In Charles Dickens Christmas Carol, Scrooge dreads the appearance of the Ghost of Christmas Past. The ghost reminds him of things that were, and things that might have been as he looks back with many regrets. I have no such loathing whenever I recall Christmas past. Rather, I long for the ability to step back in time into any of several Christmas scenes I hold dear. Perhaps you do as well.

Growing up in Indiana, USA, I fondly remember snowy white Christmases as the reflection of colored lights turned every place you stepped into a magical scene reminiscent of a Thomas Kincaid painting. I recall when department stores had animated window displays that came alive before the eyes of a young boy with his nose pressed against the cold glass in wonder. I walked down “city sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style.” I have fond memories of playing Joseph in the children’s church nativity play each year. As a teenager I can still feel the cold of singing carols in near zero temperatures at nighttime in a live Christmas tree set up in a shopping mall parking lot. And I’ll never forget performing in a Christmas Madrigal dinner in a very short purple costume with white leotards and mooning the audience as I served them traditional holiday fare. I simply love everything about Christmas past! They are among my most precious memories.

I’m in my sixties now and so much of what made Christmas so precious to me has changed over the decades. I could blame it on commercialization, profiteering, cheesy Christmas tunes, redundant recycled Hallmark movies-all would be right. But I believe it goes much deeper. For me, it seems that the reverence and the awe and wonder about who Christmas is about has been lost, or worse, intentionally replaced by a woke society that has grown uncomfortable with the life that a holy child calls each of us to live year round. The carols of the past, seldom heard today even in churches, tell the wondrous story of God erasing the divide between Heaven and earth and becoming Emmanuel, God with us. You could almost tell the Christmas story from the beginning by these forgotten carols: Oh Holy Night, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, Away in a Manger, Silent Night, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and Joy to the World. And yet to many, this story is received in dread much like Dickens’ Scrooge, as an unwelcome call to living a changed life that little baby embodied.

And yet the story of that first Christmas has not changed, and remains a hope for all who desperately seek the peace that Emmanuel brings. A young teenaged Jewish girl is chosen to bear the Son of God while her husband is charged with protecting him and raising him to become the Savior of the world. From that time until now, all who have sought him, the shepherds, the Magi, the lost, the desperate, the hopeless, have found peace and felt the wonder that was first ushered into our world that night in Bethlehem. What a night that must have been! For those of us who believe and follow this Christ child, the holy residue of that night that forever changed humanity, can still be felt when we ponder the miracle of that first Christmas and when we still worship at that manger with lyrics that cause us to remember. Yes, Christmas was but a precursor to Easter when Mary’s soul was truly pierced as prophesied. But our salvation process began with God’s immeasurable love and desire for to become his children through the birth of his child.

My Christmas past is my Christmas present and future and I embrace that hope with all that I have. Christ lives in me because of Christmas. I pray that all who read this may also seek and cherish the salvation and the awe of that special Christmas past!

Merry Christmas and God’s peace be with you.