When I was younger, I was very skeptical about the way the Holy Days of Christmas are celebrated. And I can say that, with the inexperience that characterized me, I criticized these things. I said, these are secular, they are not needed. Why are they done? They offer nothing, they lose the spiritual meaning and all that we often hear said.
So once I accompanied an old man from Mount Athos because he needed to visit the doctor. And because on Mount Athos Christmas is celebrated later on a different date due to the calendar, we happened to be in Thessaloniki on Christmas days. Thessaloniki, as in other cities, the main streets of Egnatia, Tsimiski and others are filled with thousands of lamps, lights that decorate the streets. This ascetic, the old man - he had been out in the world for many years - at night, walking, he saw all that great spectacle with the illumination and the lights and the lamps and he began to cry and thank Christ and say: "My Christ, all this is happening for you!". While I was saying to him: "Grandpa, all this is worldly things. Is this how Christmas is celebrated?" He says to me: "Blessed one, all these things are happening for Christ! If it weren't Christmas, would people put so many lamps in the streets? After all, they put them up for Christ, because it's Christmas and because they want to celebrate as they know how. That's why they filled the places with lamps and lights and it's for the love and for the glory of Christ that all this is happening".
And he was so much relieved and was overjoyed and had such a good opinion about the people, who adorned and decorated their houses and their shop windows and their streets with so many lamps. Why did he not think that these things were bad and worldly but said that these things were done for the glory of our Christ, because it was Christmas! And if it were not Christmas, all these things would not be done.
Fr. Athanasios Metropolitan of Limassol
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