AETH

Christmas is over?

By Dr. Justo Gonzalez

They say Christmas is over today. Tomorrow the lights will go out, the music will change, the boxes and gift wrapping will be thrown away, and the trees will disappear. Tomorrow the merchants will focus their attention on New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day that follows. So they say Christmas is over, but they say it wrong! Christmas($) is over; but not CHRISTMAS($)!

I say this for two reasons. The first, and the least important, is that Christmas will be over on the commercial calendar, but not on the Christian calendar. Until this Christmas Day, we have been awaiting the coming of our Lord (which is why we said we were in Advent). Today we begin to celebrate His coming, and that celebration will continue in our calendar until its culmination on January 6, with the arrival of the magi from the east and therefore with the revelation (or Epiphany) of our Lord to all nations.

But the most important reason why we affirm that Christmas does not end today is another. Christmas does not end today because it cannot end; because Christmas is nothing less than the presence of God among us and as one of us humans. Herod wanted to end it with the slaughter of the innocents. Religious and politicians wanted to kill it with the cross. But, ON THE THIRD DAY...!

The Child in the manger, God made one of us, is still one of us. As one of us he lived on this earth. As one of us he suffered and died. But for all of us he conquered death; and on behalf of all of us he sits at the right hand of God.

That is why Christmas is not over, and we will continue to celebrate it. The loud Christmas music that until yesterday we heard in the streets and in the stores will fall silent. But it will not silence the song to which we join today and which we will continue to sing forever: "Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace and good will".