What a humbling and beautiful Christmas this merry 2010. There’s just so much to be thankful for this season. The blessings, the joy and the fellowship with each and everyone. New friendships made at our End Year retreat organized by the leaders of the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Our first ever young adult ran semi-silent retreat. The first of its kind.
New gifts being unlocked for the hopeful and the faithful. A renewal of roles and leaders in the community. Visions, words of affirmation and consolation. All to build up the community, all for the one body of Christ.
What does Christmas mean to you this season? I sat and wondered why the joy of giving, why the act of giving. Then it dawned upon me that the one true God who gave his son to be truly man came to be among us, humbling and human just like each one of us. God’s gift to us, the greatest gift above all, his son Jesus Christ as we celebrate his birth every Christmas.
We exchange gifts during this festive season as a way of representing the Christian tradition of the Kings who came with gifts of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh for Jesus at the time of his birth. A reminder of the homage that was paid to the King. Symbolically, the gifts that we exchange represent the Father’s love for us. That each gift we exchange and receive is a reminder and symbolic for the love that the Father gave to each and everyone of us during this merry season.
Actually Christmas gift giving comes from Saturnalia, the festival that Christmas was specifically chosen to supplant:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/6090068/origins_of_christmas_gift_giving_the.html
Thanks Gabriel. Popular belief may identify it’s roots to Saturnalia. Then again, there’s the other side of Santa and giving that comes from Saint Nicholas
http://www.suite101.com/content/history-of-christmas-presents-a76003