The REAL Miracle of Christmas

O.K., I'm going to bore everyone and ruminate for a while. I can do that. It's MY blog, after all!

Christmas Day is supposed to be a special time for people to reach out to family, friends...and, well... everyone. Right now is where I'm supposed to say that it isn't for all the material things, the presents, the tree, the mistletoe, blah, blah, blah. But I'm going to go a step further: it's not for the Babe in the Manger either.

WHAT?!!!
("Gasp! He must be a friggin' atheist")

No, Christmas is not for the Son of God.

It's for survival.

Survival of the fittest? No, even Darwin would say "definitely not." No, just...survival.

That's it.

Now I'm not going to throw in a remark about living in the nuclear age, or even "saving the planet" (although both would be appropriate). No, the real miracle of Christmas is that it is one day among three hundred and sixty-five which tells us how to survive in the only way possible: by reaching out in compassion to help our fellow human beings ... survive.

I guess you could also say that it's a miracle we have one day with such frequency, given the state of open hostility we have for each other. It's the one day we have to let down our guard of self-preservation and try to reach out to a hand that needs us.

Now here's the part where I'm supposed to go all KUM-BI-YAH on you, but I won't. The way we've been acting, we don't deserve that one special day out of the year. Christmas Day literally forces some people to be nice to each other. It has to pummel them with the shock and awe of miracles just to make us help others ... survive.

It's sad that there must to be one day out of the year that tells us, like a mother to her children, "play nice."

So perhaps the real miracle of Christmas is that we have Christmas at all.

We must learn from it.

Else we will not survive.

Just a thought.