Christmas and Glue

    It's about 6:30 on Christmas morning, and I am the only one up at my house. Because of family traditions that go back many years, the presents are all unwrapped, and all the family visiting is done for another year. I'm the only one up in our house, and this has given me some time to reflect on the past year, Christmas, and many other things.
    What is Christmas to you? Skeptics will tell you it's just a day that was arbitrarily picked to celebrate the birth of a child, and the day was perhaps picked to appease pagans who were already celebrating something else on this day. Perhaps that is the case. It's all conjecture. One of the fundamental rules of historical scholarship is that if it wasn't written down down by several independent sources, it didn't happen, so all of that is conjecture. My point though is that is really doesn't matter. 
    Christmas is more than a day to celebrate a birth. Christmas is more than a day to overeat. Christmas is more than a day to give and receive. Christmas is more than just a day to reconnect with family and friends. Yes it is all those things. But those aren't nearly as important as what Christmas really is. Christmas is glue. Christmas is a day in which for a short time anyway, the majority of mankind is united. It is a day, or perhaps a season, where we all come together and enjoy spending time together and being generous. It is a bonding agent that unites disparate materials together as one for a short time, and that is the real power of Christmas.  
    Among Christians, it is a short time in which we can put aside theological differences, which probably don't matter to much to Christ anyway, and be one in worship. It doesn't matter if you are Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, or whatever flavor of Christian you may be, we all unite on this day. Non-Christians as well. Many Jews, Hindus, and Muslims still celebrate the spirit of the season, visiting, exchanging gifts and good tidings, and in general, embracing the true spirit of God, which is love. St. Paul said it best so many centuries ago in his letter to the Corinthians (13:13) "But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love." God is Love, and, lest we ever forget that, which we often do, we have a few select days, among which, the greatest is Christmas, to remind us, and reunite us, in that overpowering love. 

Merry Christmas Everyone!