Good Tidings and Poinsettias

(Posted December 19, 2024)

As we journey through this last full week before Christmas and mark the Fourth Sunday of Advent, we do so with the wonderful news our Moderator Heidi Palmer shared with us in this issue of E TIDINGS. (Read Heidi’s announcement.)

Good tidings are just what all of us need this week, as we await the arrival once again of a Child who made all the difference to a sad and cruel world then, and can do the same in our sad and darkened world today.

The quote above, from Don Miguel Ruiz, a Mexican writer whose work reflects his Toltec background, reminds us that children arrive here, wholly open to the world. While adults seem to be able to find something to criticize about others -- and particularly themselves -– it is in the perspective of a child that the world can be seen as beautiful in itself.

Why Poinsettias at Christmas?

How fitting it is that our Sanctuary is filled across the front with poinsettias. Most of us have no idea where they’re from or what they have to do with the approaching day of Christmas.

But the truth is the poinsettia is a weed in Mexico, one that grows everywhere along the roadside there and in Central America. How did it become connected to Christmas? Through a little girl and a story:

“A Mexican girl named Pepita had no money to buy a gift for the baby Jesus on Christmas Eve. Her cousin told her that Jesus would be happy with any gift, so she picked a bouquet of weeds from the roadside. When she placed the weeds at the Nativity scene, they burst into red flowers. The flowers became known as Flores de Nochebuena, which means "Flowers of the Holy Night.”

The truth of the poinsettia is, we don’t have to be fancy in order to be beautiful. The love we have within us when shared with others can make us bloom and delight the people who gather for the Christ Child.

I hope you will join us this Sunday at 10 a.m. to look for the beauty while we travel the road to Christmas.