* Editor’s note: Bob Dunning is taking the day off. This column was first published on Dec. 23, 2001.

Those of us who type for a living dread days like this. Two days before Christmas. The final column before Christmas. Nothing new to say about a story that’s 2,000 years old.

Truth be known, I’ve never had anything new to say about this Christmas story.

What you hope is that one day on Christmas Eve, or thereabouts, you say something meaningful and wonderful, balancing sentiment and silliness, and in the process create something you can run year after year after year without anyone noticing.

In 32 years of performing this labor of love, that’s never happened to me. Yes, I’ve reprinted Christmas Eve columns. In fact, I’ve reprinted the one about a one-on-one basketball game inside prison walls several times. But I know I’ve never captured exactly the essence of this day.

When you grow up in a Catholic home, Christmas is, above all else, a day when you end up in church. When you’re very young, of course, it’s about Santa Claus. Then it’s about Christ. And one day it occurs to you how incredibly nonsensical it is that the people who claim to believe in Christ are divided into some 400-odd denominations, some of them openly hostile to each other. Not to mention 5 billion other people on the planet who don’t give Christ a passing thought.

At some point in your life you wonder about this. How can it be that all of us recognize water as water, trees as trees, dirt as dirt and mountains as mountains, yet we disagree so wildly about all things spiritual?

The war we are fighting at this very moment has elements of a religious war. True, many of these terrorists are in it for the sheer thrill of being a terrorist and whatever perverted “high” that may bring. But others, very clearly, believe they are involved in a holy cause. How else to explain people who would so willingly give their lives by hijacking airplanes and crashing them into buildings?

Yes, it will be a very different Christmas this year, one like we’ve never experienced before. And yet, from speaking to friends and acquaintances on the East Coast, it’s clear we haven’t felt this tragedy anywhere near as much as they have.

We’ve read about it. We’ve watched it on television. We’ve heard the stories of those who died and those who survived, but it’s been almost like a bad movie on this side of the country. Sometimes, I suspect, we feel guilty that our lives have seemingly gone on almost as if nothing has happened.

We’re supposed to be alert, to be vigilant, to be looking over our shoulders. What we’re looking for, no one is sure. All the while, of course, we’re supposed to drop all stereotyping, all profiling and treat everyone as if he or she is beyond suspicion. It is nearly an impossible task.

Our eyes dart nervously at our fellow passengers when we dare to board an airplane. Some of them, for reasons we’d rather not say out loud, make us nervous.

Which brings me back to that Christ child we were talking about so many paragraphs ago. He said some things we’ve chosen to ignore for too many years now.

Indeed, he asked us to love our neighbors, but he also asked us to love our enemies. It is easily the most difficult thing he asked us to do. He couldn’t possibly have meant Osama bin Laden, could he have?

The message of Christ, whether you believe in him or not, is one of hope. There is a similar message in many religions of the world, if only we would take those words to heart.

Hope. Faith. Joy. Love. Charity.

May we all have these things on this day that is so special to many of us.

— Reach Bob Dunning at [email protected]

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