Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 305, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 December 1916 — What Does Christmas Mean to You? [ARTICLE]

What Does Christmas Mean to You?

We have in this ooynty of ours, several very important holidays. Among them is New Years, Easter, Decoration Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day and Christmas. On each of these days we refrain from labor. Our banks and business houses close and we attach to each a certain amount of reverence. Why have our lawmakers, both state and national, made these days legal holidays? Is it that in this busy, hustling world we have geared ourselves so high that we must have these fextra days of rest? Or are they for the purpose of calling our attention away from the bread and body to the spirit and the soul? There must be a reason of considerable importance that the wheels of industry should pause, that the millions should hold sacred a day and give to its hours meditation upon a certain ideal.

The most sacred of all holiday? is the 25th of December, and wc call it Christmas. It commemorates the greatest event of all time, the birth of Jesus Christ.

Nineteen hundred and seventeen years ago there came to this world a character so sublime that He is steadily, winning the world to Himself. Some day eveYy knee will bow and every, tongue will confess His name. This will be true primarily because of his divinity, because the great God has so willed it. But it will also be true because of the teachings of the great Apostle. Wherever His book has been opened there has come those things we hold nearest and dearest.

Christianity is the herald of civilization and progress. Its teachings are nowhere in conflict with liberty and advancement. It advocates clean living, happy homes and fidelity to the inspiration Of every noble impulse. It is true that many wrongs have been committed in the name of Christianity*'but all such acts have been done, out of harmony with and

in direct conflict to the teachings of the man from Galile. It is beautiful that Christmas comes at the close of the year, because in it we reoelebrate all that is great and good in every other holiday. New Years so soon to follow and so far with its new resolutions and high resolves is remembered in just so far as we have been faithful in living up to the standard we had placed before ourselves. Our Christmas will furnish us the inspiration for the New Year’s Resolutions. Easter, representing as it does the resurrection, is very closely associated with Christmas. 5 It is the second birth of the Master.

~The celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence the fourth of each July, is but the emphasizing of an inborn love for freedom as taught by the Great Teacher. It is Christian patriotism that decorates with tears, flowers, love and devotion the graves of those noble heroes who gave their lives for the great principle that every soul, whether white or black, is precious in the eyes of the Almighty.

Labor Day is distinctly Christian and we pause on that day to pay just tribute to the Nobility of Labor. We have asked: “What does Christmas mean to you?” We would have it mean to you all that is pure, ‘grand and noble. The time when the noblest impulses will become a part of your very living. We would have the Christmas cheer lift you above the mean and low into the high and noble. We would have it make you happy but not contented. We would have you realise that no matter what station you may occupy in life you can be happy and useful if you will serve your fellowman. When we forget church and creed and act with Aill love of our Maker and our fellowman, then we will 'be able to celebrate Christmas to the approval of Him and the betterment of mankind.