Xmas vs. Christmas

The world has an ingenious ability to attach itself to what Christians believe; tame it; subvert it — and then turn it against the very people who continue to believe. Too many Americans don’t really celebrate Christmas. They may think they do, but they don’t. They celebrate Exmas.

The world — left to its own devices — has no room and no use for the birth of Jesus Christ.

It has contempt for Christians who seriously strive to be His disciples. So we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by being the saints God intended us to be. We can at least seek to be holy by tithing our time to sit quietly with God; allow Him to fill our actions and our choices with His Son; and let Him shape us into the men and women He needs. We can get up and experience the dawn in silence as a reminder of what Advent and Christmas mean. We can prepare ourselves to be alert for the voice of God and to receive God’s word afresh and proclaim it anew...

Advent means “coming.” What’s coming in the reality of Christmas is an invasion. The world needs the invasion but doesn’t want it. It’s an invasion of human flesh and all creation by the Son of God; by the holiness of the Creator Himself.

All of us in the Church were baptized to be part of that good invasion. The doubts, the failures, the mistakes of the past don’t matter. Only our choices now matter. How will we live our Christian faith from this day forward? How will we make our Catholic witness an icon of Christ’s Advent?

--Archbishop Charles Chaput, Dec. 2005