Although this may not reach Georgia Garvey, the syndicated columnist, who wrote the editorial, “The happy-enough holiday more than good-enough” ( Dec. 23 ), my intent is to share why the celebration of Christmas is “more than good-enough”. Georgia shared her Christmas memories at age 11. She and her two brothers received more presents than ever before. Later that day, she learned of her parents’ plans to divorce. She remembers none of the gifts she opened that year. “Even when holidays are happy, they’re sad.”

She continues, “The stories Christians tell about the first Christmas are no different” . . . In Christian doctrine, Jesus was born to die — as we all are, and if that’s not depressing, I don’t know what is.” She notes that one of the presents the wise men brought to Jesus “that night” was myrrh — “an unguent used for perfuming corpses.”

The biblical account of the first Christmas tells us that shepherds, in the fields near Bethlehem, were the first to come to worship Jesus. (Luke :2) The wisemen (no number is given) traveled from the East. Matthew writes of the new star that prompted their journey, first to King Herod in Jerusalem, to find the “new born king of the Jews”. (chapter 2) His wisemen find the prophet Micah (5:2) identified Bethlehem. Based on what Herod learned from the wisemen, Herod calls Jesus a “child”, not a baby, and later orders his soldiers to “kill all the boys in Bethlehem who were two years old and younger.” Herod, and many others, did not understand that Jesus came to be our heavenly King.

Nativity sets include three wise men bearing gifts. It would be more accurate to place them at a distance from the manger scene and explain to children, when and where the gifts were given. Matthew writes that the now moving star, stopped over “the place where the child was and the wisemen entered a house in Bethlehem. The gifts given, as the wisemen worshipped Jesus, did include myrrh, which was a costly perfume, used as such, and also in the oil used for anointing. In addition, used when a body was wrapped for burial, to keep animals away.

There is more than “hope in a baby born . . .the arrival of one who might change things”, as Georgia describes Christmas. Christmas is really “Christ-mas”. Jesus means, “Savior” and Christ means, “the anointed or

Chosen One.” God had promised to send a Savior from sin to Adam and Eve, about 4,000 years earlier, after they disobeyed Him. Jesus did come to die, but to die for our sins, and then rose again to tell us,

“Because I live, you also will live.”

Geogia’s wish for this new year was that “we all discover the rainbow in the storm, the gratitude in suffering, and the hope in the pain.”

How wonderful if we would discover God’s love for us in his word, gratitude for his son, Jesus, coming to suffer and die for all, and the sure hope of eternal life in heaven, where there will be no pain.

— Trudy Madetzke is a Marshall resident