But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

Christmas should therefore be a time to celebrate the values and ideals that all genuine religions and philosophies have in common, while setting aside theological differences as matters of private faith or lack thereof (noting that atheists also share these values and ideals). What Jesus would do is probably more or less what Rabbi Hillel, Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Gautama (Buddha) would do, so we can indeed share this aspect of Christmas with our Christian friends and neighbors.

The New Testament (John 18:38) records that Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” It does not, unfortunately, record Jesus’ answer. If it had, the world might have avoided an enormous amount of trouble during the next nineteen centuries or so. It fell to a most unlikely individual, an industrialist and mechanic who did not even complete high school, to provide it. Then again, while Jesus spoke in parables, Henry Ford wrote for the common worker as opposed to the doctoral-level philosopher or theologian.

I am now most interested in fully demonstrating that the ideas we have put into practice are capable of the largest application— that they have nothing peculiarly to do with motor cars or tractors but form something in the nature of a universal code. I am quite certain that it is the natural code and I want to demonstrate it so thoroughly that it will be accepted, not as a new idea, but as a natural code. (My Life and Work, 1922).

…when one regards the moral law as merely the law of right action or truth it becomes quite different from “trying to be good.” The universe is set in a certain direction, and when you go along with it, that is “goodness.” (My Philosophy of Industry, 1929)

The advantage of what we call moral is that it is natural; it represents the way life must go if it is to go at all. (Today and Tomorrow, 1926)

This “natural code” is what Dr. Stephen Covey’s Principle Centered Leadership calls Natural Law, and what Ford called the “Constitution of the Universe.” Theologians would argue that God created these natural laws of human behavior, while secularists might contend that they evolved through the culling out of societies and organizations that did not follow them, but everyone agrees that these inviolable laws exist. This “natural code” is doubtlessly the answer to Pilate’s question, and all genuine religions are paths to this elemental Truth. That is, while religions differ as to who or what is God or gods, they agree fundamentally about how people should treat one another. Ford reinforces this lesson as follows:

So, while the people are indeed supreme over the written Constitution, the spiritual constitution is supreme over them. The French Revolutionists wrote constitutions too—every drunken writer among them tossed off a constitution. Where are they? All vanished. Why? Because they were not in harmony with the constitution of the universe. The power of the Constitution is not dependent on any Government, but on its inherent rightness and practicability (Ford Ideals: from “Mr. Ford’s Page,” 1922).

Cultures and religions all over the world have names for the “Constitution of the Universe” and its effects. Dharma is the “Right Way” of Hindusim. Kshatriya Dharma, the Right Way of the soldier and ruler (the two occupations were often identical, as was also the case for Japan’s samurai), required a leader to care for the lowliest of his followers. The concept even provides an impartial definition of Evil. Adharma means “against Dharma,” or against the natural code of human behavior. As an example, our Constitution recognizes the natural right to life, liberty, and the ownership of property. Murder, slavery, and theft are therefore inherently evil.

Tao also means “The Way,” as does Japan’s Do (Bushi-do = Right Way of the Warrior, the analogue of Kshatriya Dharma). The Christian Gospel is the Good News, while Buddhism’s Bodi-Dharma is the Good Way or the Good Law.

It is therefore plain that non-Christians differ with Christians only over the belief that Jesus was literally the son of God. There is no practical difference whatsoever between Jesus’ teachings and those of every other legitimate religion as to how people should behave toward one another. Rabbi Hillel, upon being challenged to teach the entire Torah while standing on one foot, did so by proclaiming, “What is hateful to you, do not do to another. That is the whole of the Law; all else is commentary.” Seventy or eighty years later, Jesus told his followers, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” Different teachers, same message.

A recent letter to our local paper claimed that, eighty or so years ago, the writer’s family had received a Christmas visit from a mysterious stranger who, after consuming a huge amount of food, vanished while leaving only his hat behind. The writer expressed absolute faith that the visitor was either Jesus or Saint Joseph. The truth is that variations of this story are found in cultures throughout the world, and many of them predate Christianity. It shows that all legitimate religions, i.e. those whose purpose is to teach positive values and behavior as opposed to priming their followers for mindless violence and wars of conquest, promote hospitality toward distressed strangers.

Jesus said that, whatever one does toward the least of his followers, one does to Jesus. In other words, the Christian is to treat a distressed stranger or poor person as if he was Jesus himself. A far older Greek story, in which a pair of gods disguise themselves as poor travelers, teaches exactly the same lesson. The gods visit a family that, despite its poverty, shares the best of its food with the impoverished travelers. The gods then reveal their true identity and repay the family many times over. Hinduism features at least one story that is almost identical. The Christian legend of Saint Christopher (Christ-Bearer) describes how a strong man helps a distressed traveler (who is Jesus in disguise) cross a river by carrying him on his back. The Greek hero Jason similarly helped someone he thought was an old woman cross a river, only to discover afterward that she was the goddess Hera. The similarities between these stories and teachings are far from coincidental, because every legitimate religion is based on Natural Law or the “Constitution of the Universe.”

The New Testament’s warning against materialism parallels Buddhist teachings about “attachments to material wealth,” and people do indeed get into trouble–like overwhelming credit card debt–when they become slaves to materialism. One of Aesop’s fables features a miser who buried a huge ingot of gold in his yard, and then visited the mound every day. A thief noticed this, dug up the mound, and stole the gold. A passer-by, upon seeing the miser’s distress, urged him to bury a stone in the gold’s place–because a stone would do him just as much good as the idle gold. Ebenezer Scrooge’s real problem was not that he was rich, but that his obsession with wealth made his wealth useless to himself as well as to others. This does not mean that we should take vows of poverty and give away our money, but rather that we serve ourselves best by serving others. Money that is invested in domestic manufacturing firms, for example, creates high-wage jobs for working people while delivering profits to the investors. Henry Ford’s industries lifted millions of people into the middle class without a dime of charity.

In conclusion, the common behavioral framework of every single legitimate religion on earth reinforces and affirms all religions. Christmas is therefore not a time for politically-correct “Bah humbug” objections to our country’s primarily-Christian heritage, but rather a time to emulate Tiny Tim by proclaiming, “God bless us, every one.”