My son,
Another Christmas season has come.You will hear people say that Christmas is only a family holiday — a tradition, a cultural celebration, something warm and familiar that comes once a year and passes just as quietly. But if that were all it was, it would not belong to the world. Nations do not share traditions. Cultures do not share sentimentality. Yet Christmas is kept in every corner of the earth — by people who share nothing else in common.That alone should tell you something.
There is a longing written into the human heart. St. Augustine said it plainly:“You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”Christmas is not powerful because of decorations, music, or memory. It is powerful because it touches that restlessness — the hunger for God that lives in every soul.
And because it does, the enemy does not destroy it.He disguises it.The Nativity gains a drummer boy.Saint Nicholas becomes Santa Claus.Elves appear. Reindeer fly.And slowly — very slowly — Mary and Joseph are moved aside, and the Child born in Bethlehem is forgotten.
G.K. Chesterton once warned that when men stop believing in God, they do not believe in nothing — they believe in anything. The miracle is replaced with fantasy, because fantasy is easier to carry than truth.
Our battle is not fought with weapons, my son.It is fought in the mind.St. Paul said that we must be “transformed by the renewal of your mind,” and the Church has always known this. St. Thomas Aquinas taught that truth disciplines the soul the way training disciplines the body — it orders us, strengthens us, and makes us free.This is why prayer matters more than we realize.Eucharistic adoration trains the mind.The Rosary trains the heart.Daily Mass trains the soul to recognize the voice of God.
The enemy does not always pull people away with obvious evil. Often, he simply distracts them with good things. Even Christian things.Christian radio is not bad — unless it replaces prayer.Studying theology is not bad — unless it replaces obedience.Entertainment is not bad — unless it replaces worship.
St. Ignatius of Loyola warned that spiritual ruin often begins not with great sins, but with small, “reasonable” compromises.Soccer is not evil.But teaching people to neglect the Lord’s Day is not holy.And when Christian communities begin to bless what Scripture forbids — when they reshape marriage, excuse abortion, and soften the Gospel to make it easier — this is not compassion. It is confusion. And confusion always precedes collapse.
St. John Henry Newman wrote:“To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”But he also taught that doctrine develops like a tree — never by changing its roots.When roots are cut, fruit rots.Christmas still matters, my son, because it still pierces the world with a quiet truth:That God entered history — not as an idea, but as a Child.Not to entertain us — but to save us.And if you do not guard that truth, it will not be attacked.It will be replaced.
So guard your mind.Guard your worship.Guard your prayer.Because someday, you will write your own letter.And what you hand down will shape more than you will ever know.
With love,Dad
The musings of Peter 