Christmas is a yearly reality check. The lessons of Christmas are so counterintuitive that even after we have celebrated Christmas in society for centuries, and in our homes our whole lives, when each Christmas comes it’s like we are learning its lessons for the first time.
Here are 12 Christmas virtues our culture tends to forget. Call them the 12 ways of Christmas.
1. God loves a good story. Far from being opposed or alien to human nature, God shares our love of a good story. He could have become a man any way he wanted. He chose to be born in a stable, to a couple far from their home, surrounded by animals, shepherds and Magi, pursued by a wicked king.
2. God loses battles but wins wars. In his day, Herod was Christmas’s formidable enemy. He lied to the Magi and ordered a massacre of innocents, becoming an angel of death in Bethlehem as he killed all newborn boys to try to eliminate Jesus. In our day Christmas is still under attack, though in America the attacks aren’t violent, thank God. Christmas will win in the end, because God wins even through apparent defeats.......
National Catholic Register reviews the 12 Ways on their blog.
12/27/08
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