Christmas lights and decorations, products promotions, and even Christmas countdown are now published daily on television for the blessed and joyful season. Businesses are redoubling their stocks and supplies, augmenting display designs in the market, and posting very attractive Christmas advertisements, and aggressive marketing campaigns to entice and capture the interest of shoppers, especially at these times when Christmas benefits are almost due for distribution. Plans for sumptuous parties and social gatherings are now being discussed in offices, schools and every other organized groups of people.
| A similar nipa hut where the family lives |
Observant of the premature lavish preparations for Christmas festivities, my memory remits one Christmas time event which occurred during our scheduled Sacrament Meeting on December 19, 2010. My heart bleeds at the sight of a widowed father carrying his two very young children on a hand cart which he pushed at a distance of approximately 3 kilometers away under the rain. He earns a living scavenging and rummaging recyclable scrap materials from trash containers all around the community. At times he is seen carrying on his back the dirty collections in a large empty sack of rice later to be piled for sale to scrap buyers. Together with his children they live in a nipa hut down a hill, in Sitio Cayutan, Barangay Cagniog, Surigao City, Philippines. They arrived just before the sacrament meeting started. The father and children were wet. Immediately, sympathetic hearts were touched and the children were given clothes to wear from extra clothing which mothers brought in reserve for their children during rainy season. Acts of generosity abound and Christ like charity was immediately available to lift the needy from such a forbidding sight.
I could not hold back the tears at sacrament meeting as I partook of the Lord’s Supper, and as my memory brought me to the account of the Master’s birth when He was also denied the comforts of even just an available room for His mother to give birth and for Him to lie on. But he was instead afforded an animal stable where he was finally given birth and was “wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger” (Luke 2:7). In that most humble nativity “there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God,” from on high announcing the glorious tidings of great joy “saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men” (Luke 2:13-14). He was long prophesied to be the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but since that humble birth, He was simply known as the carpenter’s son. He walked the lonely road of Jericho, performed miracles for the lonely, the distressed, and the afflicted. On one occasion, He performed miracles to ten lepers, but only one ever returned to express gratitude to Him by whose miraculous and powerful hands relieved the men from their sufferings and afflictions.
I could not hold back the tears at sacrament meeting as I partook of the Lord’s Supper, and as my memory brought me to the account of the Master’s birth when He was also denied the comforts of even just an available room for His mother to give birth and for Him to lie on. But he was instead afforded an animal stable where he was finally given birth and was “wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger” (Luke 2:7). In that most humble nativity “there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God,” from on high announcing the glorious tidings of great joy “saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men” (Luke 2:13-14). He was long prophesied to be the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but since that humble birth, He was simply known as the carpenter’s son. He walked the lonely road of Jericho, performed miracles for the lonely, the distressed, and the afflicted. On one occasion, He performed miracles to ten lepers, but only one ever returned to express gratitude to Him by whose miraculous and powerful hands relieved the men from their sufferings and afflictions.
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| Birth of Jesus (source: lds.org) |
Now, we are once again celebrating the glorious event, even the birth of our Lord and Savior. We wonder if the tide of commercialism associated with the celebration would ever reflect the true and enduring meaning of Christmas. We don’t know if we even have the Lord, His mission and His Atoning sacrifice, come into our thoughts on this blessed season of the year. We wonder if like the ten lepers, there would even be one out of ten that would come to partake of the Sacrament on that blessed day in remembrance and expression of gratitude after He suffered in the garden of Gethsemane and died on the cross at Calvary’s hill, saving us from our sins that we might not suffer even as He suffered.
Greed and materialism flourish even more clearly each Christmastime. The humility and simplicity exemplified by Jesus Christ at His birth is now seen as a pathetic display of prideful sumptuous feasts and commercial covetousness. While we celebrate the birth of the one who exhorts us to “succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees,” (D & C 81:5), and reminded us that if we would do these “unto one of the least of these...brethren” (Matthew 25:40), we have done it unto Him, we instead spend more for our own self gratification, and gain more from the high premiums we add on the prices of goods and services in our businesses, somehow forgetting the call for generosity and benevolence which the Lord himself exemplified.
The message of Christmas was paramount for all---a precious and wondrous gift from God. It is not about His most humble birth, but all about His Atonement. The great light that was shown during that first Christmas illuminates both the way for the wealthy wise men and the humble shepherds watching their flocks by night. The wealthy wise men offered gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. The poor shepherds offered gifts of their time and love to come to the stable where the Lord was humbly laid.
That widowed father, in his impoverished condition, seemed to have nothing to be grateful for, except perhaps for his life and his two children. Yet he came carrying his own Calvary's cross to partake at the table of the Lord to remember His atoning sacrifice and worship Him on a Sabbath immediately before the Christmas Day. In his destitution, he finds no reason to complain and default, but came many Sundays more since then and even now, to renew his covenant and partake of the blessed Sacrament.
Greed and materialism flourish even more clearly each Christmastime. The humility and simplicity exemplified by Jesus Christ at His birth is now seen as a pathetic display of prideful sumptuous feasts and commercial covetousness. While we celebrate the birth of the one who exhorts us to “succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees,” (D & C 81:5), and reminded us that if we would do these “unto one of the least of these...brethren” (Matthew 25:40), we have done it unto Him, we instead spend more for our own self gratification, and gain more from the high premiums we add on the prices of goods and services in our businesses, somehow forgetting the call for generosity and benevolence which the Lord himself exemplified.
The message of Christmas was paramount for all---a precious and wondrous gift from God. It is not about His most humble birth, but all about His Atonement. The great light that was shown during that first Christmas illuminates both the way for the wealthy wise men and the humble shepherds watching their flocks by night. The wealthy wise men offered gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. The poor shepherds offered gifts of their time and love to come to the stable where the Lord was humbly laid.
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| The Atonement (source: lds.org) |
Since that first Christmas, the gift of love, light and life which only the Lord Jesus Christ could bestow, were both for the rich and the distressed, the strong and the weak, and the healthy and the afflicted. His invitation to partake of the infinite gift of His Atonement for the sins of the world was extended to all. To the rich young man He invited, “... sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me” (Luke 18:22). To the lonely and the weary He summoned, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:29). To the wounded and worn out, He sends His ever comforting assurance, “...peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment” (D & C 121:7). To both the faithful and the sinners He declared, “For behold, I, God, have suffered these thing for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent” (D & C 19: 16).
The pathetic sight of a suffering family on that afternoon of December 19, 2010, the last Sabbath prior to Christmas Day of that year, who come to worship the Lord and remember Him, was such a kind of attitude that perhaps we need to emulate not only at Christmas, but the whole year through. After partaking the holy ordinance of the Sacrament, and receiving greetings from those whose hearts he touched, the father loaded his two children on the handcart covering them with an umbrella from a generous benefactor. He carried by hand and pushed the handcart with only two semi-metal wheels in front under the pouring rain. While riding a utility tricycle ourselves, we passed by them and our hearts throb as we saw the father carrying and pushing the heavy handcart, resting every few distance, onwards to another three kilometers on the lonely road to his own Calvary’s hill. How we wished we have our own bigger utility vehicle to accommodate them, but we felt it enough to have been taught that day of a wonderful lesson on how to celebrate the blessed season. We knew that the family had been blessed with the real joy at Christmas by the source of all happiness, even God, more than the goods that the world could give.
The pathetic sight of a suffering family on that afternoon of December 19, 2010, the last Sabbath prior to Christmas Day of that year, who come to worship the Lord and remember Him, was such a kind of attitude that perhaps we need to emulate not only at Christmas, but the whole year through. After partaking the holy ordinance of the Sacrament, and receiving greetings from those whose hearts he touched, the father loaded his two children on the handcart covering them with an umbrella from a generous benefactor. He carried by hand and pushed the handcart with only two semi-metal wheels in front under the pouring rain. While riding a utility tricycle ourselves, we passed by them and our hearts throb as we saw the father carrying and pushing the heavy handcart, resting every few distance, onwards to another three kilometers on the lonely road to his own Calvary’s hill. How we wished we have our own bigger utility vehicle to accommodate them, but we felt it enough to have been taught that day of a wonderful lesson on how to celebrate the blessed season. We knew that the family had been blessed with the real joy at Christmas by the source of all happiness, even God, more than the goods that the world could give.
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