It is not about winter solstice, it is about Christmas

Each year, we celebrate the birth of Jesus. The baby in the manger is an image we hold dear to our hearts — but, the image only has meaning for us because we have been told what the world was like before the incarnation. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory: The glory of an only Son coming from the Father, filled with enduring love.” (Jn1:14) Until this moment, ours was a world that could never conceptualize the divine. Now, we can actually put a face on the infinitely transcendent God, who mediates our matter to himself and embraces fully our humanity in the person of the Holy Infant.
Still, we have to remember that we can only begin to grasp the impact that the incarnation had on our world because our faith has been tweaked by what followed the infancy of the Christ-child, Jesus’ ministry, his Passion, Death and Resurrection. It is in light of what follows the incarnation that we can look back and say “this birth is different from all others.” Then and only then, can we pause and give thanks to God for the gift of his Son, for the glory of his incarnation and subsequent birth of Jesus.  
As a result of our pondering the “whole package,” from incarnation to resurrection, we are able to appreciate how this baby, unlike every other, would forever change the face of the earth.  
Our secular society wants to desensitize our eyes to the sacred and relativize all religious celebrations into one, generic, winter solstice festival. This tendency is in vain for us who believe that love is better than hatred, that hope is better than despair, that imagining heaven is better than resigning ourselves to nothingness.
We owe our salvation not to the shortest day of the year but to a God who so loved the world that he sent us his only Son. What we celebrate is not just the birth of another, cute baby. This baby embodies our salvation, and is on a divine, temporal mission to convey God’s love for us.
Now is the time to celebrate the fullness of God’s love made manifest in Jesus — now is the time for us to subject the secular to the sacred, because in Christ, God utters his final, absolute Word of revelation, articulated in the unique birth of Jesus, that gives us hope for the future.  
Christmas gives us hope that we can survive  cancer; that we can care for our mother who is suffering from Alzheimer’s; that our teen son can overcome his drug addiction through rehabilitation and, with the right support, remain in recovery. Christmas gives us hope that we can find life after divorce, dignity after bankruptcy, sobriety after alcoholism, calm after an attack of anxiety, solace in the void of loneliness.  
It is this spirit of survival kindled by the annual celebration of Christmas, and not some observance of the winter solstice, that propels us to look for that baby who radically transformed the course of our world forever. It is because we have found him, in Jesus, that we muster the courage to wish each other, not “Happy Holidays” or “Seasons Greetings,” but “Merry Christmas.”  
It’s because the Word became flesh and dwelt among us that we can sing about darkness eclipsed by light, goodness triumphing over evil, cold giving way to warmth, love overcoming heartache. It is because we have a God who is with us, in Jesus, that we dare to hang festive lights, decorate trees and wreathes, bake cookies and exchange gifts.  
On Christmas eve or day, we gather in a church, not at a park or the beach, not at the mall, Times Square or Rockefeller Center. We pause to allow the sacred to break into the profane. We know in our hearts that we can be tethered more intimately to this unique Christ Child, who has alone bridged the gap between man and God, the natural and the supernatural, the secular and the sacred as we listen to his Word and unite ourselves to him by partaking of his Eucharist. This is no small feat. It is the miracle of yuletide faith!
“Merry Christmas”!
Father Comandini is managing editor of “The Catholic Spirit.”