Christ came and took on full humanity (both body and soul) and healed it so that we could be healed in totality (both our physical and spiritual natures). This is important to think about when contemplating the Nativity. We are not called to destroy what is natural within us, but to transfigure and transform and transcend it by God’s Grace. What Christ did for us was to elevate our nature by taking on that nature Himself and healing it. When we say spiritual we can stay separated from nature when we say super-natural, then we are comparing things to nature, and more specifically, fallen nature. This is why I stressed the term super-natural…that is, above nature and did not stress the simply spiritual. We are, rightly speaking, creatures of both the material and the spiritual. This is not to deny the physical world or the seasons. While the colder climates can be a helpful tool for introspection and contemplation, it is not necessary to draw one’s thoughts inward.Īs I wrote above we are called to transcend the merely physical world and to step into the super-natural realm. There is an old saying, “Christ is the reason for the season.” True, but Christ is the reason for all seasons. Truly, there is no “Christmas mood” to get into. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Frosty the Snowman…but he has nothing to do with Christ’s birth! No, for that matter, does a jolly old elf’s livestock with aerodynamic antlers! As I said, it’s natural to associate the seasons with the holidays (or rather, holy days), but we are called to go beyond the merely natural and enter into the super-natural aspect. The point is Christmas is a holiday that celebrates something more than a snowman that comes alive when an old silk hat is plopped on its head. Christmas in the Holy land, actually, is more like the weather in Jacksonville, Florida or Jackson, Mississippi. That’s not Christmas,, though.that’s just the season. I’m used to the forced introspection of colder climates along with the pleasures of hot cocoa and a warm fireplace. I’m used to Christmases with grayer skies. It is human nature to associate the seasons where one is located with the seasonal events. I realized that I had bought into the created North American image of Christmas. “Now, that’s Christmas!” I’d say to myself. Even though I grew up in Atlanta, I have distant memories of Cleveland, Ohio and recent memories of Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and cold Christmas seasons. When I heard “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” for the umpteenth time on the radio and I looked out through the windshield of my truck and saw the sun shining, people in shorts on bicycles, I thought to myself, “No, it’s not.” The images of snowflakes and tinsel (or icicles as we called them when I was young) and Christmas lights on palm trees seemed just incongruous…wrong. Source: St Peter the Apostle Orthodox Mission
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