The Real Gifts of Christmas

The Real Gifts of Christmas
by
December 16, 2025

Christmas is just a week away. Ready or not, it’s almost here. As the carol says: “A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.” I want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make Walk Thru Bethlehem another success on a very frigid Sunday! It is an incredible tradition at Woodmont that impacts thousands of lives.

The stores and malls remain busy with shoppers looking for the perfect gift. But the gifts that we are all looking for cannot be bought or delivered by Amazon. As Amy Grant sings every year at the Ryman, “No more lives torn apart, and war would never start, and time would heal all hearts. Everyone would have a friend, and right would always win, and love would never end.” That sounds like a pretty nice world, but it first has to start in our own hearts. A Chinese proverb says that, “If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person. If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house. If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.” It all starts with light in the soul.

Deep down in our soul, we all long for the spiritual gifts of hope, peace, joy, and love. We live in anxious and divided times. Anxiety and fear have become the defining spiritual dilemma of the twenty-first century. In his book My Age of Anxiety, Scott Stossel says, “To some people, I may seem calm. But if you could peer beneath the surface, you would see that I’m like a duck – paddling, paddling, paddling.” That resonates, even during this season of peace on earth, goodwill to all. Stossel says, “Being severely anxious is depressing. Anxiety can impede your relationships, impair your performance, constrict your life, and limit your possibilities.” Physicians will now tell you that treating anxiety is an integral component of practicing medicine. Theologian Paul Tillich once said that all of our anxieties and fears can be placed into one of three buckets: fear of death, fear of emptiness or meaninglessness, and fear of guilt or condemnation. Leadership experts have written countless books on how to lead and live in anxious times. Edwin Friedman talked about the importance of “self-differentiation.” Peter Steinke talks about being a non-anxious presence, steady and calm in the midst of uncertainty. Ron Heifeitz talks about the importance of “holding steady” and learning to take the heat, whatever it may be. But for any of this to happen, we must first find our own sense of inner peace and joy that does not depend on other people or external circumstances.

Inner peace at Christmas and beyond is a choice that we make. We must seek it and then work to maintain it. It’s not always easy. If we wait for the external conditions of our lives to become perfect, it will never happen. Joy must become a mindset as we live from day to day. MIT professor Otto Scharmer identifies three voices that we battle in our minds. The first is the voice of judgment, which is intellectual, sealing off the mind to protect the status quo. The second voice is cynicism, which is born out of mistrust, telling us that everybody is out to get us, hurt us, and stab us in the back. The third is the voice of fear that keeps us afraid of losing what we have earned and accomplished. These are the same voices that keep us from experiencing joy. While we may not choose our circumstances in life, we all choose our attitude and response. The Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu once identified eight pillars of joy – perspective, humility, laughter, acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, and generosity. Each of these virtues is essential to the spiritual life. Perhaps Meister Eckhart said it best: “Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.” This is always our challenge this Christmas and beyond.

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