CHRISTMAS BRINGS OUT POTENTIAL FOR GOODNESS

Distractions of the Christmas season should be of the kinder, gentler variety: what size sweater does a child require, what dish should be taken to the neighborhood potluck, which lights no longer function? While this is the season of good cheer, weighty matters won't seem to wait. News from far and near confounds us at times, and it takes effort not to lose track of what the season is really about. We mustn't though, because the season is about what is best in all of us.

Some items don't add to the celebration. Consider:

A San Francisco lifestyle management consultant conducted a survey that showed, among other things, that the average parent spends just nine minutes on Christmas morning playing with children, and that the average person spends more than an hour each day in the last week of December bickering over holiday-related plans.

Those reveling in the season are warned against "Holiday Heart Syndrome," a condition of atrial fibrillation touched off in some people by alcohol consumption. Such a condition can cause hospitalization.

On a great many fronts, public institutions are curtailing Christmas observances for fear of legal confrontations concerning the separation of church and state. However, an organization known as the American Center for Law and Justice has been formed to educate government officials about religious discussion and activities that don't enter the realm of constitutional violation.

In response to the placement of a menorah, celebrating the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, in a public square in Cincinnati, a Ku Klux Klan group gained a city permit and erected a cross 200 feet away. The cross was splintered within hours.

A yuletide song title, of the modern variety, comes to mind: "Do They Know It's Christmas?" What does all this have to do with the meaning of a sacred day?

Our society often makes life more complicated than it needs to be. Our expectations for Christmas are confined yet altogether grand: peace on earth, good will toward men. In seven words, we sum up the miracle of a child's birth in a Bethlehem manger and the faith for which this was a founding event.

Christmas 1992 finds our nation at peace, with the only foreign involvement being one of good will. We lend our thoughts this holiday to those giving comfort in Somalia and hope their mission is safe and successful.

People entertain the notion this time each year that every day should stir in them the feeling of Christmas. Against increasing odds, we try our best. It isn't deception, just an aspiration. The Christmas we recognize, the one that endears us, involves not surveys or behavioral failings or legal disputes. Rather, it involves dozens of people dressed as Santa Claus delivering Toybox gifts to families of limited means. It involves the hundreds of individuals who donated to this cause, and many others. It involves family and friends together, it involves children and hope. It involves a sense that there is goodness to be found in others and ourselves.

Merry Christmas.