All is Calm, All is Bright…Really? Maybe This Video Will Help

The video below was produced by the Archdiocese of Washington for our “Find the Perfect Gift” Christmas outreach. It is an attempt to refocus Catholics and non-Catholics on the truest and most perfect gift of Christmas, Jesus Christ. It also invites each of us to give the perfect gift, the gift of our very self to God and to one another.

The video illustrates well a problem that we can all have at Christmas: hectic, hurried lives, made even busier by “holiday” requirements and traditions. These traditions, beautiful though they are, sometimes backfire and become a kind of countersign to some of the songs we sing, which speak of all being calm and bright, heavenly peace, peace on earth, and so forth.

The video also shows a problem that has become worse in recent years with the “stovepiping” effect of technology, which allows us to live in our own self-designed but very separate worlds. Many of us walk about with ear buds in and barely notice the others around us. Others of us tune in to a very self-selected world of cable TV and/or Netflix. It is possible, as this video demonstrates, for people to live in the same house and yet inhabit different worlds.

Somewhere in the busy-but-isolated world of the household depicted here, is a member of the family who gets it right, and both finds and sings of peace. We all struggle to get it right and to find our proper center. Allow this video to give you a little vision of what the perfect gift is and what the perfect Christmas is. Gifts, parties, and yuletide joy are nice and have their places, but don’t miss the perfect gift!

For more information, you can click through at the link above, or visit this URL: www.findtheperfectgift.org.

Personally, we do the following in our household to keep the focus on the reason for the season:

Consciously avoid crowded shopping malls and places that start blaring commercials and secular Christmas music, often before even Halloween is over.
Modest decorations in the home around December 1st: An advent calendar and a Nativity figurine set which has been in the family for years.
Christmas music which we play in the home has to meet the ACLU test: If it doesn't offend them, we don't play it.
By mid month (12 days before Christmas), we will put up a tree.

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