A letter from God

                               
Dear friends,

This is my day. You celebrate it with great zeal. I saw you preparing for this day months ago. 

But can I just intrude today into your celebrations? Could I ask you one important question? Where do I really fit in?

I watched your girls spending hours in parlors, manicuring, perming and what not. I looked when they were shopping days together for the best outfits. But where was I in all this? 

I peep into multitudes of homes today. They visit the church, some of them do it the only time in the year, and during the service they are busy comparing each others' outfits. Its just a ritual. Then the booze party follows in the evenings. Where do I fit in?

Shops, restaurants and commercial establishments advertise this day, supposedly mine, for their own commercial gains. They decorate this huge, green tree right in the middle of their huge establishments, drawing huge crowds and keep their cash boxes jingling while singing, 'Jingle bells...' non stop. 

Homemakers tire themselves out for days on end, cleaning, cooking, entertaining. Sometimes they just hate it. My day. They get no time to spend with me. 

Can I make an announcement now? This will startle you out of your wits. This day the 25th of December is not really the day I was born. I was born sometime in September. You tell me I'm crazy. Well, just look into My Word. You'd see that the shepherds were out in the field tending to their sheep the night I was born. So it has to be in the warmer month, not December when it gets terribly cold in Israel. 

By the way, I was born an Israelite. I'm not western at all, as these western guys would want you to believe. I was born poor, lived poor and died poor. So where do I fit into your gaudy, booze flowing celebrations? And who really is Santa Claus? Just some guy invented to wean folk away from me. kids pray to Santa for their needs and not to me. Can you believe that? And what happened to my name? Its crossed out. Merry Xmas they say. 

I would rather that you spend time each day at my feet. Just listening to me. Following my instructions. Instead of choosing your own manner of celebrating my birth on earth.

You say its a season of gifts. Well and good. But you forgot something. You are so taken in by the wrapping, that you neglect the Gift inside.

Let this day be a day when you pause and ponder. Whether you really know me. I'm not interested in vain celebrations, where I'm not really the center.

I ask you dear friends that you celebrate me not just once but each day of this coming year.

Waiting eagerly for your reply,
God