HOW CAN BUSINESS AND MONEY DARKEN CHRISTMAS?

“Christmas this year will be sad because the stock market is in crisis….” Here is what we are still hearing from the media these days. That announcement, obviously, makes parents anxious and angry. Where can they get money to offer a gift as and high-definition television, i-Pods, MP3 players, laptops, digital cameras, games consoles and satellite navigation equipment… to their kids and friends, they ask themselves? So, Christmas 2008 might be a tragedy because there is no money.

Meg McMullen, the president of New England Research and Management strongly agrees with this expectation. He told Reuters on December 8th: “There will be no great Christmas on Wall street this year…” We also guess, in Europe specifically in Italy and in France, it is the same thought.

But let’s ask ourselves: is it normal to connect Christmas and money? Christmas is probably a feast. And we cannot enjoy a feast without money. Christmas is also a religious feast. However, much more than a religious feast, Christmas is a Christian feast for several centuries which celebrates the birth of Jesus.

At Christmas, we commemorate the coming of the savior among Human Beings. Christmas is God with us. During Christmas, God himself comes on the earth to visit us, to live as we live, feel as we feel, see as we see, hear as we hear. At Christmas, God comes to rejoice but suffer with us. Jesus has already come over 2000 years ago. But nowadays, his coming is hidden as saint Bernard says in one of his homely. Only those who believe in him and greet him (actually Christians and people of good will) can really feel his coming and his effect: peace, joy reconciliation, love and forgiveness in their heart.

So, Christmas is a bit more than a stock market and a purchasing power affair. If so, lots of poor countries around the Globe will not celebrate it. Christmas is GOD WITH US. It is our task, we Christian, to proclaim this Good News and not some journalists who behave themselves as the spokesmen of big industries which interest is to produce their shiny turnover in this period.

Let’s rejoice Christmas in the temperate way as God himself has come to visit us.

Merry Christmas.

F. Maxime