With this new found peace, Christmas, as a community festival, began to grow in popularity and spread through the world. One thousand six hundred years later we're still celebrating Christmas. But for many in North America, Christmas, the festival born in peace, is anything but peaceful. All too often we find ourselves engulfed by mobs of holiday shoppers as we negotiate our way through stores, malls and busy streets. TV advertisements, like guided missiles, hone in on our living rooms and blast us with obnoxious efforts to peddle more consumer products.
Life seems to speed up.
We can revolutionize our celebration of the birth of the Prince of Peace by giving alternative gifts, by giving gifts of peace. Most of us don't want to be seen as incarnations of Ebenezer Scrooge. Each year we open the floodgates of generosity and shower our family and friends with gifts. We enjoy being generous, especially at Christmas. Remember, though, generosity and spending lots of money on gifts are not necessarily the same thing.