Christmas--A Paragraph a Day

Every year I have to ask myself why I like Christmas so much, and I never come up with a satisfactory answer.  It isn't for religious reasons, because the holiday really has gone far past its religious roots, and if my focus were on religion, I'd probably dislike the holiday more than I like it.  It isn't for the gift-giving, because that seems to have gone over the top for most people, becoming more like a competition to give the best gift or a way to buy other people's love and affection.  I think that the bottom line for me is that it's a season when so many people are thinking of others more than they're thinking of themselves.  Our focus shifts from inward (which is very often very positive) to outward, and we're more concerned with the other people in our lives than we are in ourselves.  In my family this was rarely the case--we spent most of our holidays hoping that dad wouldn't go out drinking on the 23rd and not come home until the 26th or 27th.  Our holiday thoughts weren't on what we could do for others, but what we hoped wouldn't happen to us.  Since then, though, I've come to see Christmas more as Scrooge's nephew sees it in a book that I read every Christmas, starting on my birthday on the 20th:  "I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"  I think that Dickens definitely hit the nail on the head there, and I know that I will always love Christmas for just that reason.  Here's hoping that your Christmas, too, is a wonderful one!