Keeping Christmas

This is the reading (from an old Ideals magazine) that Jonathan gave last night in our church's Christmas Sunday candlelight service, with the children adding a few props and acting out small parts as he read.

Bro. Lefever accompanied the reading on the organ, beginning with a Christmas carol, and ending with "Love Divine."

"Keeping Christmas"

by Henry van Dyke --(one of my favorite writers from olden days)

" It is a good thing to observe Christmas Day. The mere marking of times and seasons, when men agree to stop work and make merry together, is a wise and wholesome custom."

"It helps one to feel the supremacy of the common life over the individual life.

It reminds a man to set his own little watch, now and then, by the great clock of humanity which runs on sun time.
[This is one of the three tables set up at Grandma and pa Lucas's home for Christmas Sunday dinner we spent with Jonathan's clan.]

"But there is a better thing than the observance of Christmas Day,

and that is keeping Christmas.

 "Are you willing to forget what you have done for other people and to remember what other people have done for you; to ignore what the world owes you and to think what you owe the world;

 to put your rights in the background and your duties in the middle distance and your chances to do a little more than your duty in the foreground;

 to see your fellow men are just as real as you are and try to look behind their faces to their hearts, hungry for joy;

to own that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life but what you are going to give to life; 

to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness-

 -are you willing to do these things for even a day? 

Then you can keep Christmas.

Are you willing to stoop down and consider the needs and desires of little children;

to remember the weakness and loneliness of people who are growing old;

to stop asking how much your friends love you, and ask yourself whether you love them enough;

to bear in mind the things that other people bear on their hearts;

 to try to understand what those who live in the same house with you really want, without waiting for them to tell you;

to trim your lamp so that it will give more light and less smoke;

 and to carry it in front so that your shadow will fall behind you;

to make a grave for your ugly thoughts and a garden for your kind feelings
with the gate open--are you willing to do these things even for a day?

Then you can keep Christmas.

Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world---

 

stronger than hate, stronger than death--and that the blessed life which began in Bethlehem nineteen hundred years ago

 is the image and brightness of Eternal Love?

Then you can keep Christmas!