David Trinko: The Christmas spirit’s lasting lessons

This week’s storm put some snow on the ground for a white Christmas. The heavy winds made travel harder, keeping families together as we reached Dec. 25.

If you can’t feel the Christmas spirit this year, you must be doing something wrong, right?

There’s so much more to that yuletide joy than hanging holly and stockings around your house, though. Remembering that may just save your soul.

If you really contemplate the Christmas spirit, you’re really contemplating Jesus Christ, whose birth we celebrate. The word literally means Christ’s Mass, not Santa’s wild adventure.

When I consider the Christmas spirit, I often think about being charitable and generous. We aim to help those who are less fortunate than us, perhaps by pitching a few bucks into a Salvation Army kettle, adopting a needy family or chipping in for the Adopt a Stocking families profiled each year here at The Lima News. They’re friendly, anonymous donations.

That’s all right out of Jesus’s playbook, as Jesus said in Matthew 6: 3-4: “When you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.”

Another aspect of Christmas spirit that comes to mind is being full of joy, with peace, kindness and goodwill to our fellow man.

Jesus said the word “peace” 23 times in the Bible, and the word itself appears 420 times in the King James version of the Bible. Clearly it’s a key message in there. There’s no better way to share your peaceful spirit than being kind and sharing goodwill.

That all comes down to joy, as Jesus said in John 15: 11: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.”

This kind of joy and goodwill comes down to the oft-repeated golden rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s a high hurdle to clear, but it’s certainly one worth trying.

The best way to do it is by aiming to love others — friend and enemy alike. Jesus covered that pretty well in Matthew 5: 44-46: “I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes the sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”

So much of the Christmas spirit and of Christ’s spirit falls on forgiveness. It’s such a key to Christianity and goes so counter to what feels natural for us grudge-holding humans. In forgiving others, we’re setting ourselves up for forgiveness.

“When you stand to pray,” Jesus said in Mark 11:25, “forgive anyone against whom you have a grievance, so that your heavenly Father may in turn forgive you your transgressions.”

There are so many other examples of how we can follow Jesus’s words and example to make the world a better place. There’s a reason they call the Bible the Good Book and the Good News.

There’s more to the Christmas spirit than decorations, gift-giving and bursting into song. Those are all good starts, though, to a life-improving adjustment in your ways.

I pray you have a truly merry Christmas this year, with transformational joy and goodwill you carry with you all year long.

ONLY ON LIMAOHIO.COM

See past columns by David Trinko at LimaOhio.com/tag/trinko.

Subscribe to the Trinko Thinks So podcast at LimaOhio.com/podcasts.

David Trinko is editor of The Lima News. Reach him at 567-242-0467, by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @Lima_Trinko.