The Spirit of Christmas | Inspirational Christmas Podcasts

Christmas Podcast Transcript: Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast. I would like to start today’s podcast by thanking our newest 10 dollar a month patrons, John Cline and Monica Makarious. It’s with your kind financial help that we are able to continue the Inspirational Living podcast for years to come. If you would like to support our podcast, you can become a patron for as little as $1 a month. To do so, simply search for the Inspirational Living patron page at Patreon.com.

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Lastly, I would like to wish everyone a heartfelt Merry Christmas. I feel honored that so many of you have made this podcast a part of your lives, and that it has helped you in some small way. As the host of the Inspirational Living podcast, I’ve never mentioned my name before, because I wanted the voices of the classic authors that we feature on this podcast to take prominence.

But since you all have been so kind to bring me into your life this past year, I think it only polite that I do introduce myself. My name is David. I grew up in the Pennsylvania Dutch region of Eastern Pennsylvania, and attended graduate school in the Appalachian mountain region of North Carolina, where I studied English literature, philosophy, and religion. I was a university professor in the Czech Republic for several years, before moving to Thailand to lecture at several universities and begin to raise a family.

But, that’s enough about me. I would just like to add that I very much look forward to being with you for another season of podcasts in 2017. Thank you so much for joining me.

Now, let’s move on to today’s podcast, which was edited and adapted from the book The Spirit of Christmas, by Henry Van Dyke, published in 1905.

The custom of exchanging presents on a certain day in the year is very much older than Christmas, and means very much less. Gift giving has been a custom in almost all ages of the world, and among many different nations. It is a fine thing or a foolish thing, as the case may be; an encouragement to friendliness, or a tribute to fashion; an expression of good nature, or a bid for favor; an outgoing of generosity, or a disguise of greed; a cheerful old custom, or a futile old farce, according to the spirit which animates it and the form which it takes.

But when this ancient and variously interpreted tradition of a day of gifts was transferred to the Christmas season, it was brought into vital contact with an idea which must transform it, and with an example which must lift it up to a higher plane. The example is the life of Jesus. And the idea is unselfish interest in the happiness of others.

The great gift of Jesus to the world was himself. He lived with and for humanity. He kept back nothing. In every particular and personal gift that he made to certain people there was something of himself that made it precious.

For example, at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, it was his thought for the feelings of the giver of the feast, and his wish that every guest should find due entertainment, that lent the flavor of a heavenly hospitality to the wine which he provided.

When he gave bread and fish to the hungry multitude who had followed him out among the hills by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people were refreshed and strengthened by the sense of the personal care of Jesus for their welfare, as much as by the food which he bestowed upon them. It was another illustration of the sweetness of “a dinner of herbs, where love is.”

The gifts of healing which Jesus conferred upon many different kinds of sufferers were, in every case, evidence that he was willing to give something of himself, his thought, his sympathy, his vital power, to the men and women among whom he lived.

Once, when a paralytic was brought to Jesus on a bed, he surprised everybody, and offended many, by giving the poor man the pardon of his sins, before he gave new life to his body. That was just because Jesus thought before he gave; because he desired to satisfy the deepest need; because in fact he gave something of himself in every gift. All true Christmas-giving ought to be after this pattern.

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