One of my work colleagues has a saying he often uses: “I look, but what do I see?” It came to mind recently when I wanted to buy a card featuring the Nativity scene for a friend who I knew thought of Christmas that way. I was looking, but all I could see were Christ-less Christmas cards featuring everything from snowflakes, reindeer and santas, to presents, stars, Christmas trees, decorations and words like ‘season’s greetings’, but not a Christ child in sight.
The very essence of Christmas – Christ – is absent from the mass of Christmas products drenching stores and media for the past few months. It is ironic and masterful at the same time that we can so publicly, commercially and socially share in, promote and support an event that is void of the essence of its very name and the origins of this globally popular word.
To put it into perspective, it would be like the Olympics without sports, soccer without a ball, motor racing without cars, fashion without clothes, music without sound, royalty without the royals.
Even though we all acknowledge the obvious commercial presence of Christmas, there is little focus or question on what’s not present, like Christ.
This isn’t a rant about the Christ-less Christmas being a bad or evil thing or about our lack of piety, but the Christ-less Christmas is, perhaps, the most blatant example of the meaninglessness of words today, the hollow emptiness of our language and the growing façade of words, whose substance has been rotted away like houses eaten through with termites, appearing solid but crumbling into nothingness at the touch. The word Christmas describes a foundational part of our lives, yet that foundation today has no relation, or connection, to the actual celebrating-the-birth-of-Christ-into-the-world meaning of the word.
The real problem with Christmas is not that it is Christ-less but that it is meaning-less; that is, the actual meaning of the word Christmas and what it has come to mean, in reality, are no longer the same thing. Putting Christ back into Christmas is about using words and language in the fullness of their true meaning so that we may mean what we say and say what we mean, deeply, fully, clearly and truly.
Observing the activity around Christmas reveals that the majority of us are definitely religious about decorating, gifting, feasting, holidaying and rounding it all off with sale shopping, devoid of honouring the birth of a being, whose short life and simple wisdom has echoed down the centuries, offering a way of living that has inspired many. We don’t have to be Christian to appreciate the Christ.
Christmas is a super-powerful word and once we get past the white noise and discern its meaning, as The Way of The Livingness invites us to always do for ourselves, it offers a genuine and true way to live. The word Christ actually refers to our connection with each other as One Family, not by blood, but by Brotherhood – we are all each other’s family, regardless of physical or legal ties, in essence beyond physical bounds. How different would this annual festival be if the word Christ was known and reflected in our celebrations of how we live, connecting deeply with each other as One Family and as the Brothers we equally are?
Without such truth in our words, we can say one thing but mean and live another, as so many of us can testify to with our current experiences of Christmas. How much living wisdom have we lost in the cracks between meaning and reality in the words we use in our lives? What gets lost and buried is us when our words and our lives don’t match, when our words are not embodied in the way we live.
Being definite in our language invites us to return integrity to our speech and our lives, having words actually match their meaning equally and universally, without distortion or versions, so they may be known singularly by any ear that hears them or eye that reads them. Moreover, the more we live with such integrity, the more we will insist that our words reflect this lived quality whereby Christmas is a lived celebration of the Christ, the Brotherhood we know, not in theory, but in the everyday way of our livingness.
By Adrienne Hutchins, BEd, Brisbane, Australia
Related Reading:
What I Love about Christmas
The Way of The Livingness – It’s My Religion
Christmas Lies, Christmas Myths and the Truth about Christmas
Related Tags: Serge Benhayon
Words on Serge Benhayon 
The word ‘living’ to most is ‘existing’ where the true meaning of living is to connect to your essence and know who you are.
As with anything in life, we have to clean up any mess we make. Energy isn’t exempt. Our words will need to be re-imprinted by living their original truth.
We have been too forgiving of the absence of essence. It indeed has allowed many cracks and the consequential falsity to be part of our accepted reality.
Absolutely Adrienne, our living way every day can be filled with the Christ when we are re-connected to our forever living essences or inner-hearts.
“What gets lost and buried is us when our words and our lives don’t match, when our words are not embodied in the way we live.” That is so true Adrienne and most of us are not aware about it anymore – therefore I like it very much that you invite us all again to be more aware about living what we are talking so that we as a society can again walk what we talk.
It’s true Adrienne how often do we stop and feel the true meaning of the word Christmas. It must be expressed millions if not billions of times during the lead up to Christmas, but we have made it about presents, food and entertainment in an effort to make Christmas special or different, without considering that none of this is necessary if we just accept that it is a time to come together in Brotherhood and enjoy each other’s company and reflect on the completion of a cycle, in preparation for the year ahead.
If someone lives the words they speak you can feel it. If they don’t you can feel that as well. The one who walks their talk there is a deeper sense of trusting that person compared to the one that talks their walk.
Absolutely Leigh, every step is building on the previous step when we understand the responsibility to live the truth of our words.
Agreed Christmas is meaningless and soooo commercial and as we are getting nearer and nearer to another year of Christmas I am really feeling this. But of course if we live the rest of our year without any true meaning than how on earth are we going to suddenly change this at the end of the year to have meaning when we do not have the foundation to start with? Also who decided on Christmas, for what I am aware of Yesuha was born on the 25th December and there were no 3 kings and also there is no ‘one’ (yes there are amazing world teachers and he was one of them) as each and every person has that same light and connection to the divine within us so Christmas is something that has been bastardised and commercialised. What if instead throughout the whole year we celebrated that same light within ourselves and others … now that would be worth something to celebrate ✨
A true Christmas is when we feel the Christ energy in and around us. We can not wish for more.
Coming together to celebrate oneness, unity, community, congregation, light and love…we can do this every day of the year…however the cycles we have express something for us to learn because many of us do not live this everyday.
What I notice about Christmas time is that a longing occurs in people for something more in their lives. It is like we want a deeper connection with people but don’t be honest about it and instead give presents, which really do not support us at in terms of the connection that we are looking for.
Elizabeth I like what you are saying because something is definitely missing from Christmas this year there seems to be a lack of something? Which judging by the food trollies loaded with groceries we are trying to fill by consuming food. There seems to be more unease in people, they feel very nervous and unsettled and to me this seems to be over riding any sense that it is Christmas. Going about the towns and cities it has never felt so unlike Christmas.
“Being definite in our language invites us to return integrity to our speech and our lives, having words actually match their meaning equally and universally, without distortion or versions, so they may be known singularly by any ear that hears them or eye that reads them” – so true, and the opposite can also be said that we have the responsibility to live the truth of the words we speak in order to preserve their integrity.
We don’t have to celebrate christmas to live the Christ; such powerful expression. So true! Lets see the trap of our illusionary way of living, because we hiding what is oh so visibly true.