Economic Crisis can reveal true Meaning of Christmas, Pope says
(December 18, 2008) This year's economic crisis could help people rediscover the
true meaning of Christmas and the values of life, love and charity, Pope Benedict
XVI said. The difficulties of an economic crises that have hit so many families “can
become an opportunity and a stimulus” to free Christmas from the “accumulations of
consumerism” which reduce it to an occasion for the sole purpose of buying and exchanging
gifts” and help us to “rediscover the warmth of solidarity, of friendship” the “warmth
of Christmas”, the “message of Christ’s birth”. After the "consumerist and materialistic
scales have been shed, Christmas can then become an occasion to accept as a personal
gift the message of hope that comes from the mystery of Christ's birth," he said at
his general audience Dec. 17. The pope dedicated the talk at his last general audience
of the year to the importance and meaning of the Advent and Christmas seasons. Christmas
celebrates the gift of life, which is sometimes fragile or in danger, he said. As
Christians contemplate the birth of Christ in a lowly grotto, "how can we not think
about the many children who, still today, are born into enormous poverty in many parts
of the world?" asked the pope.