Spiritual Gifts

Kevin Lisicki's mother has a Christmas tradition she has long shared with her grandchildren.

"On Christmas Day, at Christmas dinner, she brings out a birthday cake with 'Happy Birthday Dear Jesus' on it," says Lisicki, grand knight of Knights of Columbus Council 14144 at Christ the King Catholic Community.

It's just a store-bought cake that she puts candles on -- fewer now than when the kids were young -- for the youngsters to blow out, and Lisicki admits he has always found his mother's tradition amusing. But, in the larger scheme of things, it's also a creative way of emphasizing to children the Christian belief that Christmas is -- or at least should be -- about more than Santa Claus, shopping and partying.

Tension between the spiritual and commercial sides of Christmas is nothing new. Since the 1980s, the Knights of Columbus, a fraternal organization for Catholic men, has produced public service announcements urging Americans to "Keep Christ in Christmas," and the sentiment itself dates back decades in American culture.

But the tension has reached new heights during the past few years with what some have dubbed a "war against Christmas," the assertion that the secular side of Christmas has come to trump any public allusion to the holiday's religious underpinnings.

Encroaching secularism is "of greatest concern among people who believe in Christ and who are Christians," says the Rev. Tom Mattick, pastor of Desert Spring United Methodist Church.

But, he adds, "I think what has happened is probably the result of the church, the believers, having gotten away from the meaning itself. We're as culpable as anyone else."

It's certainly true that the shopping, social obligations and various stresses of the season can dampen Christmas' spiritual observance -- so much so that, says the Rev. Mark Wickstrom, senior pastor of Community Lutheran Church, "I think we have grown so accustomed to the urgency of life that this is just routine."

"It isn't just the Christmas experience," he adds. "People are just as busy in July as they are in December."

But it's also true that some Christians do entertain at least fleeting notions over the holidays that, spiritually speaking, they're missing out on Christmas.

"I think people do worry," says the Rev. Ron Zanoni, associate pastor of St. Joseph Husband of Mary Catholic Church.

Even Advent -- a four-week period during which Christians prepare spiritually for Christmas -- has become a challenge in an era when Christmas trappings are displayed months before Dec. 25.

So, the first step in bringing Christmas back to its spiritual roots may be simply slowing down a bit.

Wickstrom says his church encourages people to include spirituality in their everyday lives.

To this end, Community Lutheran Church this Advent provided MP3 discs of the New Testament to any church member who desired one. People who have listened to the audio Bible 28 minutes each day -- during their drive to work, while working out at the gym or at other odd moments throughout the day -- this Advent should hear the complete New Testament by Jan. 3, Wickstrom notes.

The goal of the project is to offer church members a convenient but powerful way to prepare for Christmas. One woman, Wickstrom says, even "came back and said: 'I don't have an MP3 player. But on the side jacket, it had an outline of what you're supposed to read, so I just read out of my Bible every day.' I said, 'Good for you.' "

In the same vein, the Rev. Eldwin Lovelady, rector of All Saints' Episcopal Church, each year offers church members a pamphlet that contains suggested Scripture readings and prayers for each day of Advent, "and I encourage families to use that at home."

A family also might adopt the traditional practice of lighting an Advent wreath -- a wreath with four or five candles that correspond to the four weeks of Advent and Christmas -- as a means of focusing on Christmas' impending arrival.

"That's a wonderful tradition," Zanoni says. "It's a great practice to do that as a family and, perhaps, say some prayers around dinnertime."

"In our house we have an Advent branch," Wickstrom says. "It's five candles for Advent that we leave on our kitchen table, and every night when we sit down to dinner we light the number of candles for where we are in Advent."

The daily communal lighting of the candles is an example of a spiritual tack Wickstrom endorses: "Looking at our daily life and saying, 'How can I add this Christ-save experience into my daily life?' So, hey, we have dinner every night, so how can we bring it into there?"

Or, a family might make it a point to gather for a daily prayer. "There are all kinds of devotional materials published for families to focus on the significance of Christ in their lives," Mattick says.

The Nativity story also can provide fodder for family spiritual practice, Mattick says, when parents and children read the story together and talk about it.

A family reading of the Nativity story can serve as a prelude to Christmas gift opening, Zanoni says, while the family Nativity, or manger, scene can be a tool for reinforcing the spirituality of Christmas.

In Catholic tradition, the manger scene isn't erected -- or, at least, the infant Jesus figure isn't placed in the creche -- until Christmas. Zanoni says a family might begin a tradition of formally welcoming Christmas' arrival by placing the infant Jesus figure into their family creche.

Parents also can reframe the way in which children think about the trappings of Christmas. Zanoni notes that the weeks that precede Christmas are a time of longing for the birth of Jesus, just as, for kids, it's a time of yearning for Christmas gifts.

"There are ways to, perhaps, use some of the spirit of the waiting and the yearning and all of those things we all remember as kids to turn that into, 'What are we really yearning for? Are we yearning for just material gifts or are we yearning for God?' " Zanoni says.

Mattick suggests reminding children that the gifts they receive from their parents are "part of our expression of love to you children and also remind us of God's love for us. Jesus is the gift of God, so we give gifts to others in the same spirit."

Actually, Lovelady says, the commercial trappings of the Christmas season need not be a distraction from, and certainly not in opposition to, the holiday's spiritual foundation.

"In reality, for people who are involved in the life of the church, all of the hoorah is separate from the (religious) Christmas celebration," he says.

"So my advice for folks, particularly for folks with children, is to do the stuff -- the shopping, the school programs, the carols, all of those things that are kind of generic -- but also to be in church the week before Christmas to hear the story we tell leading up to the birth of Jesus."

"I always took my kids to see Santa Claus," Lovelady adds, "and I'd take my grandchildren if they lived close."

Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@ reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0280.