Let's Keep Christmas

Excerpts from a Sermon by Peter Marshall: (a Scottish immigrant to the U.S. who eventually went to seminary and became a minister in the Presbyterian church - this sermon was likely delivered sometime in the 1930's - 1940's)

"We all feel the pressure of approaching Christmas.

The traffic is terrible.

You can't find a parking space...

The stores are crowded...

Mob scenes make shopping a nightmare.

You are thinking about presents - wondering what in the world you can get for so-and-so.

You think of friends and loved ones who are so hard to shop for. You can't think of anything they need (which is rather strange when you take time to think of it.)

Let's not give way to the cynicism and mutter that 'Christmas has become commercialized.'

It never will be - unless you let it be.

Your Christmas is not commercialized, unless you have commercialized it.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Let's not succumb to the sophistication that complains: 'Christmas belongs only to the children.'

That shows that you have never understood Christmas at all, for the older you get, the more it means, if you know what it means.

Christmas, though forever young, grows old along with us.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Have you been saying, 'I just can't seem to feel the Christmas spirit this year'?

That's too bad.

As a confession of lack of faith, it is rather significant.

You are saying that you feel no joy that Jesus came into the world...

You are confessing that His presence in the world is not a reality to you...

Maybe you need all the more to read the Christmas story over again, need to sit down with the Gospel of Luke -

and think about it.

When Christmas doesn't make your heart swell up until it nearly bursts...

and fill your eyes with tears......

and make you all soft and warm inside..........

then you'll know something inside of you is dead.

Isn't it wonderful to think that nothing can really harm the joy of Christmas...

-------------------------------------------------------------

Although your Christmas tree decorations will include many new gadgets, such as lights with bubbles in them...

it's the old tree decorations that mean the most...

the ones you save carefully from year to year....

the crooked star that goes on the top of the tree.....

the ornaments that you've been so careful with.

And you'll bring out the tiny manger,

and the shed,

and the little figures of the Holy Family...

and lovingly arrange them on the mantel

or in the middle of the dining room table.

And getting the tree will be a family event, with great excitement for the children...

And there will be a closet into which you'll forbid your husband to look,

And he will be moving through the house mysteriously with bundles under his coat,

and you'll pretend not to notice...

There will be the fragrance of cookies baking

spices and fruit cake...

and the warmth of the house shall be melodious with the lilting strains of 'Silent Night, Holy Night.'

And you'll listen to the wonderful Christmas music on the radio,

Some of the songs will be modern - good enough music perhaps -

but it will be the old carols,

the lovely old Christmas hymns that will mean the most.

And forests of fir trees will march right into our living rooms....

There will be bells on our doors

and holly wreaths in our window...

And we shall sweep the Noel skies for their brightest colors and festoon our homes with stars.

There will be a chubby stocking hung by the fireplace....

and with finger to lip you will whisper

and ask me to tip-toe, for a little tousled head is asleep and must not be awakened

until after Santa has come.

-------------------------------------------------------------

And finally Christmas morning will come.

Don't worry - you'll be ready for it -

You'll catch the spirit all right.

And then you will remember what Christmas means - the beginning of Christianity....

the Second Chance for the world....

the hope for peace....

and the only way.

The promise that the angels sang is the most wonderful music the world has ever heard.

'Peace on earth and good will toward men.'

It was not a pronouncement upon the state of the world then

Nor is it a reading of the international barometer of the present time...

but it is a promise - God's promise - of what one day will come to pass.

-------------------------------------------------------------

The years that are gone are graveyards in which all the persuasions of men have crumbled into dust. If history has any voice, it is to say that all these ways of men lead nowhere.

There remains one way - The Way - untried,

untested,

unexplored fully...

the way of Him Who was born a Babe in Bethlehem.

In a world that seems not only to be changing, but even to be dissolving, there are some tens of millions of us who want Christmas to be the same...

with the same old greeting 'Merry Christmas' and no other.

We long for the abiding love among men of good will which the season brings...

We want to hold on to the old customs and traditions because they strengthen our family ties,

bind us to our friends,

make us one with all mankind

for whom the Child was born,

and bring us back again to the God Who gave His only begotten Son, that 'whoever believeth in Him shoud not perish, but have everlasting life.'

So we will not 'spend' Christmas.....

nor 'observe' Christmas.

We will 'keep' Christmas - keep it as it is....

in all the loveliness of its ancient traditions.

May we keep it in our hearts,

that we may be kept in its hope."