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The Virtues Of Christmas

It’s Christmas Day and I hope Santa was very generous with the treasures under your tree and surprises in your stockings!

We’re going to spend the Twelve Days of Christmas examining how to apply Benjamin Franklin’s Thirteen Virtues to our lives. He listed thirteen virtues in his autobiography with which he maintained his personal integrity.

Thirteen Virtues

Benjamin Franklin may have applied his thirteen virtues in a specific order, but we’re going to switch things up a bit. These are The Virtues of Christmas and there are more virtues than there are Days of Christmas!

As the birthday of Jesus, it’s appropriate to apply two of Ben’s personal virtues. Let’s take a look at two that really speak to the heart of Christmas.

Humility

Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
~Benjamin Franklin

Christians around the world celebrate Christ’s humility today. When the Almighty Creator of the Universe chose to be born as a helpless little baby in order to fully experience the human condition, that was not only the most astounding act of humility but it was also the first “baby step” in fulfilling centuries of prophecy and addressing millennia of hopelessness.

Apart from Good Friday and Easter Sunday, Christmas Day is one of the most poignant answers to the classic question, WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?).

Jesus, as the Word made Flesh, chose a humble birth to an undistinguished family in a backward corner of Galilee in Judea.

He would live his life in humble surroundings doing everyday things with common people. Who could ask for anything more? We can all bring our best to everyday circumstances. Staying humble and doing whatever is needed at the moment for the good of all involved is how we can imitate Jesus at Christmas and every day.

Justice

Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty. ~Benjamin Franklin

While he arrived humbly as a helpless infant, he had much more important work to attend to in the end. Jesus spent much of his documented ministry passing judgment in parable form as well as by directly rebuking hypocrites to their faces.

He brought God’s justice to Earth in word and deed. When he healed the sick and crippled in his day, he was showing people in his day that the illness and injuries suffered by some among them were not God’s judgment. God was having compassion on people in need in the person of Jesus and his miraculous healing.

He also brought judgment on those in power. Members of the priestly class were held in such high esteem, yet so few seemed to be worthy of the accolades afforded them. Jesus was saying both symbolically and, in many cases, directly that God was the final judge of someone’s righteousness. To him, it was an affront that so many who were so totally missing the point of the Law of Moses were considered to be righteous because they presented form over function.

Jesus came to put things right. To that end, he spoke in parables so that people could understand what he was getting at. He boiled the Ten Commandments down to two in order to make them easier to adhere to.