Remember! When I refer to person in the Godhead in any blog, I am referring either to singular person (one-of-three) or to the collective person (three-in-one) of the Triune.
Picking right up where we left off, joyous tour companion, we know what the real Christmas is, do we not?
Yes, yes, you are so right! The real Christmas is the Christ Child who, when invited, comes into the hearts of believers to stay, by the power of the Holy Spirit! In Polar Express, Santa, in essence, admits he is a learning-instrument for believing. Santa is a way children may start appreciating the wonderful, glorious enormity of the reality of the Godhead and the Kingdom of God. They may start by believing in a kindly, generous, attentive father-figure, with an ice-bound, polar toy factory who colorfully and dramatically captures their imagination and symbolizes the true spirit of Christmas embodied in the Godhead. And they can go on richly enjoying that symbol until such a day that their understanding can expand to embrace the incomprehensible and they can see that the “real” gift of Christmas is the ‘real’ and living gift of the Christ Child. Santa is a precursor for greater things.
But I truly believe that children just beginning the ‘conscious cognitive function’ years of life are totally thrilled by Christmas being the birthday of the baby Jesus with or without Santa (from years of personal observation and I have a college major in child development). Further the tender and heartwarming history of the birth is awesome, and it is also touching and reassuring to children. Plus the promises of Christmas continue to support and encourage the child throughout the rest of the year, and memory being what it is, will keep coming back to mind for the rest of that child’s life.
But back to the Polar Express, what I concluded from this film just goes to prove that much can be said in a few words and a few glorious images! And if I took this cinematic situation a little too optimistically and if they did not say or imply all that I hope they did . . . all I can say is, oh, would that they had! At any rate, I still gained a meaningful and rightful understanding through this evocative scene.
And I now love Santa more than I have ever loved Santa. I feel free to love Santa. Santa is now firmly in his place for me. I now understand what Polar Express wants the whole world to know, that Santa is a symbol of Christmas, not the meaning of Christmas, as so many seem to think (people of our times, especially adults, seem fixated upon him). And I have this glorious movie to help promote the understanding and remembrance of what Santa is and what Santa is not.
I never was much of one to enjoy movies that go around trying to say that Santa is real, because he is not. Jesus is real, and He is the real gift of Christmas given by the original Great Gift Giver, His loving Father, by the power of the Holy Spirit. To celebrate Christmas is to celebrate and remember how the Great Gift Giver of God the Father has and does gift us, how we are to gift Him back, and how we are to gift each other.
Why-oh-why would anyone ever want to portray Christmas, to any great extent, any other way than the true way, I ask you! Any belief, other than believing that Jesus is, and always will be, the first, great and real gift of Christmas, is pale by comparison with a genuine, vital belief in and anticipation of Christ Jesus, the little manger child, during the season of His birth.
I mean, it matters what we appreciate most and celebrate in life, doesn’t it? I have already detailed how God is Significant Truth #1, surviving every test of time in the box of life, Blog # 2 (I am smiling and nodding here, tender reader, coaxing anyone who wants to come along with me toward God’s understanding of right behavior to do so). Believing in the overarching greatness of His Son, believing in the Everlasting Lord Jesus Christ, believing that Jesus is Lord over Christmas, is Right Thinking, Right Believing and Right Behavior all rolled into one, tender reader.
As Polar Express says, Believe! I do.
My choice.
To be continued . . . again tomorrow!
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