In a second advent, in the XXIst century, we are waiting for the second Christmas, as the patriarchs and the prophets had been waiting for the first one for long centuries.
The second Christmas is not anymore about a second nativity scene with the Holy Family in a cave barn, a Messiah baby in the manger, shepherds and sheep under the barren sky with the messenger star and with the Magi visitors just arrived by, but it is about the return of the Christ King with full power and judgment, appearing from the clouds, descending from Heaven onto the Earth. The prophets had been waiting for centuries BC, as we have been waiting also for centuries AD, I mean almost two millennia, and nowadays something is just in the air, that the second coming of the Christ is not too far.
Since the leaving of the Christ, all generations, one by one, claimed that the Christ's return is near, looking for foretold signs in the nature and society.
Jesus however asserted, that nobody knows that time and the hour, but the Father himself.
Also he said that it will be very sudden and unexpected.
One thing seems to be certain that our age is expecting. Something big must happen soon. The nature and the climate are definitely changing. The symptoms are well known, as hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, melting icecaps around and on the poles, ozone holes, acid rains, magnetic pole shifting, sun eruptions, and also human errors.
In the outer society we have already experienced the phenomena of international and global wars, sub-continental hungers, fast spreading viruses, resistant bacteria. The econimists are more pessimists than doom-sayers, the social trenches keep widening year by year.
Also several candidates are obviously marching against Jesus Christ, real Anti-Christ figures.
Meanwhile we prepare for the Christmas season, by gifts and good deeds in family, in community and church, looking for wrappers and expecting happy smiles, starting with the Santa Claus events on a global scale, and also gathering in churches to celebrate the birth of the Messiah of the world.
We, as humanity, have definitely reached a major cross road, wondering and disputing that where we should find the right decisions and solutions for global headaches.
What is the direction we should follow? Where is the guidance?
For Christians the answer is very simple. The guidance is the Christmas Child, namely love and goodness, mercy and justice, kindness and empathy, truth and faith by grace and the Spirit.
This world with its hatred and wickedness, with its ruthlessness and injustice, with its greed and cruelty, with its lies and blasphemies must go, it must disappear.
Great philosophers and a great part of the general population boldly doubt that it will ever happen. But they also doubted that the first Christmas would ever happen.
The miracle of the first Christmas was given by God as a Christmas gift to the humanity.
As it is written. “ In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. ” John 1:4-5
The Celebration of Christmas is the celebration of his light. If we think about the Festivity of Christmas only as the frame of the nativity story, we will not be in the complete dark, just a we will happen to be a little bit inaccurate.
Nobody actually knows exactly when Jesus was born. Not the day, not the month,not even the year. According to the wiki : " Two approaches have been used to estimate the year of the birth of Jesus: one based on the accounts in the Gospels of his birth with reference to King Herod's reign, where it is proven that Herod died in the year of 4 BC, thus Jesus must have been born before 4 BC. (There is no year Zero.)
The other theory works backwards from his stated age of "about 30 years" when he began preaching. Most scholars, on this basis, assume a date of birth between 6 and 4 BC with Saturday 17 April 6 BC / 17.4.748 AUC / 29 Nisan 3755 HC being the most likely candidate."
For a long time the Eastern church celebrated Jesus' spiritual birthday on January 6th, on the agreed feast they of the baptism of Jesus. Finally around the end of the IVth century the western church put the Feast Day of the Nativity on December 25th, practically on the Winter solstice.
The question may arise that if we do not know the exact date of his birth, and nothing is certain, except that it was not in December, then why should we celebrate it in December?
The answer is simple. Better than never.
Thus the wise of old and the mighty put the Christmas Day on the winter solstice, which is practically the beginning and the end of the astronomical year. This condition corresponds with the famous quote from the Book of Revelation: " I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End ."
Astronomically it is a recurring moment in every year, when the Sun starting to gain weight, the daylight is increasingly longer, thus the phenomenon became a natural metaphor for the victory of the light over the darkness.
In an ancient system of symbols, the belief system and the liturgy naturally incorporates cosmological metaphors, thus the winter solstice is a perfect choice to celebrate the birth of the Christ, of whom the Gospel of John 1: states: " In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. "
Paradoxically but consequently, the lack of knowledge of the exact date of his birth make us able to celebrate it in such a perfect time like December 25.
However, the lack of knowledge of the exact day may enable us to go even further, to reach a higher level, the spiritual meaning of God’s ordered timing.
This higher level is the understanding that it is completely not enough to celebrate Christmas for one or two days a year, but we have to make everyday like Christmas. Because if we do not know the exact day, then any day can be his birthday, any day of the year can be Christmas.
The characteristic expectation of the Festivity of Christmas is to have a bit more love and charity, family precious time and friendship, compassion and generosity, a little bit more of these than on the other days of the year. As Andy Williams sings regarding Christmas that " It's the most wonderful time of the year. "
It is a legitimate claim, and feast must be feast, celebration must be celebration, but still it is not the best approach to isolate the Christmas from the rest of the year.
The better is when we try hard everyday to fulfill the expectations of Christmas of more peace, more charity, more family and friends time, more generosity.
If we limit Christmas to a few or moreover to a single day, it may diminish the real meaning of Christmas, which is quite the opposite, aka the divine light shines in the world all the time and not only for one starry night or the big day when people try generosity for one day as a matter of some temporary change.
Maybe it is a wonderfully preordained condition by God, the Father, that we should not know the exact date, thus every single day we may whisper the question to ourselves in our hearts that maybe today is the real Christmas? In order somehow not to miss it, we have to celebrate every single day as a Christmas day to make the scope and the kingdom of the Christ complete on Earth as it is in Heaven.
AMEN
