Christmas seems to hide secret, arcane knowledge of how to saturate the air with excitement and hearts with wonder, but the answer stares every neighborhood in the face: Christmas lights.
I don't mean that we should display Christmas lights year-round in pursuit of wonder; we would have more luck white-knuckling a ghost. I mean that Christmas lights are symbols of the holiday's ‘secret.’ A spirit of joy and wonder permeates the environment every Christmas season because we start to become a community. We all, as a race, join together in expectant longing for the same thing.
God provides Christmas as the spark, but joy and wonder burn brightly within us by the formation of true community. At its core, the human heart longs for community, and its worst fear is loneliness. We bear the image of God, who in His very being is Community, and He tells us that it is not good for man to be alone. The Son of God became a baby for the first Christmas because He knew we needed community, that we needed God with us, Immanuel. It should be no secret, then, that even today the foundation of Christmas wonder is community.
For us today, the Christmas season produces community, but for our predecessors, community had to produce everything we know as the Christmas season. That truth shows us that we can still sow community in this era to yield new joy and new wonder. Humanity is still the same, and there is no bad season for planting community.
Meaningful community in another time of year will be different than it is at Christmas, but in many ways it will be the same. It will bring the same warmth in our hearts as we see ourselves united with our neighbors. It will bring the same joy as we share our lives with others. It will bring the same wonder as we detect the presence of something larger than ourselves, which, to the perceiving eye, is God.
We may not have the echoing silver bells or winter wonderlands or mistletoe or rainbows of lights, but we will have the peace on earth and good will toward men. We will honor God, our country, and ourselves by establishing community that lasts through the new year and thereafter.
Only the Son of God could unite so many hearts for the day of Christmas, but we can each unite our neighborhood blocks for other good works. As a small step, we can decorate our houses instead of using them merely as shelters. Just as Christmas decorations brighten otherwise gloomy nights, so too will other holiday decorations liven our mundane American neighborhoods. A larger step of faith and courage is to build friendships with our neighbors. The small step is optional; the large step is the mission.
The holiday season provides a perfect opportunity to bake (or purchase) desserts for those who live around us, and we can use that open door to initiate and deepen relationships with them. In other times of the year, a neighborhood barbecue or cookout—hot dogs and burgers fall in the latter category—will allow us to do the same. Once we learn what values our communities share, we can plan and begin work to fulfill those values. If we discover our neighbors do not share any of our values, then our best course of action will be to relocate. However, the chances are high that our neighbors will have our same love of God, of country, or of the poor.
This is where we start, and we must start.
The first time Christ sent out His disciples, He commanded them to visit strangers, live with them, heal them, and tell them that the kingdom of God was near. That is our example today, and we Christians have the highest duty to fulfill that ministry, for God demands it. Only we can give God the proper glory, because only we confess in Christ that He deserves it.
Conservatism demands from us the same duty for the sake of our country. We cannot love America the Beautiful without loving our neighborhoods that give her life. Our own neighborhoods should be beautiful and clean, and our own neighbors should mean more to us than Washington, D.C. does.
If we want to have joy and wonder filling every season, then it begins with us building community in our own neighborhoods. Let us as Christians and as conservatives respect the duties we have inherited, and may we enjoy the feeling of Christmas while it rests in the air and not on our shoulders. God rest ye merry.