"Santa's Healthy Eats"
Dear Church,
This will be the third Christmas I have spent as a minister in a parish setting, but only my first Christmas with all of you. Whenever I spend the holidays somewhere new, I always love seeing which Christmas traditions different families and different churches hold dearly to—my pastor in California would collect nativity scenes, my dad in Kansas would always make lasagna for Christmas Eve dinner—those sorts of things.
My own Christmas tradition was pretty basic, really—as a child, my parents taught me to always leave a piece of fruit or some vegetables out along with the cookies and milk for Santa Claus. You have to figure that the old, rotund fellow already has an expensive enough health insurance premium, to say nothing of the group plan the elves are asking for because they really need a union, so it was probably best to offer healthy food. It may have had more to do with my parents wanting to teach me healthy eating habits, but that part just went in one ear and out the other.
I think there was another reason for offering Santa more than just the milk and cookies, though—it was to offer him something more than the expected minimum. After all, Christmas is the day when we welcome our Savior into the world, and the Magi who came to visit him did not give him a varied assortment of junk food, the random holiday fruitcake, or the re-gifted sweater. They lavished Him with the very best of what they had to offer—gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. Theirs is an example that we can all take heed from—that Christmas is a time to promise our newborn Savior that we, too, will give Him not simply whatever we feel like giving, but the very best of our talents and of ourselves. If the cliché is that the true joy in Christmas is in the giving, then may our giving of ourselves once more to the Christ Child be the greatest joy of all.
A very Merry Christmas to you and yours this holiday season!
Yours in Christ,
Eric
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