My Christmas Spirit

Halfway through the month of December and the excitement is reaching its peak. Christmas is a joyous time of the year when people get together with families and friends to share their love, their time, special gifts and a lot more.

But its more than just togetherness. It’s a time when people must remember that God gave us a gift of Salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Christ and every December we celebrate the birth of the Saviour of the World.

Our celebration begins with the setting up of a Christmas tree, decorations and festive lightings. These bring focus to the Christmas crib, where we let our imagination, historic knowledge and our faith work to physically build a small replica of the place where Jesus Christ was born. This along with the carols and the prayers raise the spiritual essence of the joy of Christmas along with the pomp, the joyous meals and merrymaking.

We choose the most prominent corner of the house where no eye can ever pass without appreciating our work of art; The foyer by the main door. We want every well-wisher to grace this replica and remember the salvation gifted to humanity.

The rules are simple. Use readily available objects and try to keep things simple. We set up the Christmas tree at the corner and take our time to place each decorative hanging on its branches. The reflective nature of these little hangings gives the tree a colourful sparkle. We use a string of flashy and colourful beads to wrap the tree around its branches before we hang the serial lightings along. Now we have a place to leave our colourfully wrapped gifts; under the tree.

Now we need a table for the crib; let not the dust from our shoes be kicked into the crib. We use the teapoy as the base. The white marble top is way too smooth and will need to be hidden. As many of us know, the Jews that lived in and around Bethlehem at the time of Christ’s birth used caves as stables and where the rocks had no opening or crevices, the people would raise huts with dry branches to shelter their animals. Thus, we needed a few shapely rocks. Now the western coasts of the Indian peninsula is mainly made up of laterite stone, hence small well-placed laterite stones will do good to provide the rocky finish to our work. Now we need to work on something to create a canopy. My imagination helped me to make use of a coconut palm basket that was in shambles. The dark and rough texture of ribs of the basket added to the requirement. We have a canopy and all we need is some dry grass to spread on the table and cover that marble finish. Then to add glitter to our work we conceal a series of tiny bulbs within the crevices and the rough dried up foliage to light up the crib.

Looking at it from a neutral perspective, one would say that this work of art is pretty shabby. But that reminds us of the truth. That Christ was born in a poor man’s stable in the midst of domesticated animals. And we must understand the fact that the Son of the Most High God of Hosts found no glorious place to be born in the flesh than the humility of a dirty stable and among the lowest people; the shepherds. Even today, God finds it hard to find a spiritual place in the hearts of powerful and rich people. But God finds praise and is welcomed in the hearts of the humble and among the poor who struggle to survive in a world where material things are a branded as the way to happiness. This joyful season we focus on the need to keep the material lifestyle simple and reflect deeper into the meaningful essence of this Christmas.