Alright, even those of you who are so aware of what is going down at this time of year, let me see if I can't condense it all in a nutshell:
Christmas is the holiday we celebrate to honor the birth of a person we call Jesus. For many people, he is the founder of the Christian religion, at least insofar as his "followers" tend to claim that they revere him as the son of Gd and the savior of everyone. That's a big deal to a lot of people. About half of all the people on the planet at the moment claim, in one way or another, to be an adherent to this religion, which is called Christianity.
The word "Christmas" is a term that derives from "Christ" (a borrowed translation from the Hebrew, Meshiach, meaning "the anointed one") and "mass", what the Catholics call their worship service. Christmas is the day on which a particular mass was celebrated to honor the birth of the one they consider to be the Messiah, the Redeemer of the World, or thereabouts. This birth took place, according to our time reckoning, about 2012 years ago. Yes, we've been at this for a very long time.
Over the past few posts - especially for those of you who may just be joining us - I've been taking a closer look at this individual. This part of the Christmas season is called "Advent" (the coming) and we have been considering just who or what is on the way. That's what all of the current hub-bub is about ... everything else, including Santa Claus, St. Nick, St. Nicklaus, or whomever else we've happened to associate with this event, is beside the point. We're left with the fact that this Jesus guy had such an impact on so many people, that he got his own holiday (actually, here in the West, he got two, but we'll get to the other one - Easter - in the spring. Until then, you'll just have to be patient).
Even though a lot of folks don't believe Jesus is who those other folks claim he is, we still have the celebration, and I believe it's worth the effort to at least take a look at the guy and see what he's got going for himself. It turns out, he was a somewhat radical troublemaker who thought we should be looking out for other people instead of just looking out for ourselves. Yes, yes, yes ... he said and did a lot of other things, but when you take a closer look at it all, it's the taking-care-of-others thing that causes us the most problems.
As a result, there are a lot of people (as I said, about half the world's population) who claim to be followers of this guy, but the fewest of them actually use him as an example of anything ... so I've been wondering why ... out loud.
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