Christmas… Past

SAT., DEC. 27, 1997, 6:48 AM
FARM, BRKF. TAB.

The holiday celebration called Christmas is now definitely past, but you still need a Teaching from Me as closure. You haven’t done well with Our relationship this week, and you have been aware of this. You had some thought that when you became Emeritus you would have more time for Teachings. Now you see that you’ll have to “organize such in”. Otherwise time is just sucked up.

Christmas this year was a fine holiday, with three separate gatherings, including family and friends. The food was good, and you were only a mite excessive. The gifts have not seemed excessive… except to the children… and that is hard to counter, in this present culture.

I guided you to rediscover this “essay” on Christmas that was printed last year. Your culture is quite bi-polar in relation to this holiday, and this piece tells of an even wider range in both perception and practice as you look back in time. It definitely has a mixed quality to it, and I accept this… and, naturally, I’ll tell you why.

As Jesus, I, the triune God, came to be in the earth, in bodily form. This is both important and unimportant, symbolized by two of the Gospel stories telling of My birth and two not. You note that the first one written, Mark, felt no need to tell of My birth. Then the last one written, by John (the most spiritual of the Gospel accounts), just said I was “from the beginning”. I was adult and ready to be the Christ, and there was no need for a birth story.

So, there are two birth stories, somewhat but not very, alike. This qualifies this event as mystical rather than being strictly historical. In a mystical story there is no necessity to be consistent or to “make sense”. There is only one story of My actions and life as a child, youth, and young man. And, as I have noted before, it is intended to portray Me, at age 12, as one who could amaze and impress the rabbis and teachers in the synagogue, but also has Me disobeying My parents and causing them great concern and trouble. Does this qualify Me as a “regular boy”?

Let this be a fairly good analog to the celebration of Christmas you just have experienced. If I was to be a human I couldn’t be “perfect”, except by definition. If this birth of Mine is to have holiday status in this culture it must be a good part secular and irreligious. And that means, here, a commercial blast and more of a focus on Santa and reindeer than on a simple, non-technological birth. Gift-giving can be tied to the story of the wisemen, who came bearing gifts. As I have noted before, these were of no practical value to the baby, so gifts, apparently, can be impractical and expensive and fit in fine with this story.

Neither story tells anything about eating, but this has become a feature of Christmas, in your experience. (7:37 / 7:42) Also neither story gives attention to the receiving of the gifts, and this is the “completion” of the experience. It is as important to be a fine, thankful recipient of gifts as to be a generous giver.

So, Christmas is a mixture of the sacred and the secular, of the holy and the commercial. Without this addendum to the sacred and holy it could not be the holiday it is in Christian countries. (In contrast, of course, Pentecost is the celebration of My “birth” as Holy Spirit and of the Church, as the continuation of My Body… and it is not a holiday and has no commercial significance or “value”).