Mark Gilroy

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The Simple Blessings of Christmas: Childlike Wonder

Simple Blessings of Christmas by Mark Gilroy

Experiencing Childlike Wonder

Christmas reveals the wisdom of childlike wonder.

Christmas! The very word brings joy to our hearts. No matter how we may dread the rush, the long Christmas lists for gifts and cards to be bought and given—when Christmas Day comes there is still the same warm feeling we had as children, the same warmth that enfolds our hearts and our homes.
Joan Winmill Brown

Even though little Cindy Lou Who didn’t stop the Grinch from stealing Christmas, most Dr. Seuss experts still think it was her big brown eyes that first pierced the his heart and begin his personal transformation, even before he heard the whole community come out and sing from his icy hilltop home.

What are the characteristics of a Grinch?

Nothing showcases the heart of a Grinch better than cynicism. Looking at everyone and everything with jaded and jaundiced eyes. A true Grinch would never be satisfied to watch another person perform a good deed during the holidays, but would take time to wonder who that person thinks they are trying to impress.

Isolation is another surefire way of showing the world your inner Grinch. Getting together with family and friends can be too much of a hassle, can’t it? Why go to a special church service when you’ve had enough of crowds at the mall? And the neighborhood progressive dinner will conflict with a TV show you wanted to watch!

Then there’s a resentful spirit that hates to see others experiencing blessings in life. Such a small-spirited outlook declares one to be a top-tier Grinch.

But there’s more that goes into being a Grinch. Irritability. Short temper. Meanness. Making fun of others for their innocence and joy.

Now if you’ve had enough of being a Grinch, there is a cure if you’ve seriously been feeling like canceling Christmas for yourself—and everyone else—this year. It begins with humility. Not believing you are too sophisticated and cultured to stop and admire the tinsel and the toys. It continues with the words of Jesus to His followers when some thought the kids were being a nuisance and distracting them from grown-up concerns. He said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14).

Lost the wonder of Christmas? Maybe you need to watch a child enjoying the season. Whatever it takes, spend some time with small kids this Christmas. Have some friends or family members with kids come over to decorate cookies. Take a family you know out on a Christmas light tour or to an outdoor Nativity scene. Or help an organization that delivers toys to needy children—and see if you can be part of the delivery team.

Kids approach Christmas activities with unabashed enthusiasm. Watching their excitement and outright glee over things as simple as sugar cookies and wrapping paper, you just might find your heart softening—or growing three sizes—and your cynicism melting. You’ll be filled with compassion for children and an appreciation for their ability to really celebrate. Best of all, what will replace your hard heart is a renewed sense of childlike wonder and joy.

Jesus called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 18:2–4

the simple blessings of christmas by mark gilroy.

Excerpted from The Simple Blessings of Christmas by Mark Gilroy.

Peace On Earth, Good Will to All Men

The Simple Blessings of Christmas

Does your attitude proclaim that you are a person of peace and good will?

My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that?
Bob Hope

Christmas calls us to peace with all people – even those different from ourselves.

It happened in the midst of the fiercest fighting of World War I. It spanned all 500 miles of the Western Front, a jagged ever-changing line separating British and German forces. Newspapers around the world hailed it as miracle.

“All I’d heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking, and whining of bullets in flight, machine gun fire and distant German voices,” said Alfred Anderson. “But there was a dead silence that morning, right across the land as far as you could see. We shouted ‘Merry Christmas’ to each other.”

Anderson, who was 108 years old when he spoke those words, was the last survivor of the Christmas Truce of 1914, a spontaneous event that he experienced at 18 years of age and one that he had thought of every day since.

There are numerous first hand accounts from soldiers’ journals of how this seemingly spontaneous outburst got started. But the story most remembered was that a German soldier began singing “Stille Nacht” and his solo soon became a chorus as he was joined by English voices singing “Silent Night.” A British regiment serenaded the Germans with “The First Noel” and the Germans sang back to them, “O Tannenbaum.”

Men from both armies laid down their weapons and crept cautiously and then quickly into No Man’s Land to share food, cigars, drinks – and even play a game of soccer together.

Christmas has always been a time when people of all ages, races, and creeds come together to break bread peacefully. Like the Truce of 1914 sometimes even sworn enemies have laid aside historical and more recent hostilities.

In the Christmas story, a newborn Baby was given gifts by Wise Men from the East, probably Persians from a city in what is now Iran. When these Magi realized that King Herod was a threat to the Baby’s life, they protected him by returning home by a different route in order to keep his location a secret from the madman. This Baby was sheltered during his childhood in Egypt, a country that had fought many wars with his homeland.

When angels sang to shepherds, ‘Peace on Earth, good will to all men,” they announced the simple yet profound truth that enemies can be reconciled; that strangers can become friends; that those who think and believe differently can still be neighbors. Christmas was literally born in strife – but celebrated and protected by “foreigners” who were men and women of peace and good will.

As you experience the Christmas season this year, don’t think that peace is something to be negotiated by politicians between lands and peoples that are thousands of miles from your world. Begin with how you look at those who are different from you. Does your attitude proclaim that you are a person of peace and good will? Move closer to home and ask yourself if there is a relationship where you need to lay down weapons of anger and harmful words? Is there a person with whom you need to call a truce and be reconciled? Not just for a day but from this point forward?

 

the simple blessings of christmas by mark gilroy.

Excerpted from The Simple Blessings of Christmas by Mark Gilroy.

Holidays Are for Games: 3 Recommendations

The online video gaming industry is huge and getting huger every year – almost as big as Hollywood and on a growth trajectory that will continue to cut into the TV audience for sports. But for all the realism and sophistication found in the new product launches and annual updates, video games lack something important that can still be found in playing old school board games: face-to-face human interaction and intimacy.

It’s almost Christmas. A lot of people will be off work with vacation time and a lot of families and friends will gather to celebrate and catch up. Tis the season when classic board games like Life, Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly. Clue, and Scrabble will be lifted down from top closet shelves and dusted off. Holidays are for games.

Here are three holiday game ideas that you might want to try or adapt with your friends and family members.

Settlers of Catan

Up to 6 can play.

1. Settlers of Catan. My soon to be son-in-law brought this to our family Christmas gathering last year and the award-winning game was an instant hit. Think of Risk on steroids without the cannons and destroyed troops. The board comes in about 30 pieces and can be set up different every time. Up to six can play. The goal is to get 10 ‘victory points’, which are gained by building roads, settlements, cities, and armies. Players have to accumulate wood, bricks, ore, sheep, and grain through strategically building settlements in the right spots – and through good old-fashioned barter with other players. Sounds complicated but it only takes 15 to 30 minutes to learn. There are game extensions in the Catan family that can take you on the ocean or to outer space or into particular historical epochs, like the Roman Empire.

2. Fast Scrabble. I like regular Scrabble just fine but if you want an interesting variation try ‘fast scrabble.’ All tiles are placed in the middle of the table face down. The first player turns over a tile. If it’s a one-letter word like ‘I’ or ‘A’ then the first player to call out the word gets to keep the tile, face up, in front of him or her. If it’s not a word, the tile remains with the person who turned it over as a free letter. The second player turns over a tile and again, whoever calls out a word, made from that letter or that letter and any other letters that are face up, gets all the tiles to make a new word. If ‘A’ came up first and then ‘M’ came up second, player three can call out ‘Am’ and keeps that word in front of him. If the third letter pulled up is ‘C’ then the first player can call ‘Cam’ and all letters come back to him or her. If the next letter is an ‘E’ then someone can yell ‘Came’ and the tiles are now all theirs. Once a word is formed the letters must stay intact and in that order but can switch to different players throughout the game. ‘Oven’ can become ‘Coven’ can become ‘Covens’ and so on. When all tiles have been turned over, each player adds up the points on their tiles that are formed into words and subtracts any letters that are sitting free. Loud. Fast. Fun.

3. Team Hybrid Game Night. One of our favorite activities during the holidays is a family and/or friend game night where we divide into teams and play a combination of popular games, a new one each round. This works best with four or five teams going four to five rounds. We like to use Trivial Pursuit (each team is asked every question on a single card per round and is awarded 10 to 20 points per correct answer), Pictionary (50 points for identifying the picture), Tabu (20 points per correct word), Outburst (10 points per correct word), Scene-It (all teams compete at once in an ‘All Play’), but you can come up with a myriad of other options, like Charades or Family Feud, by adapting your favorite games into the process. One of the nice things about the team approach is that you can enjoy competition but no one gets singled out as not being good at something like Trivial Pursuit. I like to do a final round where points are doubled and each team gets to choose which of the previous games played they want to try.

Whether you’re gearing up to drive to Grandma’s or are hosting a group of friends on Christmas afternoon, don’t get stuck in the rut of staring at the TV screen and missing out on the people around you. Games or no games, find ways to interact face-to-face.