Over the course of some 40-plus years in which this weekly column has been in existence, there have been at least one hundred essays in which Christmas has been mentioned, if not highlighted, especially in the annual meditations just prior to the holiday.

Two years ago I put together a tapestry of quotations from some of those earlier columns. This week I focus on a few Christmas essays that failed to make the first cut, mainly for lack of space.

In 1968 I pointed out that, since its inception two-and-a-half years earlier, the column' theological focus had been on the Kingdom of God, just as the Kingdom had been the focus of Jesus' own preaching and ministry (Mark 1:15).

That column employed as one of its keynote texts a sentence from Luke's Gospel (9:1-2): "He summoned the Twelve and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal [the sick]."

"The connection between the preaching of the Kingdom and the healing of the sick....is central to a proper understanding of the Gospel and of the entire Christian life. For this is, indeed, what the Kingdom of God and the Gospel are all about. It is a matter of healing, of reconciling, of bearing one another's burdens, of compassion, of justice, of peace, of charity....

"The spirit of Christmas is the raw material of the Kingdom of God. For Christmas is a time of homecoming, of giving, of the innocent joy of young children, of the softening of harsh attitudes and the stifling of animosities of every kind....

"Few writers have captured the meaning of Christmas, and correspondingly the meaning of God's Kingdom, better than Charles Dickens in his Christmas Carol (which was, it must be added, a document of social protest).

"It is a rare human being who is not touched, again and again, by the transformation of Scrooge from an insensitive, grasping, frightening old man, into a figure of warmth, compassion, and generosity....

"It is not without some justification that a Latin American scrawled these words on the walls of a newly purchased palace of an Apostolic Nuncio: 'Blessed are the poor.' The Church in every community must look to its words and deeds, particularly at this season of Christmas, to see if anyone may have cause to splash such a judgment upon its own walls."

Thirty years ago the theme of the 1976 Christmas meditation was loneliness as "the dark underside of Christian merriment."

"Loneliness and bitterness grow like weeds overnight in the Christmas patch because Christmas is, at root, all about relationships, communities, and homecomings....

"Jesus summons us to break down the barriers that separate us from one another. He releases the power of his Risen Spirit, who makes reconciliation and community possible. He calls us ahead to the final Kingdom, where 'he will wipe every tear from [our] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things [will] have passed away'" (Revelation 21:4).

In 1979 the Christmas meditation adopted a broad, salvation-history perspective. "Christmas isn't just about a sentimental nativity scene in a stable at Bethlehem. It is about the Word of God's taking on human flesh and making a dwelling among us.

"Christmas is about Jesus of Nazareth and the significance he bears for our history and for our destiny. Our Christmas Jesus is not just the baby in swaddling clothes. He is the Jesus who was born into, and belonged to, the lower class and who would later make it clear that wealth is an obstacle to entrance into the Kingdom of God (Matthew 19:16-30)....

"He is the Jesus who came to preach the good news to the poor (Luke 4:18), and who praised Zacchaeus for his generosity to the poor (Luke 19:1-10)."

And it was Jesus who insisted that our relationships with our neighbors in need will be the principal measure of judgment on the last day (Matthew 25: 31-46).

In 1982 the column focused on a more pedestrian topic: the still-common complaint that Christmas has gone the way of secularization. But, in fact, the history of Christmas shows the reverse to have been the case; it was the Church that sacralized an essentially pagan holiday.

It took the Church almost 300 years to add Christmas to its liturgical calendar because, from the beginning, Easter, not Christmas, was, and still is, the primary feast.

Perhaps we should worry more about the encroachments of the Easter bunny than of Santa Claus.

A blessed Christmas to all.

Father Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.