The Keepers of Christmas

We Are The Keepers of Christmas

It’s a wintry mix kind of day. The sky is obscured with an unending blanket of gray that will never brighten and yield to an increasingly earlier sunset only to be swallowed up by the long winter darkness. 

It’s always windy this time of year, which makes winter’s dead cold even more foreboding. The winter solstice has yet to come yet winter surrounds me. The once vibrant trees which were bursting with life just a few weeks ago, now stand brittle, dull, creaking skeletons swaying under the mournful gray of nature’s sky-canvas. That canvas will stay with us until spring appears from the barren frozen ground.

Christmas is only days away now, and of course, some still refuse to call it Christmas — as if saying the word somehow entangles them in some religious denomination or organization.

Christmas is not “Happy Holidays”, it’s Christmas. If someone does not want to call it “Christmas” they should not be taking time off work, exchanging gifts, or celebrating… no one will force them to. But, of course, they will anyway. Christmas doesn’t exist to them, but they will be hypocrites and celebrate what they love to deny.

Many of those who shun Christmas will still be glowing in the revelry of Christmas, though. You’ll see them putting up Christmas trees, shopping for gifts, knocking back a drink or two… and celebrating the very holiday they deny.

I’m tired of politics. I’m tired of hypocrites. I’m tired of deniers and liars and “influencers”. I just want Christmas to be the way it should be – the way it always was. I’ll admit it was getting harder to find the spirit of Christmas — it is so often buried in cultural upheaval, ignorance, and politics.

Christmas has become an easy target for deniers and hypocrites who can’t stand to be part of anything they don’t understand — or don’t want to understand — and won’t take the time to understand. Some just don’t like seeing other people being happy.

I will admit that this year, I was having an extremely hard time finding the spirit of Christmas. I cannot deny it. I had a very difficult time convincing myself that Christmas would endure much past my generation. I couldn’t shake off the dust and dirt the world had piled upon it.

Then something happened.

I received a picture from my youngest son. It was a picture of my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter giving her teddy bear as a gift to the family Christmas tree. 

The innocence and sweetness touched me… and made me stop and think.

I realized then that Christmas does not come from outside ourselves, it comes from within; Christmas lives in our hearts. We keep it alive. We are the keepers of Christmas.

If I keep Christmas in my heart, and you keep Christmas in yours, Christmas will never die, no matter how much some try to kill it, deny it, or commercialize it.

So it is that you and I, and all of us, really are the keepers of Christmas.  It is up to us to keep the magic alive so that our children, our children’s children, and their children, will know the true meaning and the magic of Christmas. They will know because Christmas lives on in our hearts. So it is then, that we all are the keepers of Christmas and because we are, future generations will know the magic and the spirit of Christmas too.

Those of us who are the keepers of Christmas have an important and precious obligation. The future of Christmas depends on us. No matter how much the world changes, no matter how crazy the world gets, how commercialized it gets, or how much the deniers try to kill it, Christmas will live on because of us. And as long as we keep Christmas alive in our hearts, the true meaning of Christmas, the story of Christmas, and the magic of Christmas will live on forever.

Christmas will never die.

Christmas is not about what others do—it’s about what we do. Christmas is not about what others say—it’s about what we say. We are the keepers of Christmas. We are entrusted with keeping the Christmas spirit and magic alive despite the obtuse labyrinth of craziness that swirls around us.

No one can take away Christmas as long as we, the keepers of Christmas, persevere.  

And remember too, Christmas is not a date on the calendar, it’s a place in our hearts. And as long as Christmas lives in our hearts, Christmas will never die.

It’s up to us to keep Christmas’s true meaning and spirit alive. If we keep Christmas in our hearts and if we keep Christmas well, Christmas will live forever.

We are the keepers of Christmas.

We wish you and your family a very Blessed and Merry Christmas!