80 years ago – December 20, 1939
There are some days that stand out from the others like Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. But Christmas stands out among all these. In “a day when Christmas has been commercialized, tinseled with empty and gaudy pleasures, cheapened with excesses and turned over to unclean rioting, it is well for us to pause and ask ourselves what Christmas really means. … Christmas came and with it the worth of the child was recognized as never before. Bret Harte has a story of how Christmas came to Roaring Camp. Roaring Camp was a mining camp in the lawless west, with a sinister and unenviable notoriety. But a baby was born into the camp. The camp was subtly changed under the influence of that little child whose helplessness appealed to all that was” noble in people. They “became tender and thoughtful.” It’s an allegory about Christmas. “The world itself was Roaring Camp two thousand years ago. … Then a little child was born in Bethlehem. … Harte’s lovely story is a parable of the regeneration of the individual soul.” The Christ child is born anew and the human heart is the inn. “When Christ is born in the soul, all life stands irradiated and transfigured. Therein lies the very essence of the Gospel.’”
From “Christmas came — and” by Presbyterian Outlook editor Ernest Trice Thompson
