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OTTAWA VALLEY, ON, December, 24, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – My three daughters (ages 3, 4, and 6) love to dance to the Nutcracker musical by the great Russian composer Tchaikovsky during the Christmas season. They don their sparkling costumes and flit across the floor like pixie-dust fairies.

I filmed their beautiful dancing the other night so that I might share their joy and even elegance with family and friends. As I was capturing the precious moments of my dancing daughters, my one year-old son suddenly decided to make an unscripted grand entrance onto the scene, pushing his favorite red truck.

The contrast between “dainty dancing fairies” and “man-child motoring behind red monster-truck” couldn’t have been more stark. And a statement about the difference between the sexes couldn’t have been better orchestrated.

Prominent sociologists would have us believe that behavioral differences between boys and girls are matters of “social construct.” These are the same folks who make the distinction between “gender” and “biological sex,” saying that “gender traits” boil down to “acquired learning.” These folks promote sex-change operations for biological boys who think they are girls and for biological girls who think they are boys.

In the final analysis, these folks do not believe “men should be men” and “women should be women” because they sincerely believe that there is no basis for a genuine notion of masculinity and femininity.

But my girls dancing like fairies and my son pushing his truck into the middle of it smashes the crazy idea to smithereens. My wife Erin and I never told our girls to dress-up and dance to music. We never told our son to push a truck around. They simply do these things on their own initiative.

Erin and I find ourselves approving of our female and male children expressing their biological differences. We want our daughters to embrace the fullness of womanhood and to reject the false-feminism that would see them become like men in order to find fulfillment.

We want our boy to grow into a real man who knows who he is and where he stands. We want to affirm them in their journey of discovering their womanhood and manhood so that they might avoid a sexual identity crisis in the years to come.

But how will our children grow into becoming real men and women when the prevailing culture-of-death offers predominantly weak, sick, and totally deformed male and female role models?

I found an answer in a Christmas bible passage:

“And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great…” Luke 1:31-32.

God, in the person of Jesus Christ, came into the world as a biological male. He was conceived in and born of a perfect woman. Nothing is accidental from God’s perspective. Jesus and Mary reveal how a male is to be a man and how a female is to be a woman.

Mary, who the angel hailed as “full of grace,” was the greatest woman that ever existed and that will ever exist. She teaches women that true empowerment comes not from asserting one’s self, but by becoming a Christ-bearer to the world. Every woman, through her gifts and talents, is called to bear Christ to others. This will happen in as many different ways as there are women. Every woman will find her true self by bearing Christ to others in her own unique way.

Jesus was the greatest man that ever existed and that will ever exist. He teaches men that true greatness comes not from dominating others, but in laying down one’s life through a sincere gift of self. Every man, through his own unique gifts and talents, is called to imitate Christ’s sincere gift of self on the cross. There are as many ways to make a sincere gift of self in imitation of Christ as there are men. Every man will find his true self by making a sincere gift of himself to others.

In a culture saturated with porn-stars, prostitutes, and sexually confused people, it is Jesus and Mary who we must turn to in the journey of rediscovering our true male and female identities. In a world where increasing sexual deviancy creates new genders as a regular occurrence (doesn’t the UN recognize more than a dozen genders now?), we must turn our attention to the most real man and woman that ever existed. 

Let us meditate on Jesus and Mary as we celebrate the feast of Christmas. Let us seek to discover through their example the source for an authentic renewal of our own masculinity or femininity.

And the next time you see “girls being girls,” and “boys being boys,” don’t just take their behavior for granted. Vocally affirm the good you have perceived.

May Jesus and Mary find their way into our hearts and help us all to become the men and women God created us to be.

I wish you a most blessed Christmas!