So, Why Celebrate Christmas?

I celebrate Christmas to celebrate the incarnation of God in every human child.

I celebrate Christmas because each of us is the Light that shines in darkness.

I celebrate Christmas because Mary's child reminds me that there is no "original sin." There is only original innocence.

I celebrate the Good News of the Gospel where Jesus not only said, "I am the light of the world" but "You are the light of the world;" where Jesus not only revealed God to us but revealed us to us. Did he not say, "Ye are all Gods"? In the words of St. Athanasius, who lived before the Council of Nicea forged chains of creed and dogma: "God is humanity fully alive."

Holy Spirit and Holy Matter get married. Christmas is the fruit of their wedding. I am their only-begotten child. So are you. Let's feast!

Not a particle of dust lacks the sparkle of God's wine. God's dough is rising in each seed of Winter wheat. Your body is the blessed sacrament. Each electron of you bathes in a photon-cloud whose energy is literally infinite. That's not religion: it's physics. Each atom contains the vastness of interstellar space. When I look at my hand, I see the birth of galaxies. When I look at your face, I see God's image in the mirror of all-pervading consciousness. I celebrate Christmas because earth itself is a miracle.

Christmas reminds me to discover the green God resurrected in a pine needle, the blood of God's body in a holly berry, the Mother of God in the darkness of midnight, the manger of God in my heart.

I celebrate Christmas because all God's children are saved the moment they are born, because God feels no wrath, because the divine plan does not include hell. (Some of us use the gift of freewill to invent hell for ourselves, but that is none of God's business.)

God is love and nothing but love, pressed out and overflowing. God's Love enfolds the earth with healing wings. The love of Christ anoints each creature, infusing every heart with Grace free for the taking, like breath. I breathe God. This is why I celebrate. I can't help it.

And when I meet a True Believer who tells me that I must get saved, I reply, "From what?"

Then the True Believer quotes Jesus: "You must be born again, born of the Spirit." Yes, I agree, and I am. In the Bible, the word for Spirit and Breath are precisely the same word: "ruach" in Hebrew, "pneuma" in Greek. When I breathe with conscious gratitude, each breath baptizes me with the Holy Spirit.

If I am truly awake, just to breathe is worship. Just to breathe is to be born again and again.  Jesus was not telling me to perform a ritual, but to wake up.

O miraculous birth of God in me, who is never one moment old!