A Winter’s Day

By Fred Pruitt

(from 2002)

(Note: Since winter is on its way, I thought it would be good to publish this again.)

It’s a gray cold day in Louisville, and coming to work this morning as I caught my first glimpse of the sky and trees, I was overtaken by a late-fall/early winter feel, like a day in December rather than April. This is especially ironic since yesterday was warm breezes and 76 degrees.

It brought to mind about the placement of Christmas in the middle of the darkest month of the year, wondering if those who made that decision did it with that in mind: that in the darkest moment, in the dead of winter, in the shortest days with the least light, the Light is born as a miracle from beyond our minds and greatly exceeding all hopes.

Then I got to thinking that all my life I’d heard that these people who made that decision did it to Christianize an already existing pagan holiday, the Saturnalia I think, as the Christian church did with many things, and how some debunk it because of that, believing that doing so somehow “paganizes” the Christian church.

Some won’t use the things formerly used by darkness because they seem to them to be stained, unusable.

Yet is this not our commission — to divinize, to recover, to reconcile, all which had been misused before?

I remember when my kids were trick or treat age and the issue came up with some “christian” parents not letting their kids participate in Halloween because it was the devil’s day.

I said, “I’m not letting the devil have a day, EVERY DAY is the Lord’s day!” So my kids got to dress up and have a fun time, just like I did when I was their age. After all, do we not believe that He Who is in us, is greater than he who is in the world? Or is this something we just give lip-service to, all the while believing that horned-tail bastard is somebody we need to fear and who has great power over us and all the rest of the world?

So I’m for continuing on, even in low light on a day in spring that feels like winter, seeing only the LIGHT that ever shines in darkness, and ascribing no power nor ultimate fruit to the liar and accuser. I cannot do anything else but to live in this truth: that “God was in Christ, reconciling THE WORLD unto himself.”

But I cannot say that for anyone else. As Jesus said to the twelve when he asked them what other men were saying about Him, “What do YOU say?”