Celebrating Christmas Every day

Christmas is a day for celebration. It is a day of festivity. It is the day when friends and family to come together to eat, drink and be merry. It is a day to give and receive gifts. It is a day, out of the 365 days in one calendar year (366 in a leap year), when most of us find the time to express love and kindness to one another.  It is a day many people look forward to with excitement. It is a day most people feel they are truly loved. For these reasons, how I wished Christmas is celebrated every day, every moment.

Forget for now about the commercialisation of this hitherto spiritually uplifting celebration. Forget about the pressure commercial advertisements put on you to spend the money you do not have to buy the things no one needs for a person you hardly have a single meaningful conversation with for a whole year. This makes the celebration more exclusive to people with means to the exclusion of those without means. The person whose birthday we celebrate at Christmas lived with, and died for, the people with no means. Why then should they be excluded from his birthday celebration?      

I want you, for a moment, to forget about Jesus being the son of God. I want you to put aside the idea that he was even born of a virgin. I want you to discount the notion that he rose from the dead, ascended into heaven and will come again to judge the living and the dead. I want you to put all of this aside for just a few moments and focus your mind on his humanity. I want you, for a few moments, to think of Jesus as an ordinary human being; born into an ordinary family in an ordinary place some two thousand years ago and whose actions have made extraordinary impacts on humanity more than anyone else dead or alive.

I belief Jesus came into the world with one message for mankind. It is a message of unconditional love. The message of love is of two parts. The first is the love of God. The second is the love for one another. When you love one another unconditionally, you have loved God. You cannot love God and hate your next door neighbour. In other words, the person who fulfils the second has automatically fulfilled the first. Even when a person professes to hate God and devotes his or her entire life helping the people in need, I belief such people can be justified. I call this living the spirit without necessarily being in spirit.  

Spiritual success leads to life eternity. Physical success is of this world and therefore very transitory. What gives permanence is spiritual success. It naturally shows you the ways to have the things of the world without necessarily being attached to world.  The sage himself affirmed this when he said “seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness (spiritual) and all these things (physical) shall be added unto you”. These messages are simple but very powerful. When you think about these two messages and grasp their essence, your life will begin to change forever. You will begin to think differently. You will begin to do things differently. Christmas will begin to mean something different to you.

Many of us want to be like Jesus. I am however not sure how many of us want to share some of his experiences in life: rejection, public disgrace, spat upon, flogged, whipped, nailed on the cross and buried like a poor man, all because he dared to speak out and challenged mankind to love one another, to live humbly with one another, to show more kindness to socially excluded members of the community. What does it feel to love a neighbour as oneself? What does it feel to forgive those who hurt us? What does it feel to feel the pains of others?

The three pillars of great people are knowledge, understanding and wisdom. You acquire knowledge through learning. You gain understanding through knowledge. Wisdom comes from learning and knowing. Knowledge gives power to make informed choices and decisions.  Understanding builds a compassionate heart and wisdom ennobles justice for all under all circumstances.

Just for a moment, let us forget the words and actions of old sages such as Jesus, or Mohammed, etc. Just think of one or two people in your life today who you belief truly have these three great attributes. Think of what makes him or her so different from the other people you know? What makes them so unique? Is it their physique?  Is it what they wear? Is it their wealth? I want you to spend a few moments to think deeply about the people in your mind. They could be members of your family. May be your colleague, your neighbour, your friend, or even member your church? Just think of the things they say and they way they say them. Just think of things they do and how they do them. Just think of the way they relate to other people and the way other people relate to them. Just think of any other thing that you can associate with the people in your mind and compare these with how you see other people.

You will begin to notice a common thread starting from the values they attach to things of the world, what they belief in, what they expect of themselves and others, their attitudes to life and the world around them, the way they think about themselves and about others, what they do, how they live their daily life, their lifestyle, and their views of what life is all about. They are the epitome of humility. Love and kindness flow from their inside and are reflected in the way they live their life moment by moment. To such people, every day is Christmas. They want it celebrated it every day of the year including 25 December.  Merry Christmas.