2025 December 23 The love of Christmas

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about reimagining your life. Thanks for joining me today to talk about Christmas and the holiday season spirit. If you like what you hear today, please leave a like, subscribe, tell your friends, send me a message.

This week we're going to be talking a little bit about keeping our perspective during the holiday season. I know it can be hard to be cheerful, like when the dude in the diesel F-250 pickup truck is trying to scare you while you walk through the parking lot. True story. A saying that my forever mentor Pat Flynn has often said comes to mind: hurt people hurt people. The proper response in that case is care and kind of firm resistance rather than lashing out in anger. Not at all easy, but the right thing to do, and more likely to bring some sort of healing. And it's a good reminder of why it's even more important to be patient during these holiday days.

I had started an outline for tonight's script yesterday, being so angelic and getting ahead on things, and then I'd also started my 2025 Christmas letter. I typically send those out only every other year and I was pretty excited actually about writing it because it was really a pretty exciting and positive year in a lot of ways. And I was also practicing songs with the Spanish choir for Christmas Day mass, and I got a lot of my presents wrapped and then I cooked chicken for dinner, plus a batch of bacon and maybe even more things. And it was all still before 11 o'clock this morning, and then the day just turned to trash. Total trash.

The details are irrelevant, but all those great starts turned out to be pretty much the bulk of the day's progress. And I could have been really, really cranky and tried to scare people in the parking lot, just like my little buddy in the big truck. But that's when it really struck me. The spirit of Christmas isn't the lights and the music and the parties and the gifts. The real spirit of Christmas is remembering what Christmas is all about.

It isn't about getting dressed up for church or telling everyone how tired you are because you went to midnight mass or a late church service. It isn't about knocking someone out of the way to get that last perfect present before the old lady next to you can reach for it. And it certainly isn't about thinking about all the presents that you'll get or that you deserve, a word I really have come to detest. It's much simpler. So simple, it's even easy to miss. It is quite simply being kind, but not just any sort of kind. Being kind like Jesus was kind.

I know priests who pride themselves upon the minutiae of the law, yet Jesus never focused on the minutiae of the law unless he was debating something with the Pharisees. The Pharisees, if you're not aware, are kind of church lawyers or scribes, lawyers in a manner of speaking. They knew all the laws and they knew how they should be applied and typically made much fanfare about how learned they were. But Jesus really didn't speak of the fine points of the religious law, and indeed spent much of his time breaking many of those laws. But it was always coupled with a parable to teach the people what was truly important. And for those of you who don't know much about religion, parables are just stories, kind of literary stories that tell the same message, but in a simpler, very tangible way.

Instead, Jesus essentially lived by one law: love everyone, and he meant everyone, more than you thought possible. Always give love to others even when they harm you, either accidentally in ignorance or even on purpose, and always, always forgive those who harmed you no matter what the circumstances. There is story after story in the Bible about Jesus's behavior. Yet when we look around us, especially at secular Christmas and in many churches, even the modern interpretation of the religious Christmas, this one simple—not easy, but very simple—law of Jesus is totally ignored or downplayed. And that's when I realized that this was the purpose of the day, of this day that I had. It wasn't meant to be a productivity home run. It was meant to remind me of what the season and Christianity are all about.

So whether you're a Christian or not, you've probably heard enough to realize that this dude, Jesus, was radically inclusive and single-mindedly focused on getting his message of love across to everyone. Did he talk about other aspects, things like being the son of God who created everything? Yes, he did, but it was always in the context of why you should live a life of endless love and patience. So please keep that message in mind this Christmas and every single day. Love for everyone, by the way, includes love for yourself. Jesus encouraged us to improve and strive towards higher goals, but it took organized religion to tell us we were always bad and worth nothing. Jesus said to love ourselves for we were the vessels of God's love, and then to share that love with everyone else, with all the other people. A striking and different message.

I'll stop by again on Christmas Day, but on the day before Christmas Eve, I want to wish each and every one of you a happy, holy, and joy-filled Christmas and holiday season. Remember the original focus: that we are the vessels of God's love and that we should try in every way to share that love with every other person. It's often difficult, but when you start from that point of view, the view of endless love, life becomes much more satisfying and less a competition for more because you realize you don't need more of anything when you already have it all.

That's it for the evening. No homework for the holidays other than try and remember what the real message of love brought to us by Jesus in his radically inclusive way, daring us to try and love everyone who comes into our lives and passes us in every way through life. As always, thank you for stopping by. Remember, one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. UKR7.com and WCK.org—two big international organizations. UKR7.com focuses on Ukraine and has links to places of focus on Ukraine. WCK.org works in disaster areas around the world, but there's a lot of local charities too. Even just a simple smile can change someone else's day for the better in ways you can't even imagine.

So as always, thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting or useful, please pass it along and please subscribe and hit the like button. Please drop me a comment as to what you'd like to hear. Have a great week. Remember to live the life you've dreamed of because that's the path to contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com. And I wish everyone, Christian, non-Christian, whatever, have a wonderful holiday season. Have a wonderful Christmas, and remember the message of love and inclusion.