Christmas 101
Why Exactly Do Christians Celebrate December 25?
It is not so obvious a question. As I peruse my daily dose of social media, I see pictures of elves popping out of cookie jars and peeking around flat screen televisions; I see families ringing bells in front of red kettles; I see advertisements for luxury cars tailored with giant, red bows.
I look outside and see that our neighbors have unloaded their usual blow-up decorations on their lawn…Star Wars characters. This year they have added Jabba the Hutt. The doctor and his wife will sit inside their dark house watching the steady stream of cars drive by their home after dark. Their address has made it onto the city’s map of best Christmas lights.
Even inside my own home, our Christmas tree is up before Thanksgiving, and I am frantically shopping the three dollar section at Target in preparation for December 1: D-Day for those of us who do advent calendars filled with gifts and activities to last the entire month. Last week I tried to hide the calendar at the bottom of the Christmas storage box, but my youngest daughter tenaciously searched the house until she found it, unwilling to give up this particular tradition.
I know from teaching young adults that the meaning of Christmas is largely lost. Ironically, discussion surrounding the origin of Christmas traditions is not: Starbucks’ ethereal “holiday” cups; the local principal who banned the display of anything remotely Christmas, even the colors red and green; the evangelical who suddenly discovers traditional Christmas celebrations contain syncretized Pagan and Roman beliefs and decides she must follow the Puritan tradition of not celebrating anything at all.
Also, let us not forget that if one chooses to celebrate Christmas, one is obliged to continually and publicly recognize all of the other faith and nonfaith traditions which may or may not have corresponding days of celebration in December. Why is December 25 a federal holiday, non-celebrants argue? Isn’t the Christmas holiday the ultimate example of an unnecessary and unconstitutional co-mingling of church and state? Consequently, Christians must acknowledge the holiday in shame, visibly repentant for receiving such favoritism.
And, we have not yet discussed Santa, the fat-jolly-Russian-saint-elf-grandpa figure of our dreams, who comes to us in the night and gives us exactly what we want, namely stuff. Lest we begin to doubt that this is too good to be true, we have Elf, Santa Clause, Miracle on 34th Street, Polar Express, and a whole host of other movies to remind us that the SPIRIT of the season is S-A-N-T-A, the gift-giving, dream-maker who only appears once a year. How sad, when you actually think about it. Once a year? Where is Santa the other 364 days?
Before you begin to think that I am the Grinch incarnate, please wait. I am about to explain to you what Christians actually believe about Christmas, and you will not be disappointed.
Christmas is about the One, True God who created the universe and came to you in a physical, earthly form in order to be with you, live like you, and, ultimately, die for you, so that you can live with Him forever.
That sounds like mumbo jumbo, Catholic crap, and totally unscientific, crazy talk. (See? I know what you are thinking. You are deciding any or all of the following: Wouldn’t it be easier to believe in nirvana…a grand nothingness or oneness? Why the M-A-N upstairs coming downstairs routine? Why Zeus instead of Athena, Horus instead of Isis? Why can’t we just try to make the world a better place while we are here, since we are all part of the circle of life? Weren’t you listening to Frozen II? Ultimately everything in nature is connected, and it is up to us save the planet from ourselves.)
These are all very powerful arguments, so, let me break my statement down:
Christmas is about the One, True God, who created the universe.
Christians believe that there is only one God, the God who revealed himself over time to the Jewish people and, later, through the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, to the entire world. The Christian God is all powerful, eternal, always the same, and loving. The Christian God cannot, by definition, be a god who is a part of the universe or creation, nor can the Christian God be the same god as another religion if that religion denies that Jesus was the earthly manifestation of God, God himself in physical form.
Christmas is about God coming to reside on Earth as a human.
God, as Creator, is the ultimate scientist and historian. He created not only the universe and all that is in it, He created a history, a human story documenting his relationship with humanity, so that the world could eventually understand what God’s purposes were in creating us and in His coming to earth as a baby.
Have you ever thought about the fact that the Bible is God’s history with only ONE family of people? If God loved the whole world, why is the Bible about a chosen people, called Israel?
Read the Bible again! Throughout you will find God calling and using what the Jews called “immigrants” and “foreigners” to accomplish His purposes in both Israel and the world. From the prostitute Rahab to the immigrant Ruth, foreign-born women and men participated in the lineage of Jesus to demonstrate to us, as well as to the Jewish people, that there is One, True God over ALL creation.
We don’t have a clear record of what God was doing to reveal himself to the ancient Chinese, Indians, Mexicans or sub-Saharan Africans, but if the Old Testament is any indication, He was preparing them to see His plan for them in the personhood of Jesus.
The reason God chose the nation of Israel into which Jesus would be born was because a man named Abraham chose to believe what others called mumbo jumbo and followed a voice who revealed himself to Abraham as the one, true God. Abraham’s descendants, the nation of Israel, became the human family out of which a very human descendant named Jesus would be born.
Christmas is about God residing with us in order to save us.
The Enlightenment did much to destroy the commonality of human experience across the globe. What the Enlightenment-era Europeans divided, sub-classified, and categorized as encyclopedia entries, previous millennia of scientists, philosophers, astronomers, artists, and parents around the world called God/gods/Spirit/spirits. (For those who like an academic challenge, read Michel Foucault.)
The commonality binding all spiritual and religious beliefs prior to the arrival of Jesus was the nature and necessity of sacrifice: offering one’s crops, herds, money, or flesh through figurative or literal burning, in order to rectify one’s relationship with the spiritual realm and receive continued material blessing or reprieve from punishment for disobeying the moral dictates of one’s culture. There was no other way. Mesopotamians offered food, Greeks killed a bull, the Chinese burned incense, and the Mayans gave blood. Evidence suggests that many of the earliest civilizations offered the lives of humans.
The One, True God also required sacrifices of Abraham’s descendants. Blood sacrifices of birds and lambs and offerings of food mitigated one’s own personal failure to uphold the Ten Commandments and other laws revealed by God to Abraham’s descendant, Moses, as well as continued the blessings of God to the physical nation of Israel.
What Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection meant, and what many at the time could not understand, was that no person ever again would need to offer a sacrifice to God in order to receive God’s blessing or forgiveness.
Jesus did that. For all of us. Once and for all. His birth and life as a human meant that he fully entered into our physical and psychological existence. His nature, as God, meant that his unjust death at the age of thirty-three on a cross would pay the spiritual price for all human sin for all time.
Christmas means we can live forever with God.
The teachings that Jesus gave to the world during the years he was alive are recorded in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and further explained in the letters of Paul. Gospel means “good news.” The good news is that Jesus came to be the one sacrifice that can absolutely and permanently wipe away our stain of sin. What is our sin? It is the sin of wanting to live as rebellious creations of the Creator, independent and apart from Him.
Those who believe that Jesus was an acceptable sacrifice to God can live a life of worship and thankfulness, knowing that God’s purposes for humanity are finished. As Christians, “Christ-Followers,” we can walk in our unique callings on earth as members of God’s family, a family with no national or ethnic borders.
In the aftermath of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection (signaling that his sacrifice was acceptable to God), we now have access to the same power that enabled Jesus to live a blameless life. We can live our lives with the presence and aid of the Holy Spirit, who guided Jesus on earth and resides with us today. The Holy Spirit, then, along with the Father and Son, makes up the third part of the Christian Trinity.
I acknowledge that some reading this (if you made it to the end) will consider the above foolishness. Certainly, many influential and knowledgeable leaders in Greco-Roman society did.
I also acknowledge that others of you will scoff at the good news, wanting it to be “harder” for an evangelical Christian to obtain eternal life. (Simply believe that Jesus is God and trust Him to help you obey Him?) Certainly, many in Jesus’ time considered his message too simple. They stumbled over the lack of religiosity and legalism found in it.
But, I caution if you find yourself in either of these two camps. Why do you suppose that the very first persons to hear of Jesus’ birth, receive the knowledge of who he actually was, and see this “gospel” given in a dramatic, heavenly display were the very lowest in society?
They were shepherds, living outside the city of Bethlehem, on a hill. They were to us, the least developed nation, the poorest refugee or immigrant, the single mother on food stamps, or the homeless veteran living at a shelter.
They were us.
Yet, they believed and, like Abraham, followed the angelic voices to a manger. In obeying, they were the first to see God in human form.
Will we, like them, follow God’s voice? Or, will we deliberately ignore, detract, debate, or determine that what Christmas actually is, should not be?
