Once Thanksgiving is over, and sometimes even earlier, we get inundated with holiday movies and specials.  Sometimes even the silliest one can offer a message that is good to hear.

I had a show on in the background last Saturday as I sat at my computer.  My back is to the TV as I type, so the program was really only for company at first.

The movie was about a boy who lives in a resort with his aunt, who works there.  The boy becomes convinced that one of the guests is Santa Claus on vacation.  It starts out just as a story he made up, but then the man is always doing kind things and many of them are done without even being sure it was this man who did them.  In other words, it is the opposite phenomenon that you see in Murder, She Wrote. You know, wherever the Angela Landsbury character goes someone is murdered.  In this show, wherever this man goes good things happen.

So I turned around and started to watch.  As I watched I began to think that it would be a really great thing if everywhere we went people thought Santa had been there.  Kind of like a year-round secret Santa, only not just for little things.  Wouldn't it make you feel good if people secretly wondered if you were Santa?

But then I realized that it  would actually be a giant step down from what people are supposed to think when we have been a part of their lives in any way.

People are supposed to think that Christ has been there.  No, people are supposed to know that Christ has been there.  We are Christ in this world.  In this Advent season let us prepare the way to receive our Lord and then to be Christ in this world.

Lord, We thank you for the incredible gift of your Son whose birth among us changes everything.  May He be born anew in our hearts that we may be made his body in this world.  Amen