The True Meaning of Christmas

For Me

What does Christmas mean to you?

The traditions?
The pace and pressure to get everything just right?
Maybe it’s the sales.

Or maybe it’s the gift-giving, seeing the look on children’s faces when they open their presents for the first time.

Maybe it’s the symbolic meaning. Maybe it brings you closer to Christ, or to whatever you worship.

For me, it has become something simpler, humbler, and more rustic. That’s why I chose the image above, created with the help of ChatGPT and the WA Imager.

Christmas should not be an event, a spectacle, or a performance. All of those things have slowly hidden what I see as the true meaning of Christmas.

In the past, what became Christmas time marked a season when people drew together around warmth and light, often a fire, in the darkest part of the year. The power of that time did not announce itself loudly or demand attention the way the modern season does. It was quiet.

Communities gathered not only for warmth, food, and camaraderie, but in the hope that the darkness would pass and the sun would rise again. Community was not everyone arriving at once out of obligation. It was people coming and going, continuing their lives, yet still gathering to affirm that each other mattered, that everyone was needed to survive. Even that surly so-and-so on the edge of town. Everyone was welcome.

That is what belonging to a community looked like. Not store-bought gifts exchanged out of obligation or tradition, but people coming together in warmth and fellowship. It should not matter what belief you follow, the color of your skin, which side of the tracks you were born on, or how much money you make.

Christmas is not about any of that.

The best way I can express what it is about comes from Christ Jesus in the Bible, when he said (and I paraphrase), “This one command I give to you: love everyone as I have loved you.” This is not a direct quote, so please don’t be offended.

Christmas is not only a time to gather for companionship. It is a return to something simpler, a time when being together was enough. When warmth, shared food, and shared presence were all that was needed to say that hope is alive, and that the sun will rise again.

JD