Merry Christmas

I just wanted to spread some Christmas cheer. I don't have any ideas for this post.

But you know, something just hit me.

I've always wondered why we celebrate Christmas with joy but recognize Good Friday with sorrow. I mean, I KNOW why we sorrowfully recognize Good Friday. It's when we remember the Crucifixion. But that was coming from the moment Jesus was born, and yet we celebrate His birth because it showed how much He loved us. He loved us so much He took a fragile human form along with the rest of us, at the mercy of the world, to suffer and die. But Good Friday showed that just as much, if not more. Okay, again, I KNOW it would be inappropriate and cruel to celebrate a crucifixion, especially on the anniversary of the day it happened. And maybe that's the only difference: time. We celebrate Christ's birth because of subsequent years He had BEFORE his death, years He had at least some happiness, years He taught and comforted people while physically amongst them. That's surely worth celebrating. (I've always understood why we celebrate Easter, the end of Jesus' death, the beginning of His life with no coming death.)

Furthermore, they've written many songs and many sermons on the subject, but I only truly got it recently. Out of all the places, all the palaces, Jesus could have been born in, He was born in a stable. Not even the measly inn nearby. And Jesus was born, well, a baby. A POOR baby in a barn with a price on His head. People are at their smallest and weakest as babies. Like any child, Jesus was truly helpless. Herod wanted to murder Him, and he would have, if Joseph and Mary hadn't taken Jesus into exile in Egypt. I know how it feels to be small, helpless, and outcast. Not nearly as well as He knew, but on a minuscule scale. We live in a world that exalts the strong, powerful, beautiful, accepted, magnetic, and dominant. Jesus counteracted all that with the way he came into the world. It was a tribute to all the "useless" people. God obviously values the little people, and I'm glad. So do I. Christmas is a celebration of the lowly, the weak, the outcast, the impoverished, and the small.

Take that big, powerful, rich snobs! Baby Jesus was one of us! (But, Minnie, you went shopping today and spent over- SHHH! Ahem.) Go, little people! Christmas is your day! Celebrate the famousest of hobbits- I mean little people: the Baby Jesus! Celebrate the life created specifically to show us how loved we are! Celebrate the 33 years Jesus loved and helped us in ways He didn't before and hasn't since but will again soon!

Merry Christmas!