BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

The top headlines in some American newspapers on Christmas Eve:
“Bombings in Syria Cast Doubt on Ability of Arab Monitors to Stem Violence”
“Wave of Street Robberies”
“DC Air Jordan Frenzy Leads to Arrests”
“Payroll Tax Fight Leaves Hill Republicans Divided and Angry”
“Clash Over Regional Power Spurs Iraq’s Sectarian Rift”
“Justice Department Cites Race in Halting Law over Voter ID”
“Protesters Flood Moscow Streets”

Those headlines reflect only one of many worlds in which we live.

While negative news permeated the media, people all over the country, young and old, toured neighborhoods gazing at homes decorated with lights, wreaths, and plastic reindeer, or listened to Christmas carols on radios, in churches and schools and shopping malls. Normally sedate people were adorned in Santa hats, Christmas ties, red and green clothes, with smiles directed at complete strangers.

Thousands of people went to K-Mart and Walmart stores and paid off the layaway plans of hard-pressed parents buying Christmas gifts for their children.

Communities in Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Georgia and other states finished building homes for returning veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, some so badly wounded they needed specially-engineered features in their homes.

Friends and neighbors of returning soldiers helped them surprise their children just before Christmas and some were surprised themselves by cheering crowds, band concerts and parties.

A group of Jewish youth in Pittsfield, MA, donated toys, clothes and other gifts to the Christian Center for its holiday bazaar. An ex-con in Chicago raised money and rebuilt the roof on a house owned by an elderly invalid.

The Christmas spirit was well stoked and burning brightly, for good reason.

Christmas is the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Some grinches hold that against the holiday, but it is also the celebration of the human spirit that lies at the heart of many religions and religious beliefs, including the religion of the doubters and naysayers.

The spirit is universal. It blurs the differences that both distinguish us and sometimes separate us from one another. And it sharpens our focus on the universal values of love, generosity, humility, forgiveness, and tolerance.

For a time at Christmas, we become different people. Our core does not change, but the benevolence, the emotions, the goodness that we tend to suppress at other times of the year, exercise greater influence over our behavior at this time of year. We’re nicer.

But it is after Christmas now and while the lights may stay up well into the Epiphany, with each passing hour and day and week and month, the human spirit that defines Christmas will dissipate. Media sensationalism, political brinkmanship, commercial opportunism, individual avarice, and a whole collection of other survival instincts will eventually subdue, and in some snuff out, the spirit of the holidays. By February, those headlines may once again be the only descriptions that distinguish us as a society.

Why?  Doesn’t everybody want the Christmas spirit alive for a lot longer. Probably not. Most of us too easily and too willingly return like lemmings to our self-love, self-protective, self-emulating natures, striving to achieve success, when we’re never sure of what success is, and striving to survive when survival itself, while a primal instinct, is not much of an existence.

Some enterprising entrepreneur should find a way to package the Christmas spirit and make it profitable. Profit always tends to perpetuate behavior.

If the mercantilists can design and market an athletic shoe that drives people to tear down the doors of, and stampede each other through, an Indianapolis shopping mall, maybe they can create that kind of fervor, absent the violence, for humane behavior.

The other option is for all of us to set up a simple tickler file in which we put a reminder to ourselves to defibrillate our Christmas spirit  every now and then and engage in an act of kindness, or temper our tempers or forgive a transgressor, or give someone the benefit of the doubt, or just tell someone we love them. We do that and we’ll all have a happier new year.

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.