Christmas has officially arrived. Invitations to Christmas parties have started coming in. Christmas decorations at our offices and in the building are all up. In the grandiosity of the holiday season, marked by spectacle after spectacle of dazzling light displays, sumptuous feasts, and lavish gatherings in every corner, it is easy for everyone to lose sight of why we celebrate this momentous occasion in the first place. It is easy to forget that, before anything else, Christmas is a solemn celebration of our Savior’s birth; that, unlike our luxurious preparations and meticulous Christmas day activities, once upon a time, a poor boy was born in a manger to save humanity from sin.
It is perhaps one of the greatest ironies that Christmas, the most economically significant holiday of the year for Filipinos and for many people around the world, originally was not even about revelry in gifts and other material things. If there was anything “material” in the Nativity, it was that God assumed a material human body whom He greatly loved, to save us from sin and so that those who believe in Him may have eternal life.