This week's column presents a tapestry of quotations from pre-Christmas essays written over a period of 38 years. Whether the excerpts are worthy of reproduction here, only the reader can judge.
"'Put Christ back into Christmas' has for years been one of our standard seasonal clichés. Perhaps that rallying cry ought now to be reversed: 'Put Christmas back into Christ!' Anchor him once again in his humble Bethlehem origins.
"For Christ is not only a lordly object of doctrine, but a flesh-and-blood person; not only a cosmic event, but a carpenter's son; not only an apocalyptic moment, but a first-century preacher of the coming Kingdom of God; not only a symbol of all mankind, but a Palestinian Jew; not only the Son of God, but the Son of Mary" (1974).
"There was a first Christmas, but there will also be a last. The world will come to an end, and Christians have some responsibility for how it comes to its end, for the direction it takes between now and then." (1981).
"Exchanging a few gifts, however simple they might be, gives us all a chance to practice what Christ came to have us all do. It's not that Christmas is the only time of the year for doing nice things for others. But Christmas is a time that sets the tone, as it were, for the other 11 months" (1983).
"There is also a downside to the feast. As Charles Dickens reminded us so effectively in his Christmas Carol, it is at this season of the year that want of any kind is most keenly felt.
"Christmas is a time for family reunions, but not for the homeless. Christmas is a time for special feasting, but not for the hungry. Christmas is a time for lavish gift-giving, but not for the poor" (1989).
"There are Christians today who scoff at modernity and jeer at what they see as the evils of modern culture. But their attitude is more akin to Scrooge's than to the Gospel's.
"The true Christian vision --- an incarnational one --- is expressed not in Scrooge's 'Bah, humbug!' but in John's 'God so loved the world'..." (1990).
"The real meaning of Christmas has more to do with the doors of the inn that were closed to Mary and Joseph and their unborn son than it does with artistically mediocre Christmas scenes and endlessly repeated Christmas music....
"Christmas is about the opening of closed doors and of closed hearts" (1991).
"At Christmas we celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace. But peace, Popes Pius XII and Paul VI declared, is the work of justice.
"Unfortunately, when justice knocks at our parish, or school, or diocesan door, it too often receives about as warm a welcome as Mary and Joseph did at the inn at Bethlehem" (1993).
"Given our growing appreciation of human diversity and the minority status of Christianity in much of the world, the need has become even more pressing to 'find' Christ also within other religions and in the human family at large, and somehow to proclaim him there.
"Is not this one of the central and enduring challenges of the Christmas message?" (2000).
"The last phone calls that so many of the victims [of 9/11] made bore messages of love and concern, not for themselves but for their spouses and children.
"Ground Zero at the World Trade Center is truly mis-named. It is instead the rubbled monument to the enduring power of love which no tragedy and not even death itself can topple.
"That also happens to be the central message of Christmas --- for this year and for every year to follow" (2001).
"This year a similar 'rubbled monument' has arisen in the generous commitment of lay people to assume some measure of responsibility --- many for the first time --- for the life, mission and governance of their church, and in the renewed determination of so many demoralized and dispirited priests to serve the People of God through their own pain and in spite of it.
"It is the message of Christmas, given over and over again" (2002).
"The feast's central theme, its Scripture readings, the sanctuary decorations, and the songs and carols will be exactly the same as they were last year, and the year before that, and many years before that. But each of us will be at a slightly different stage of our lives, viewing Christmas now in a slightly different light, experiencing its charms as well as its sharper edges in a slightly different way.
"Christmas itself does not change. It is we who change, and the world we inhabit" (2003).
A blessed Christmas to all. Father Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.
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