Christmas 2013

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Christmas is a time of giving, and almost everyone participates. We gift large and small to one another, especially to family; at the very least we offer each other good cheer, Merry Christmas, or happy holidays. It’s a season of intended joy and sharing.

Christmas is a time of rest. Many businesses give extra time off during Christmas, especially between Christmas and New Years. Christmas day and the following week are times when everything slows.

For Christians, God incarnated himself in a human being who then lived a divine life. What an amazing gift—a human God. The details of his birth are in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and of course the whole New Testament along with two thousand years of Christian tradition describe and interpret his ministry.

The story gives us guides for living, and it begs our comparison, as individuals, with Christ. Can we too be gods? History is full of our successes and failures.

Christ was a gift. And he encourages us still today to help and share with one another: to practice Christian love. He encourages us also toward truth. These are gifts born of humility.

Christ’s birth was humble, ordinary. Like us, He was innocent and vulnerable at birth and through the years of His childhood. His story is a family story, but even if we are without significant family, we can join His and spend Christmas imagining the characters in His family and how his teachings fit our own lives.

A few Christmas photos follow. I took them at The Christmas Concert of the Athens Symphony Orchestra. Volunteer musicians and singers come together to create the orchestra and chorus, and their Christmas Concert is a gift to the community. Santa visits the concert to cheer the hearts of everyone. I photograph the concert, then edit and post the photos to the local newspaper’s web site. The photos are my gift, and the newspaper makes the web site available free, which is it’s gift.

I hope you had a merry Christmas and that you’re looking forward to the wonders of a new year.

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