The Christmas Spirit

It takes some doing around to get ready for Christmas.

There is the shopping to do, the gifts to wrap, the cards to mail, the goodies to bake, the floors to wax, the windows to wash, the decorations to drag out and put up ... Why, it wears one out just to think about it!

Yet, getting ready for our biggest and best holiday season would be simple if a person would start, say, the first week in December. But who can get such work underway before she gets the “Christmas Spirit!”

On the other hand, some women roll up their sleeves and do too many things. They get so bogged down in the work -- and so weary from it -- that they take no time to even think of the Christmas Spirit.

There is such a thing as the Christmas Spirit. It’s an intangible something. Invisible. A little bit mysterious, yet profound. It is the thing that awakens the good in us, stirs us into giving gifts and going out of the way to provide joy and happiness for others.

The Christmas Spirit makes for a special warmth in the greetings and good wishes we offer and receive during the Advent season. It puts a smile on the face, lifts up the heart and makes us glad. The Spirit brings a unique mood of expectation and exaltation that comes only at Christmas time.

Is it possible to invoke this Spirit, i.e., to call it down, or conjure it up? I think not. It is too deep a thing.

Christmas is the celebration of the Birthday of the Christ. And only in observing this Holy Event can anyone hope to experience the supernatural feeling we term “Spirit.” For, indeed, this special sense of joy and peace which floods the heart at Christmas tune is a gift from our God.

God gave the Gift once. Long ago. In Bethlehem of Judea, the City of David. A handful of Judean shepherds were the first to be told of it, the first to seek and find it. Now, every man in Christendom can have the Gift.

To find the Gift of the Spirit, the Christ, again and again -- each Christmas season -- go in your thoughts to the hills of Judea and join those shepherds, who on the night when Christ was born “were abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night.”

With the shepherds, see a host of angels came down to earth, bringing the “tidings of great joy,” and singing of “glory to God in the highest....Peace on earth, good will toward men.”

Try to hear the words of their song. They might well go something like this:

“...Glory to God in the highest!

Let the whole earth be full of His glory!

Let His glory be above the heavens!

All glory! All praises! All honor to our God!

We praise Him! Exalt Him! Lift up His holy name!

“With the voice of joy, with the voice of gladness,

We proclaim Peace! Peace, on the earth.

A Peace to pass all understanding,

The Peace of God for the heart of man.

Peace! Peace! God’s Peace....

“With the voice of joy, with the voice of gladness,

We bring good tidings. ...Tidings of joy, great joy!

‘Unto you is born this day in the City of David,

A Saviour which is Christ the Lord.’

This day, this day, born in the City of David,

The Saviour, the Christ, the Lord! ...

“With the voice of joy, with the voice of gladness,

We show a sign: How to find Him, how to know Him.

Go to the City of David;

In a manger, wrap’t in swaddling,

Sleeps a Holy Child.

Find Him! Find Him! Go to the City of David;

In a manger find the Lamb of God!

“...Glory to God in the highest! Now, and forevermore!”

Go on now with the shepherds, to Bethlehem. Walk “with haste, and (find) Mary, and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger.”

When you leave the City of David and return home, don’t fret about those December chores. Just do the necessary shopping and wrap the gifts, send out the cards, bake and clean, and be done with it. For all these things are as nothing when compared with taking the time to find again the Christmas Spirit -- the Gift of God.

(*Editor’s note: These lines are from “Song of the Angels,” the theme song of Jewell Ellen Smith’s new Christmas play “The Gift of the Lamb.” The same hymn is also a part of her Advent drama titled “Dear Caesar Augustus:.”)

Published December 1978. Press your browser’s “Back” button to return.