Line upon Line

Since the invention of the pen, poets and pundits have attempted to describe the spirit of Christmas. While many disagree about the divinity of Jesus, most acknowledge that love is the reason for the season.

To some, love is attraction, loyalty, and affection. To others, love is the infatuation of new romance, bright and innocent as puppy fur.

Christmas is God’s gift of true love. No mortal ever described love more poignantly than a four-year-old child during an interview with Art Linkletter. When asked what love is, the little boy replied, “Love is when someone says your name just a little different, and you know your name is safe in their mouth.”

I have been pondering whether Christmas, literally born of God’s ultimate love, is safe in my mouth?

Do I speak of Christmas in merry greetings, yet limit my charity to a few weeks in December? Is my love of neighbor conditioned on the “worthiness” of the select few with whom I share my love? Are my gifts penciled onto a checklist of recipients in a race to beat the year-end calendar?

While gift-giving at Christmas can be a memento of our love, remember what the poet suggested: “Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself” (Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Gifts,” Essays XIII, 1844).

At Christmastime, schools celebrate Winter Break but do not honor the creator of winter; cities string glistening stars across roads but ignore the author of the light shining “out of darkness” (2 Cor. 4: 6); store clerks greet us with “Happy Holidays” but remain timidly silent about the Holy Days.

Christmas is safe in your mouth when God’s love is reflected in your daily life. While governments, schools and stores strive for a politically correct Christmas, we need not tread so gingerly.

It is difficult to imagine the sacrifice of our loving Father, “who gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16) that we might have eternal life. Yet, in the exquisite Atonement of Jesus, God taught us by example how to love one another, as Jesus loved us. (John 13:34).

The true spirit of Christmas is not found in pretty bows, glossy wrapping paper, or sparkling lights, though all these can remind us of a higher purpose–the love Jesus offers us. As we seek His love, it transforms us.

President Uchtdorf taught in a recent General Conference, “For what we love determines what we seek. What we seek determines what we think and do. What we think and do determines who we are–and who we will become” (Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “The Love of God,” Ensign, November, 2009).

God’s love is the true spirit of Christmas, and Easter its shining star. The empty Garden Tomb is a testament to the loftiness of the lowly manger. We honor the birth in Bethlehem by honoring the life of Calvary and Gethsemane.

For Christmas to be safe in our mouths, our love for Jesus must be year round. While the apostles of old looked for a Messiah to overthrow earthly oppressors, we must look to Jesus to overthrow the natural man or woman in each of us.

This confrontation has many descriptions, but the same required transformation. Jesus referred to it as being “born again” (John 3:5); one Book of Mormon prophet described it as “put(ting) off the natural man” (Mosiah 3:19); another called it a “mighty change of heart” (Alma 5:14), and Elder Neal A. Maxwell labeled it “the Great Pivot” (Neal A. Maxwell, “Becoming a Disciple,” Ensign, June, 1996).