Thoughts on Christmas (David O. McKay)
In northern climes particularly, Christmas is the happiest season of the year. At first thought, it is strange that it is so. The days are short and gloomy; the nights, cold and long; trees are leafless, and the landscape barren or covered with snow. Excepting the fur-clad and a few other hardy animals, all nature lies asleep. No warbling songsters fill the air with music, no flowers nor brilliant foliage gladden the eye. The rippling streams that lured the heart in summer are frozen and still. The pine-covered hills are uninviting, if not quite inaccessible. Everything is gone which made springtime joyous, the summer delightful and the autumn glorious! Notwithstanding all this, Christmas, in the depth of winter, is full of happiness and cheer.
This is because in Christian lands the Yule-tide festivity is impregnated with the spirit of the Christ. At that time more than at any other, we think of others, and try to express either in word or deed our desire to make others happy. Herein lies the secret of true happiness. “He that will lose his life for my sake and the Gospels, shall find it,” is sound philosophy, which the true Christmas spirit helps us to understand.
Love for God and for one another should be the Christmas theme. Such was the divine announcement by the heavenly host that first heralded the “glad tidings of great joy!”
“Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will toward men!”
How simple the words! How deep, how comprehensive their significance! At Christmas we celebrate his birth in whose mission on earth (1) God is glorified; (2) earth is promised peace; (3) all men given the assurance of God’s good will toward them!
If every man born into the world would have as the beacon of his life these three glorious ideals — how much sweeter and happier life would be! With such an aim, everyone would seek all that is pure, just, honorable, virtuous, and true — all that leads to perfection; for these virtues he would glorify who seeks to glorify God. He would eschew that which is impure, dishonorable, or vile. If every man desired to show good will toward his fellow men and strove to express that desire in a thousand kind sayings and little deeds that would reflect unselfishness and self-sacrifice, what a contribution each would make toward universal peace on earth and the happiness of mankind!
