Osler's Razor

Today is Christmas.
To many Christians, it is an important day.

To non-Christians (and many of us, too), it is easy to criticize what Christmas has become. I can't defend the commercialization and rushing around; as someone I respect has explained better than I can, the best I can do is to ignore it.

But, what is Christmas to us, then? How do we explain it to a non-Christian, other than through the most literal recitation of belief?

Like many of my faith brethren, I am deeply flawed. I know some people who truly are the saints among us: Their lives exemplify Christian morality, and their words are consistent with the very word of God. I am not one of them.

But, for us lessers, Christmas can be this-- a moment that is imbued with meaning. It may be the brief epiphany of sitting in church on Christmas Eve and hearing a baby cry and rather than being annoyed, realizing the shocking truth that God took the most vulnerable of human forms imaginable.

It might be the deep sense of love for someone who understands, a love that makes us want to slip down and fall on our knees and wrap our arms around them, thank God that they exist.

It may be an act of kindness we have given or received, fully knowing what that is.

It can even be that moment, in a beautiful descant, that a voice peals over the others, a voice that pierces the heart with words we have heard our whole lives, words of worship and humility and beauty.

Christmas does not have to be a season or a week or even a whole day; for many of us, at its best, it is a moment, but a moment of purity and light and wholeness, and there is good in that. There is good in that, and there is God in that, and that sometimes can be enough.