Christmas Reloaded 2025
A Christmas Reflection
Growing up I noticed my father had an unconscious Christmas tradition: to hang our Christmas lights on the coldest day of the year. Oh, the joy! Ugh! I too had a tradition for Christmas week: to organize indoor games of hide ‘n seek with my siblings, as a clever way of finding hidden gifts.
I guess every family has their own traditions and unique ways of celebrating whatever holidays they observe. In my experience, the way we observe special occasions can develop and change over time – either from one generation to another, or within the span of a single life. How we understand what a day means matures as we age. So, for me “Reloading Christmas” is about finding new meanings in old stories or traditions. It’s about seeing them more fully or more deeply than I had before.
As I read the Christmas stories today, they reflect a diverse cast of characters, and a context not unlike our own. They feature young and old, rich and poor, men and women, citizens, aliens and refugees, those in power and those oppressed by that power. They include politics and religion, privilege and prejudice, the joy surrounding the birth of a child, and the horror and heartache of children and other innocents terrorized or murdered in the name of national security, which grows out of the personal insecurities of a powerful leader.
The world of the 1st Christmas was one where some people’s lives mattered more than others, where the privileged were heard while the poor went unheeded. Yet it was also a world where those who mattered least to the powerful mattered most to the Almighty. The One who hears their cries and sees their pain, now gives them hope through visions of angels announcing Good News. Zechariah’s prayers are heard, Mary’s lowly life is seen and favored, and old Simeon is so happy that he declares that he can now die in peace!
For the world of this Christmas, I hope for a new way of being. One that hears and sees the “least of these.” One that acknowledges the Dignity and Divinity they embody. One that nurtures the Peace they desire and deserve.
In Hospice we know that all of us will one day take our turn as “the least of these,” and that’s why we do what we do. And, why reloading, reimagining, refreshing and retelling our cherished stories is so important. Because they remind us of the deeper significance of our humanity, and of what it means for us to be alive in this world today.
Wishing you Peace and Joy and every Good as you celebrate your own Holy Days this year!
Joe DeSantis
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