From the best story you can read this Christmas, or any Christmas, or any day, here, because in its own misguided way, it makes for a beginning at recovering the call to poverty which lies at the heart of the lost message of the historical Jesus:
So, on hearing "Little Drummer Boy" each Christmas, we should be reminded that the very birth we are celebrating is a call to poverty of the spirit. To be poor in spirit, as Christ asked of us on the Mount of Beatitudes, is to admit of our weaknesses, our insecurities, our shortcomings. In recognizing these in ourselves, we are able to feel compassion when we find them in others, and we are moved to act on their (rather than our own) behalf.
This is the best of Christmas and the Christian message: to say, in the manner of a scared young boy before the most unlikely of Kings, in the cold of an often harsh world, "I am a poor boy too."
