It’s a Christmas greeting from a friend of mine that provoked these few lines. I knew my friend to be an excellent boy, practicing devout Christian. These were the words in his greetings. “Santa Claus is coming along with a rainbow of gifts especially for you. Wish you a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year”. I felt so sorry at this greeting and decided to reply him. In my reply I just asked him a question. “Since when did Christmas become a feast of Santa Clause and no more of Jesus?”
I think this is the plight of only Christian feasts. Somehow, the religious meaning behind the feasts has been completely left out. The Easter has given way for the pranks of Easter eggs, the Epiphany (which originally meant manifestation of Jesus to the magis) has been left aside and today all think of “La Befana” the old lady who comes around bringing gifts for the good ones and filling charcoal in the stockings of the bad ones. November 2, the “All souls day”, no one has time to think of the souls, because there is the “Halloween hangover”.
The worse thing of all is that it is always we the Christians who are the first ones to leave aside the spiritual meaning and spread wrong messages around. Anyway my friend in the story immediately apologized for his thoughtlessness and assured that he wouldn’t repeat the mistake again. But I think this is something that calls for a serious thought. At least at this Christmas as we sit down to email our friends let us make it a point to write not just Xmas but CHRISTmas. Yes, it is CHRISTmas because Christ is the reason for the season.
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