I love the ending part of A Christmas Carol. About how Scrooge was better than his word and came to know better than anyone else how to keep Christmas well in his heart.
What does that mean? To actually keep Christmas in your heart and not just sing songs about it or to give presents or eat a lot because of it. Could it mean keeping Christmas is more than a list of activities, more than an attitude of joviality and frivolity?
Maybe keeping Christmas requires a lifestyle change. Maybe it means that you celebrate Christmas and what it means not just one day of the year, or one week, or even one month, but 365 days a year, every year so long as God gives you breath.
Maybe keeping Christmas well means that you live out daily the Incarnation of Christ in you. Maybe you surrender totally and completely to Christ until all that is left of you is Jesus and all anyone else sees when they see you is Jesus. Your life becomes His life. He reaches out and touches people through you. He blesses and heals through you. He feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, ministers to the sick and comforts the lonely through you.
Maybe keeping Christmas means dying to your own dreams and plans. Laying down your hopes and desires. Maybe keeping Christmas means after giving up all those things, you take up God’s plan for the world, His heart for the poor and needy, His dreams for you, and His desire to see you become all He made you to be.
I want to keep Christmas well in my heart in 2011. Not just December 25, but all the other 364 days of the year. I don’t want to wait until January 1, either. I want to start now, the key word being start, not get it totally and perfectly right all at once.
I pray this is in your heart, too. I pray that you will want to keep Christmas well in your own heart with all the days God gives you, no matter what anyone else says or does. No matter whether it is socially acceptable or not, or whether anyone else around you follows.
God, help me to keep Christmas well in my heart now and always until You return and all the promises of Christmas are totally and finally fulfilled.
AMEN!
Ragamuffingospelfan's Blog 
When my 4 children were young (they are now 30 to 42, we would select an ornament (usually a nativity scene) when we were putting away all the decorations. That nativity/ornament was placed in a prominent place in our home where we could see it every day. It served as a reminder to keep Christmas in our hearts throughout the year.