The True meaning

Dear TBT,

I wish to express my disappointment with the increasing secularization of Christmas and the lack of public nativity scenes. At Christmas we pause to contemplate the nativity in the crib. There we find the Virgin Mother offering the baby Jesus - the One who stripped himself of divine glory in order to become poor, driven by love for mankind.

The beautiful initiative of the nativity is meant to reawaken in all Christians the desires to witness the values of life, love and peace of which the solemnity of Christ’s birth reminds us. Commemorating the crib means passing on the history of popular piety and religiosity. It means rediscovering joy and the solidarity of friendship which we must preserve in contemporary society, where the consumeristic rush and the search for material goods alone sometimes seem to prevail.

Christmas is a Christian feast and its symbol, the crib, handed down in time the true meaning of Christmas! The Creator of the universe, in making himself a Child, came among us to share in our human journey; he made himself little to enter the human heart and thereby to renew it with the almightiness of his love. Let us therefore prepare to welcome him with faith, enlivened by firm hope. In advancement of faith, family and fraternity may we all strive to keep Christ in Christmas!

Paul Kokoski
Canada