How can you keep Christ in Christmas if he never left. Saying “Keep Christ in Christmas” is like saying “Keep hydrogen in water”. When I partake of a glass of water, I do not think, “I feel like having two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen.” I simply seek the source that will quench my physical or spiritual thirst. The earth is 2/3 water. I simply need to find it.

Those who say (or shout) “Keep Christ in Christmas” are well-intended. They feel, fear and fret the commercialization of Christmas. But I really don’t think we are going to have much luck keeping Christ anywhere we implore or demand he be. I have found the magical, mystical spirit of a power far greater than myself at the mall; in a funeral home; in a blues bar; and even in church!

As a matter of fact, Christ has been sleeping on the front steps of my National Registry of Historic Places church with its original Tiffany windows and 35 foot vaulted ceilings and 2,000+ pipe organ for the past several nights. Each night I offer her a bottle of water and each night she graciously accepts it and each morning she packs up her bundle and departs for the day, leaving the unopened bottle of water behind. What is this shivering, incoherent Christ trying to tell me?

We keep Christ in Christmas, methinks, each time we feed and shelter the poor, clothe the naked, visit the prisoners (including those imprisoned by addiction, poverty, loneliness, loss, illness, shame and fear). I don’t look for Christ in the manger in Jerusalem. I look for Christ in the manger of my heart.

I feel blessed more so by what I do than by what I say or think. Fancy that!