One of the highlights of the Christmas season for me is the annual appearance of Charles Dickens' beloved story A Christmas Carol. The transformation and conversion of one Ebenezer Scrooge is so poignant that Dickens says of the once miserly gentleman, "that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge." The author adds, "May that be truly said of us, all of us."

I am not sure if it is nostalgia, just a gut-level feeling or whether it is Tiny Tim or the narrator, but I find a powerful confrontation with this Christmas tale.

How does one keep Christmas well? Is it a process that begins on Thanksgiving with shopping and decorating trees? As a proper Episcopalian does your Advent celebration lead to that perfect Christmas? Is it a gift or party on all 12 days of Christmas? What makes for a person's 'right celebration' of Christ's Mass, the nativity of the Saviour?

The keeping of Christmas by the transformed Scrooge is clearly spelled out in the story. This nearly unredeemable man now is seen on the great December 25 morning greeting people on the street, going to Church (Anglican of course!) and providing for the poor and less fortunate of his day. Dickens tell us "He became a second father to Tiny Tim." That is more than a seasonal task or vocation.

Keeping Christ-Mass is allowing ourselves to grow-up just as the Child Jesus did. To unfold and journey ahead. We all have our own nativity in the Lord, our conversions and our confrontations with the living Christ, the lowly child who becomes lowly enough to take our sins with him to Calvary's Hill, all to become the one to conquer all that is evil and to lead us to heights we never dreamed possible. We all have flights into our own Egypts for escape. Yet in the Eucharistic community, Christ's own body, the Church, we are brought back home to receive the necessary strength, equipment and power to reach for the heights and to share that with others.

Keeping Christmas calls us to be grateful for the gift of Jesus as "word-made-flesh". It also involves being thankful for the many other Christmas gifts we receive, yes even the tangible ones from St Nicholas, mom and dad, our grandparents, our families and dearest friends, and indeed from creation itself.

Proclamation is clearly the call for maintaining the way of life Dickens tell us Scrooge now exemplifies. From creche to the empty tomb, we meet a living Lord that can transform and enable us to open our eyes, hands, purses and talents to help this much distressed world. Tiny Tims confront us daily.

Our liturgy allows us to hear the redemption story each Sunday in The Great Thanksgiving. In our society we hear the great carols wafting through the aisles of every store in December, from Zayre's to Field's, in restaurants and in elevators. Christmas appears in print and on the TV for weeks. Even the secular world provides a starting point - our task is to run with it as the shepherds did when they first heard of the Child's birth. Christ is present in the busyness of the holidays. The name Christ is there, the carols are heard, it confronts, indeed many simply ignore.

So keep Christmas well. Keep it on your lips and in your hearts for the whole year. Watch the Child who is Christmas grow, live and touch the world. Watch him die and suffer for you and me. All the more watch him spring back to life as the power that no darkness can overcome. Watching him and responding to his challenging call to new life will allow others to see that resurrected life in us. We, like Scrooge, then can become caring and concerned active and ready to serve the world as the Holy Child of Christmas invites us to grow up in Him. Our response can lead us to be sensitive to those who find the clamour of Christmas depressing. Let no one be left out of the real joys of the feast.

So don't let the post-Christmas blahs bother you. Keep a remembrance of the season out in sight all year, a small creche, a star. Look at your special gifts. Remember Dickens tells us Scrooge first went to church and then out to proclaim the joys of that Christmas Day. Do the same. May it be said of us "that ............ really knew how to keep Christmas well."

by Canon James M Rosenthal,
Director of Communications, The Anglican Communion