The Spirit of Christmas

Take away the tinsel and the sugared treats. Take away the decorations and all those pretty lights twinkling across our cities and across the globe. Take away Black Friday and frantic shopping, tripping over others to catch the perfect sale. Let the light of Christ come into your soul. Stop obsessing over all your Yuletide preparations. Set your mind on other things – the “why” for Christ inside the word of Christmas. Ponder things unseen and things unheard: the crying of the many still enslaved and the crying of children living with no families; sad faces of some elderly sitting lonely, rarely visited inside the nursing homes or in their own residence; the whimpering of forlorn dogs in too-full pounds; the disillusionment of veterans living on the streets and the poverty of families with barely food to eat. Salvation Army rings their bells outside the stores you shop in. Be generous. Give what you can. If you’ve extra blankets, food or clothing, donate them to places where they’ll be well used. Visit lonely souls and the infirm. Show kindness to strangers and folks you see in need. Go to an animal shelter and adopt a pet! Drop gifts of necessity anonymously on someone’s doorstep. Show more love to the families that are your own. If every single person performed but one good deed in addition to the ordinary that he does already, the spirit of Christmas would start to ripple until it resounded as a sound of joy in all our world. Let Christ’s love shine forth form you, for that’s His spirit. Let love shine alongside the pretty twinkling Christmas lights across the land. Dec. 5, 2022 for the 'Christmas Spirit' Poetry Contest of Regina McIntosh