Mistletoe

Today’s message was written by my friend, Rev. Roger Kunkel, founder of Dial Hope.

A lady in her eighties has discovered how to have fun at Christmas. One week before Christmas she puts on her mistletoe headband and wears it everywhere. She “lights up” every place she goes, spreading joy with her beautiful radiance and her wonderful sense of humor. She is delightful, and she gets lots of kisses and hugs, and smiles.

Do you know where the custom of kissing under the mistletoe came from? It came from the Druids in northern Europe. They believed that mistletoe had curative power and could even cure separation between people. So when two enemies happened to meet under an oak tree with mistletoe hanging above them, they took it as a sign that they could drop their weapons and be reconciled. When the missionaries moved in, they saw this mistletoe custom as a perfect symbol for what happened to the world at Christmas. At Christmas, a new age dawned – a time of peace, healing, reconciliation, a time for embracing one another.

Friend of Dial Hope, if you want to have a “right Christmas,” go in the spirit of love and fix those broken relationships in your life. If you are alienated, or estranged, or cut off, or at odds with any other person, go in the spirit of Christmas and make peace. Give the gift of peace. Don’t put it off any longer. Drop your pride, drop your weapons, drop your grudges, and go set it right! Go, and God will go with you. That’s what mistletoe is really about, and that’s what Christmas is about. God comes to us in the Christ Child, so that we might be set right with God, set right with ourselves, and set right with other people.

Let us pray: Loving God, comfort your people not with cheap grace, but with the assurance that true discipleship matters and has an impact on human suffering, loneliness, and fear. We come to you because you have come to us. Fill our hearts with carols of joy and love that we may become instruments of your peace. Through the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ. Amen.