Thoughts on Christmas Eve

It is now, the night before the most important secular holiday of the year (and trust me, the distinction is important) that the messages of Christianity come clear - not through the pulpit, not from the signs saying "Jesus is the reason for the season", but from the interpretations of man, from the symbolism that has sprung spontaneously (though guided by the industries of commerce in latter years) about it, the archetypes of the primal religions that have survived their transformation and sublimation into the religion Yeshua started.

I make the distinction of the most important secular holiday carefully - and make no mistake, it has become the most important for reasons much deeper than its pagan roots, than the Hallmark cards and candycane dreams, though the reasons echo through the holidays conquered hundreds of years ago.

It is the reasons of the solstice, of rebirth, of the light at the end of the tunnel. It is the message half-heartedly mentioned at Easter, the rebirthing from darkness. It is the hope of a symbolic newness entering the world, of moments of childlike wonder at simple splendor and of honest effort. This, much more than Easter, is the day where suddenly we are simple again, when children are delighted by the splendor of the world around them (else why would we place such importance on the transformation of a "white Christmas"), when adults can forget the worries of credit cards, when they can see the happiness in children - when they can, if they'll only allow themselves, remember both the joy of giving and receiving.

There is a lesson in Santa Claus, in Saint Nick, in the entire spontaneous mythos that has arisen about this holiday - a lesson we often overlook as we experience its slow teaching. We create magic on this day - miracles happen, from a certain point of view. Ignore the thermodynamics, forget the last-minute shopping, this is magic in the most primitive - the most true - sense of the word. Of course it's just parents, it's just other people - but that, dear friends, is the magic. That is the wonder we so often forget in our daily lives, the magic that is so prevalent in these cold winter days when bleakness surrounds our homes and the world seems dim and dreary.

Magic is all in a certain point of view - magic is always around us. Magic is us, magic is the beauty of the world about us, whether we believe it created or evolved. It is this wonder - and ultimately our discovery of its mundane source - that is the true lesson of the most important secular holiday of the year. Not that miracles are "fake", that magic is a "lie", but that its origins are around us all the time, that miracles and magic surround us every day of the year. It is only now that we sit back and allow ourselves to realize the magic, these precious few hours before and after we wake Christmas morn, the children screaming with delight, that we can see the miracles, that we find ourselves born with Yeshua, so briefly, with wondrous childlike eyes.

Happy holidays.