The Christmas Season

It’s Christmas time, right? So that means lots of love and family and service and charity. It’s that time of year we all magically become selfless and become the way we “should be.” I love Christmas. Please don’t mistake my tone for complete pessimism; I just can’t help but think about how the tradition of Christmas (despite its over-commercialization) is that one time of year when we all forget our usual selves and become…something different. We all become a little nicer. We all become a little more loving. We all become a little more selfless.

I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s incredible to see a whole community come together for a common purpose. But it’s after Christmas that I really wonder about. After all the presents are opened and the sugar-comas have passed, we kick our extended families out of our homes, make our never-to-be-fulfilled New Year’s Resolutions, and “begin anew” the incoming year. We do this all in hopes of starting with a clean slate and of finally get back to our lives. We go back to school and work and think, “Well, that was a nice holiday season.”

And that’s it. Christmas is over, and it’s about 50 weeks until the next one.

I believe that Christmas is more than that, as I am sure most of you believe as well. But we (me included) get stuck in this routine cycle where we move from one phase to the next in our lives. Get this one done so I can move on to the next. Even though we may feel the so-called Christmas Spirit, we stress ourselves out over buying the presents, sending out the Christmas cards, baking the holiday goods…and after all of that stress, we take a big sigh of relief once Christmas has finally ended. And yet, we immediately look forward to it the following year.

I propose we do as we have been instructed time and time again—to carry that Christmas Spirit with us the whole year through. Now, that’s not to say that we should have a decked-out pine tree in our living room year-round or that we should only fill our wardrobe with red and green. Rather, I mean that we should take those things that mean the most to us during the Christmas season—such as family and giving—and we should make it our goal to foster them the whole year through.

It’s a tacky notion, perhaps, and we’ve heard it a thousand times over…but that doesn’t make it any less significant. Rather than see the Christmas season as a phase of the year to pass through, see it as a learning opportunity—a time to practice selflessness and to improve our understanding of it.

We give and we give and we give all year round, but do we ever really enjoy our giving? Do we ever see the opportunity as a blessing rather than a burden? So this Christmas season, avoid trying to check everything off of your list and try, instead, to learn from what you experience.

Time Wasted Judging

Branching off of my previous theme of courage, I’d like to touch on the 2009 Young Women address by President Thomas S. Monson entitled “May You Have Courage” where, to support his first point of having the courage to refrain from judging others, he quotes Mother Teresa, “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”

I was quite taken by this quote, as simple as it is, and find it to be a truthful statement. It’s a concept of time—if we spend our time judging or thinking negatively of others, than we lose time when we could be thinking positively and uplifting others. I don’t believe we can do both at the same time.

And this is assuming that “judging” is purely a negative thing. Using your judgment is useful and essential in life when used appropriately, however, I use the word judgment here to mean gossip and criticism.

Doctrine and Covenants 88:123 reads, “See that ye love one another; cease to be covetous; learn to impart one to another as the gospel requires.” Well said. To love your neighbor as yourself is the second of God’s great commandments.

And of course, no one’s perfect. The natural man and worldly competition harbor the tendency to look on others with a critical eye; in most cases, passing judgment is a selfish tactic of raising ourselves above another. But forgetting our pride and understanding that everyone is different and that we never know the “entire story” of one’s situation, experiences, etc. can help us to refrain from making judgments that are almost always unjustified.

Elder Wirthlin said, “We see ourselves in terms of yesterday and today. Our Heavenly Father sees us in terms of forever” (“The Great Commandment”). If we spend less of our time criticizing others and more time looking for the positive, we will begin to see them as our Father in Heaven does. We’re not perfect, and neither are our fellow men. Who are we to judge who is better than another when God loves all of his children?