As Yet Unaffected

I've been spending my last few mornings volunteering at the Bishop's Storehouse, which conveniently isn't far at all from where I live. It's kind of fun. The physical work has been good for me, and it really makes me feel good inside to help out. A lot of people do volunteer work around Thanksgiving and Christmastime, and I hope I'm not just jumping on the bandwagon, though having my mornings free thanks to Winter Break has certainly helped, and when Christmastime is over, school will start up again, and I may not be able to volunteer as often as I have this week. Maybe this is just a seasonal phase, though the season has in no way affected my desire to help.

I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Theoretically, it's good because it means that I always have some desire to serve, which, at times,  I've thought to have been one of my defining attributes, as well as one of my more admirable attributes. I like helping people, and I like that I like helping people. That's a good thing.

Still, I feel no extra desire to serve others in the spirit of Christmas. I don't know if it's that we haven't gotten around to putting up many Christmas decorations yet, or maybe I just haven't been listening to the radio enough, but I haven't been feeling extra Christmassy this year. Not that I'm complaining. If I don't feel a certain way, I know it's mostly on me, and I could change it by opening Pandora in another tab, shoving some clutter around, and making room for a tree somewhere. But what does a plastic evergreen coated in lights or a few merry tunes about silver bells and snowmen have to do with wanting to help other people?

I think it mostly reminds us that it's Christmas, and Christmas reminds us to think about, and act like, Jesus Christ.

But do we really need reminders? Well, actually, yeah. We do. Jesus gave us the Sacrament to remind us of the Atonement. It was probably the greatest of all acts in the history of mankind, and one that has a central role in each of our lives, but most of us need weekly reminders to help us let it affect us. Could Christmas be the same way? We know we're supposed to be Christians and act like Christians all the time, but we only get excited about it once or twice a year (possibly counting Easter).

At Christmastime, we serve others and give gifts and generally be better people in some ways than we usually are, and as a result, we feel a lot better around Christmastime than we usually do. The strange thing is that we tend to chalk that good feeling up to the "Christmas Spirit," and shortly after December 25th, everything goes back to normal. I know this is going to sound really cheesy, but shouldn't we act like it's Christmas all the time? And I'm not talking about gifts or decorations anymore. I'm talking about service and kindness and acting like Jesus would want us to act. Shouldn't we live our religion not just in the winter?

Well, yeah, we should. But we struggle with that sometimes. Life gets busy and the world gets us off-track. We eventually forget how good it feels to act like a Christian. But then Christmastime rolls around again and reminds us. We need Christmas. We shouldn't, but we do. We need to have a time of year that inspires us to break out of our normal routines, do nice things for other people, and rejoice in the spirit that comes into our hearts when we do. Christmas does that to people. And it's well-passed time that I let it do that to me.