hol - ee - day

Christmas, that so called wonderful time of the year.  A time to make merry around the Christmas tree or is it mugumo tree, i get confused sometimes with this white man known as St. Nick, with traditions imported straight from TV land without the cultural understanding of their origins.  I don't think I love Christmas as a holiday though i do love what it represents to me.  The day that Jesus Christ my lord and Savior was born.  The day that the world would be gifted with the greatest man ever to live.  For those who don't believe that He is the son of God, well, those are your own problems, you cannot however deny that his words were and will forever continue to be not only be relevant then but today and tomorrow. 

 

How then do i as a Kenyan celebrate this day and at the same time maintain the Christmas spirit that often goes hand in hand with gift giving?  How do i lessen the importance of the gift giving and concentrate on the core of the principle behind it? I propose a new (or is it old) idea to make it a part of the Christmas culture.  Christ the lord was/is a gift to mankind, not in the Christ himself but in what he brought through his birth, Salvation. Through him we may learn more about the father, through him we should realize that though we are created in the image of God, we are not God.  That only through knowing Christ can we then begin to understand who our true father is, and what the true nature of Love is.

 

Love, that this is what Christmas is about.  True love is sacrifice.  That God sacrificed his son and that Christ went to the cross, sacrificing himself so that we could learn this very important truth.  How then do we as mere mortals continue to love?  How then do we continue to impact those around us through sacrifice?  Some people would say that buying someone or a family gifts is sacrificing your money.  True, when this purchase has been well thought out, truly planned and managed at a sincere level then this can act as an expression of Love.  But its not enough.  A sacrifice as defined in the online webster dictionary is:

 

Main Entry: sac·ri·fice

Pronunciation: \ˈsa-krə-ˌfīs, also -fəs or -ˌfīz\

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin sacrificium, from sacr-, sacer + facere to make — more at do

Date: 13th century

1 : an act of offering to a deity something precious; especially : the killing of a victim on an altar
2 : something offered in sacrifice
3 a : destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else b : something given up or lost <the sacrifices made by parents>

 

So does the gift you buy have any of the above representations?  What then can be done over and above to draw it closer to the true idea of sacrifice.  That question can only be answered by yourself as only you know how far you would go to truly sacrifice yourself to another.  At the heart of it all by our actions we pay homage to God, we say we remember, we say we care and in the words of Nickleback, i sing Amen, Im alive:

If Everyone Cared lyrics

From underneath the trees, we watch the sky
Confusing stars for satellites
I never dreamed that you'd be mine
But here we are, we're here tonight

Singing Amen, I, I'm alive
Singing Amen, I, I'm alive

[Chorus:]
If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
Then we'd see the day when nobody died

And I'm singing Amen

Amen I, Amen I, I'm alive
Amen I, Amen I, Amen I, I'm alive

And in the air the fireflies
Our only light in paradise
We'll show the world they were wrong
And teach them all to sing along

Singing Amen, I, I'm alive
Singing Amen, I, I'm alive
(I'm alive)

[Chorus x2]

And as we lie beneath the stars
We realize how small we are
If they could love like you and me
Imagine what the world could be

If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
Then we'd see the day when nobody died
When nobody died...

[Chorus]

We'd see the day, we'd see the day
When nobody died
We'd see the day, we'd see the day
When nobody died
We'd see the day when nobody died