Are we missing out on the heart of Christmas?

Tommy lost the key component to his $75 space race set two hours after he opened the box. The catalog says it will cost another $30 to replace it (that figures).

Later that afternoon, Julie's doll stopped wetting her pants. That was a bit aggravating as you shelled out an extra $20 to ensure that "Little Baby Wet" would.

Your new home computer is insisting that 2 + 2 = 5. Maybe it's just the "new math," but it sure doesn't sound right to you.

And when you stepped on the bathroom scale, you started to wonder if you perhaps ate the entire 24-pound turkey all by yourself. Then you remembered that you did, in fact, eat half a cherry pie last night.

And to top things off, as your in-laws pulled out of the driveway to head back to Peoria, your mother-in-law commented that you were acting rather petty the entire weekend and your spouse's cousin backed his car into the picket fence you'd just got fixed from last Christmas.

We'll, you've survived another merry Christmas. You guess it wasn't all that bad. At least everyone is still speaking to each other (that's if you decide to speak to your mother-in-law again - imagine, petty!).

But somehow, there ought to be more -

I think a lot of us end Christmas with the unsettling feeling that we've missed something. Well, perhaps we have.

Maybe what we've missed is each other. It is awfully easy to get caught up in "doing" and miss the part of Christmas that is relating. Buying, decorating, cooking, cleaning, eating - all are doing. They don't necessarily have anything to do with interacting with people. We can even give gifts solely out of obligation (sometimes resenting it in the process), which is just another doing.

After a few frantic weeks of such doing, our relationships with friends and family are often in worse shape than before the holidays. Sure seems like a silly way to celebrate.

It's rather an ironic way, too. Whether we buy into the faith significance of Christmas or not, we can all agree that the person whose birth we are celebrating taught relating rather than doing.

When Jesus tried to sum up the central thrust of his message, he talked in terms of relating: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind - Love your neighbor as yourself." ("The Gospel According to Matthew," 22:37-39, Good News Bible).

A lot of people Jesus talked to were mainly into doing: they didn't always catch his meaning. It seems to me, though, that he was simply teaching about our need to relate in love. He says such relating as central to our lives.

Perhaps there is something to learn from all that. Is it possible that the sense of incompleteness, of having missed something that many of us feel after Christmas is due to our having lost sight of the central meaning of what we are doing?

Sometimes I think there is a part of us that knows relating in love (as Jesus taught) is not only at the center of a meaningful Christmas, but a meaningful life as well. When we go through the holidays doing rather than relating, this inner sense of ours cries out in disappointment: "Something is wrong here!"

Often by the time we hear that inner voice, though (often after our holiday is over), it seems too late to do anything about it.

Well, maybe it isn't. Let me suggest two things we can do to help us begin right now to work on relating rather than doing.

First, remember that just because the holiday is almost over for another year doesn't mean our need for relating is over as well. We may be less aware of it, but it is still there.

Let's take a piece of paper and jot down for ourselves some of the ways we would have liked to better relate to people during the holidays. For example, we might write "Take a walk with my spouse," or "Read a story to my niece," or "Call my best friend in New York".

You know, there is nothing stopping us from trying out some of these ideas now. Why not use our Christmas awareness to motivate us to make some post-Christmas changes in how we relate to others. Let's take our lists and choose one or two things to try in the coming weeks.

A second idea: don't throw the list away. Let's put it in an envelope, mark it "Open Before Christmas," and other Christmas paraphernalia. In about 50 weeks we'll be unpacking those boxes again. Our note can be a helpful reminder of how we might make our next Christmas more fulfilling.

The "meaning of Christmas" is not an ideal relegated to a few short weeks near the end of each year. Relating in love is a need that permeates our lives each day of each week of each year. We can recognize that need and begin to make some changes in our lives. On the other hand, we can also ignore our inner sense and go on frantically doing at the expense of relating.

Something is missing. We've been told where to look for it. Let's begin today to find in our relationships with others the love that is at the center of the Christmas message, a message that has meaning everyday of the year.

• The Rev. Ken Potts is a pastoral counselor and marriage and family therapist with Samaritan Interfaith Counseling Centers, Naperville and Downers Grove.