Reason for the Season

            Today is the Sabbath Day. It is also Christmas Eve. Since my family does its big dinner and celebration on Christmas Eve and because it is also the Sabbath Day, today was a little different than our normal Christmas Eve.

            The first thing that is different is that I did as much of the cooking as possible yesterday in order to have a more restful Sabbath Day. We attended our regular sacrament meeting where we took the opportunity to renew our covenants with Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. We worshipped them with music and with words.

            I returned home and invested a couple of hours in the scriptures. I completed the food preparation that I could not do yesterday. We had the unique opportunity because of Facetime to watch our family in Utah do the Nativity. That was fun to feel a part of a larger gathering.

            Local family members arrived in time to watch the Utah nativity. Then we had a delightful dinner together. We did an abbreviated Nativity reactivation because we were short on actors. (We invited three families to join us for dinner and the Nativity, but none of them could make it.) We played a Christmas-oriented game. We sang “Happy Birthday” to Jesus and ate angel food cake. Then we went our separate ways until tomorrow.

            It is now late on Christmas Eve. As we enter Christmas Day, I believe it is important for us to continue the holy feelings that have been a part of this day. You see, we would not be celebrating Christmas if the events of Easter did not take place. If Jesus Christ had not atoned for the sins of all mankind and then was resurrected, we would not be celebrating His birthday. Jesus is the reason for the Christmas season.

            Here is a poem that expresses my feelings this night. I do not know the author of it.

            One Solitary Life

He was born in an obscure village.

            He worked in a carpenter shop

until he was thirty. He then became

an itinerant preacher.

            He never held an office.

                        He never had a family

                                    or owned a house.

            He didn’t go to college.

He had no credentials but himself….

Nineteen centuries have come and gone,

and today he is the central figure

            of the human race.

All the armies that ever marched,

            and all the navies that ever sailed,

            all the parliaments that ever sat,

            and all the kings that ever reigned

            have not affected the life of man

            on this earth as much as that…

                                    One Solitary Life