Christmas spirit requires the expression of it.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Edgar Peara For The Register-Guard

Christmas is never automatically meaningful to anyone, any more than a marriage is effortlessly loving and happy. Even children don't find Christmas to be a season that is always wondrous and joyful, and that fact doesn't just apply to deprived children whose parents are too poor to give them presents.

One Christmas when I was 8, maybe four years beyond believing in Santa, I was impetuously consumed with the desire to open my presents. Christmas morning had been our family's traditional time to receive our gifts.

On the morning of Dec. 24, I pestered my mother to let me open just one present. Having won that point, I argued for Christmas Eve to be the gift exchange time. After I wore her down on that, I contended that since Dec. 24 was Christmas Eve day, any hour of that day could be considered a part of Christmas Eve. So I pleaded for permission to open my presents that day.

By early afternoon she gave in. As I tore open my presents, I was alone. Mother was busy in the kitchen. My little sister was having her nap. Father was out of the house.

By the time I got all the packages open, I felt deflated. I'd received everything I wanted, but simply having the gifts and being able to play with my toys wasn't enough.

My unwillingness to pay the price of waiting, of being too fretful to put off the present opening until it was part of a simple family Christmas custom, made me free empty and cheated. I found Christmas was not automatically meaningful.

Even as a little boy, I had to pay the price of patience and observe the discipline of the Christmas morning ritual to enjoy the gentle magic that made the holiday special.

How many of us cheat ourselves out of letting Christmas have any meaning? The cultural celebration is unarguably grossly commercial. So why expect any inspiration or personal or religious meaning from an event that has been stretched from being a special day into weeks of sales, decorations, lights and "Jingle Bells"?

If we just accept Christmas as it is dished up by television, the stores and media, without our making any personal effort to make it meaningful, then it can be as hollow and frustrating as it was decades ago for that spoiled 8-year old boy in Davenport, Iowa.

Christmas can be meaningful for anyone who is willing to make it so, just as embers hidden in ashes can be fanned into a flame.

The effort could start with pursuing all Christmas preparations with a lighthearted spirit of love and generosity. When one puts up decorations, remember it is to create special beauty, holiday color and a festive atmosphere.

Greeting cards can be sent to restore the bright bonds of friendship and affection.

Plan parties, gatherings and dinners to spread joy and opportunities for love to be renewed and deepened.

Religious services can afford enrichment, worship and inspiration.

Gift buying or making can go beyond the usual exchange with relatives and friends to a search for people or organizations that truly need your gifts and would be deprived without them.

Take time to express love and caring to family and friends by your actions, not just presents.

Be willing to spend time in a caring talk with a relative, engage one's whole attention in play with a child, make home improvements that have been delayed.

An activity that would be especially rewarding would be to give leadership to what would enrich your family's spiritual growth. Initiate a dinnertime discussion that would encourage religious study or exploration. What does Christmas mean, or should it mean? What is the highest form of giving, of love shown and kindnesses done, of celebration?

How appropriate to make Christmas a time of peacemaking. Peace is not the absence of conflict. It begins with awareness of our differences, and requires compromises, bargains and trade-offs that benefit everyone as much as possible. The harmony that results is peace.

Where might some peacemaking be initiated in your circle of friends, family, organizations or community? What could make Christmas more meaningful than having the courage to launch peace actions with someone in your life, to express the patience, unselfishness, love and moral strength that making peace requires?

Ultimately, what makes Christmas meaningful is what makes religion real and vital. Christmas is a time for the practical expression of love and unselfishness as a way of life. The effort is never easy or automatic, but efforts to live love is what makes Christmas, and life, meaningful.

Edgar Peara, a retired minister, moved to Eugene in 2001.