Emphasis Preaching Journal

Two Chicagoans, Kenan Heise and Arthur Allen, published a book entitled The Death of Christmas: Interviews with Forty-three Survivors. The survivors who were interviewed were people in prison, mothers on welfare aid, the aged, teenagers runaway from home, skid row derelicts and others who discovered that Christmas as they knew it brought pain. Their Christmas stories were not pretty. One wished Christmas would never come. Another could not remember one good Christmas. Still another asked what Christmas was supposed to mean. One protested that Christmas was nothing more than a racket. Another confessed, "I don't know nothing worse than being too poor to give something. It aches your heart." Still another admitted to being lonely all through life only to have Christmas come to emphasize the loneliness. What a sad turn of events that is! God gives his Son into the world as the Gift to bring joy to the hearts of men and make a day that all men can celebrate as their greatest and best day. Yet the day brings so much misery and pain that the suicide rate soars around the holiday God intended to be a holy day for all people. The problem, of course, is that people fail to understand both the nature of the Gift of Bethlehem and the nature of the Giver. They fail to discern God's activity in our history as the prophet describes God's loving care in a lovely poem about God's salvation for Zion.