Article December 31, 1984 Issue

Keep on caroling

HELEN G. HASLER

Do you dread having to unpack and then repack the Christmas ornaments and decorations? Are you happy to see the holidays over and done with? Are you worried about the bills that have piled up? None of these human reactions should be a part of our thought as this season becomes a memory. We may inadvertently drift into this kind of thinking if we have indulged in too much frivolous gaiety during the holidays instead of realizing they are joyous holy days commemorating the birth of Jesus. But it is not too late to restore our Christmas joy.

To encourage people to live and act as though each day were Christmas, a radio station in a large midwestern American city plays a Christmas carol every day throughout the year. When I first heard this innovative idea I cringed. Enough is enough, I thought. I have been sated with Christmas music for weeks, and the season is over. "Listen to them all year?" I grumbled. "Let's be reasonable." However, as the weeks rolled by and I happened to hear an occasional carol, the words began to have greater significance to me. Very often they would meet a need at that moment.

"Let nothing you dismay." World events, petty politics, family challenges, business trends, might try to disturb my thinking, but how could they, with these words of a carol ringing in my ears? How could I be dismayed when I knew God was in control and the true spirit of Christmas was stirring in my heart? "All is calm, all is bright." Of course, all can be calm and bright with the light of love when Christlike thought pervades—when we express more and more of the purity, truth, and love Christ Jesus expressed. "Where charity stands watching / And faith holds wide the door." What a reminder that faith that never wavers does hold wide the door, a door through which hatred, animosity, envy, and strife cannot enter.

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