December 21, 2005 3:01 PM
My newspaper column - Christmas 2005
One of the best gifts I received this year was seeing this on the today's editorial page in the Loudoun Times-Mirror, where for two years I've written a regular biweekly column:
The Greatest Gift
Want your kids to get the most out of Christmas?
Go easy on gifts. Emphasize meaning. Best of all, give them something to last a lifetime – a spiritual foundation.
“Religious people are happier than those without spirituality in their life†– this according to research from the University of Warwick, among a slew of studies finding churchgoers to be happier, healthier, less likely to divorce – and with children less likely to use drugs, commit crimes, or drop out of school.
Dr. Stephen Joseph, project director, noted that those who celebrate the religious aspect of the holidays are likely to be happier, noting, “Research shows that too much materialism in our lives can be terrible for happiness."
I’ve been there.
Having grown up without religion myself, as an adult I worked up the Christmas spirit buying loads of presents for my kids. Giving them things I never had was a lot of fun. Then again, with some years leaner than others, not as much money could mean not as much good cheer.
It wasn’t until I finally understood the meaning of Christmas that I experienced the joy that resonated in our home whether we could afford a lot of presents or not. It was then that singing carols together as a family – once just words, now core beliefs – could be as much fun as opening presents Christmas morning.
A couple years ago we looked around at all the stuff our ten still-at-home children had accumulated and made a radical proposal: that we send our Christmas money to a children’s relief organization (www.worldvision.org) building homes for African orphans. Our children agreed – though what it cost each of them personally to give up their Christmas bounty, I can only guess.
But how those faraway children felt to know that a real family had cared enough to give them shelter – thinking of that made it a Christmas like no other.
A friend of mine who grew up in an atheist family lost her mother as a teen. As an adult, she endured every Christmas with an endless round of movies. She said it hurt too much to celebrate Christmas without her mom.
What if her mother had given her a chance to make God part of her life? But my friend’s parents – though careful to introduce art, music and even a second language at a tender age – thought their daughter should decide for herself about religion. . . . later.
How could she decide about something she’d never been exposed to? And how could they foresee that the bitterness in her heart over the loss of her mother would make it only harder for her to believe?
Me, I was lucky. I stumbled into the Christian faith at the age of 38. Though I know a little about other religions, I can only speak with confidence of the one whose birth our family celebrates December 25: For us, Jesus Christ has been the gift that keeps on giving.
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Comments
Just wanted to say that I loved the comment about the gift that keeps giving!! So true.
Posted by: Debbie | December 22, 2005 3:37 AM
