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Christmas message – Calvinists: ‘hardship helps us experience essence of holidays’
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“A characteristic of Christian holidays is that the harder the outside circumstances, the more in tune we can be with their essence,” Zoltán Balog, the head of the Synod of the Hungarian Reformed Church, told MTI on the occasion of Christmas.
Like at the time of the first ever Christmas, circumstances today are not ideal, “but if one has everything they want and everything goes right, one can easily come to believe that they are what makes the holiday a holiday”, Balog said. But the essence of the Christian holiday is that it is created by God, “and if the external props aren’t there, it’s easier to pay attention to this essence”, he added.
The Reformed bishop said what most people would miss the most this
Christmas was loved ones they could not celebrate together with.
Balog said many families, including his own, had members who were living abroad. “But this absence of the other person shows their value. Those whom we truly miss are truly important,” he said.
As regards the effect of the pandemic on church life, Balog said the number of churchgoers had dropped due to the lockdowns. Since churches reopened people are “more conscious” of how they attend church, because it also takes courage, he said.