Reflections on the Meaning of Christmas December 2026
“Silent Night.” That was your favorite? One night before Christmas my older brother and I lay in our beds. Mom hadn’t turned out the light yet and that’s the one we sang. Impromptu. It only happened once. “Mother and Child,” “Holy infant so tender and mild.” The thought of innocence so vulnerable that only tenderness could greet it. Something new so arresting that it could only be absorbed in silence. What have we here! Grounding. An occasion for setting everything aside. The business of importance, when what could be more important, more precious, than this? Casting a spell. A summons to family to welcome a new arrival. To unite in support of an infant who will need to grow. Who will need all the help it can get, from the looks of it. “Born in a manger.” In a barn. Because “there was no room at the inn.” And more: who would believe “immaculate conception?” This kid’s lucky he wasn’t abandoned then and there.
Precious or worthless — which is it? What it means to start at the bottom. Worthlessness with the potential to become something precious. If it grows up. Otherwise, what is it? An opportunity lost? Maybe an occasion for starting over. Doing it all over again. Whatever it is that has to happen it starts at the bottom and it must grow up. And it needs lots of help. From family. From everyone able to help. Because ‘bottom’ is helpless. Needing tenderness and a lot more. Needing everything. Resolve to be there for this kid no matter what. Affect. That brooks no opposition. Motivation. From the mystique of the spell. This kid has power! To attract to helplessness so much strength. The force of opposites brought together in Parent and Child that moves mountains.
Character-building that must be from the bottom up. With helping hands when helplessness calls for it. That do for it. But not whatever it can do for itself. Just when a blind spot in its perspective needs help from another perspective so growth can move on. From parents? From an intermediary. Let their hands do the helping and there goes growth. A go-between? Another perspective grounded in the same source as the Parents but with a different function. Theirs is what? Alpha. Ignition. Origination — the original Happening. Movement forward. The original Relationship that illuminated Self-Awareness, shared itself through Life-Creation and evolved into Family.
What’s the intermediary all about? Self-questioning essential to Character. That’s it? And Definition. It’s a dictionary? A Rosetta Stone that makes the way things are understandable to different functions that speak different languages. Guidance that every part of Creation depends upon to align with the laws of cause and effect while they’re interacting and moving forward. Navigating through changing situations and needing coordinates. Access to the principles and values defined by Happening when it put the original situation to good use. Conscience. Definitely! Guidance couldn’t translate support from Parents for their Child and every other part of Creation unless it was disciplined by everything positive and good. Which would be? Loving and logical. Spontaneous and orderly. Structure with Integrity that holds together no matter what.
The Child growing from the bottom up is character-building and it’s getting help from its parents through a disciplinarian. A model for the role that the Child might someday take on. Guidance? If it chooses to take it on. Freely, which is why it’s Character-building where ‘bottom’ is a test of Character with every choice. A test of integrity when dis-integration is all about us. Institutions and systems, customs and traditions, relationships and accommodations, perceptions and assumptions. Self-referential ‘reasoning’ that puts the cart before the horse. Entropy. Our universe. Indestructibility! Coming apart just like our bodies as it ages. A test of inseparability when separability is having a field day. Pulling everything apart that it can lay its hands on.
Boundary-crossing. The Child is free choice building character so it will learn to choose freely? And correctly. So it won’t choose in error and open the floodgates to boundary crossing. Like it’s doing here. The Child when it’s grown up will BE the boundary. The cause for which it must groom itself if Free Choice and Integrity are to mean anything. “Stands with a Fist” Yes, at the boundary between what is and what isn’t. Between Reality and make-believe. “Dancing with Wolves.” John Dunbar’s romance who wouldn’t be bullied anymore. We’re besieged on every side on our Planet of the Apes. Our fight-picking magic kingdom of hierarchy. Of comparisons and put-downs, continuous-reel tournaments and combat. How awful! Awful but wonderful too. A great place for Integrity to prove itself. For Character to grow up, because we’re definitely starting out at the bottom. A tribal species of animal. Apes handed our roles in a morality play by the curator of a zoo.
Surely there’s a payoff! Worth of Self that’s useful in mindfulness instead of a running joke in mindlessness. With a firm foundation of support — structural integrity where ‘basement’ doesn’t mean debasement and Movement forward and up doesn’t mean reverse, backward and down. Here it’s all top-down. Preciousness stolen by parents from their children so it can be monopolized by themselves. Tribal apes entitled to ‘supremacy’ because they’re bigger. Self-governance turned upside-down. By a myth, that there’s no need for questioning if the know-it-all at the top is the answer. No need for the infant in the manger. Honesty from the surface of a lake, a sprite asking us who we really are.
One myth to cancel out another myth in an ‘existence’ that’s a myth. So we can be better than a species of ape. Better than tribes playing games, contests of wills to replace or be replaced. Given over to cruelty. To top-down madness when every aspect of Growth — every aspect of evolution, the way things really are — is from the bottom up. From common-sense one step at a time in the orderly sequence of Logic. Left-to-right or right-to-left? Doesn’t matter so long as it’s horizontal. Not vertical? Not hierarchical, or else herd mentality is all over the map, bullying and crossing boundaries. Promising absolute freedom and absolute power. . . anything goes. . . while delivering an absolute mess.
Our Christmas homily is a long way from an infant so tender and mild. The ultimate nobody of uncertain parentage born in a barn. Character in the making. Showing us how to do it. How to start from as far down as you can get. And make something of ourselves. Our whole Family from the bottom up. Think “Silent Night.” Listening for change and for a change.
Happy birthday, Jesus, and thank you! Happy holidays to family and friends who know and love you by other names. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night! From the bottom of our hearts.
Are you sure? What? So tacky, ending a nice holiday greeting like that. You don’t think it’s clever? “From the bottom of our hearts” — yuk! Bye everyone! [What’s the idea, embarrassing me like that in front of everyone? All this work ruined and what for? Immaturity and selfishness! You left the mic on. Oh. Click!]