My freshly watered Christmas tree topiary is currently resting in my sink beneath my handmade apple and cranberry Christmas wreath across from my freshly baked Christmas cookies. As I plug in my Christmas lights and gaze at the gold and cream Christmas ornaments arranged in soda fountain glasses on my bookshelf, I begin to wonder what would happen if Christians decided to take the Christ out of Christmas. By this I mean that Christians stopped treating Christmas as a Christian holiday and simply viewed it as a cultural phenomenon. I’m pondering this for several reasons:
1. Christmas is not an ancient Christian holiday. The Bible never tells us to remember and celebrate Christ’s birth. Many Christmas traditions are rooted in pagan winter festivals. Christians did not celebrate Christmas until the 4th century, when the established Church declared December 25th to be Christ’s birthday. At the time of the Reformation, Protestants refused to celebrate Christmas because they considered it a Catholic holiday. Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans cancelled Christmas in England in 1645 because of the drunken and debauched celebrations. American Puritans outlawed Christmas in Boston from 1659-1681. The celebration of Christmas was not widespread in America until the 19th century.
2. American Christmas traditions have nothing to do with Jesus’ birth. There are easier ways to dwell on the incarnation than decorating trees, making cookies, and wrapping presents.
3. Viewing Christmas as a Christian holiday gives us license to embrace many traditions that aren’t necessarily biblical because the holiday is linked to Jesus. Presents, decorating, parties and the like become almost religious observances.
4. Christmas is full of many fantastical characters (Santa, Rudolph, Frosty, etc.) and we have to work extra hard to explain to children that Jesus was a real person. There are more productive ways to teach this story.
It seems that trying to remember Jesus’ birth in the midst of all these traditions is fighting a losing battle. So what if we just stopped trying? What if we treated Christmas like any other secular holiday (Thanksgiving, Independence Day, New Year’s Day, etc.)? I see the following potential benefits:
1. We use Christmas as an opportunity to show solidarity with our friends and neighbors. Christians no longer worry about the secularization of Christmas or fill their schedule with church activities and pageants. Instead we wholeheartedly embrace community holiday celebrations. We attend office parties, host neighborhood desserts, support Christmas school concerts, and go to city tree lightings and parades, all with the intention of building relationships with our community for the sake of spreading the gospel.
2. If Christmas is a secular holiday, there’s no obligation to put up a tree, buy presents, or make cookies. Instead we decide which traditions we want to embrace in light of the whole counsel of Scripture. Decorating your home and throwing parties might stem from a biblical conviction about the importance of hospitality. You may choose not to buy gifts or limit your gift giving based on the Bible’s teaching about good stewardship. You might decorate dozens of cookies with your children because of a biblical conviction about parenting. Instead of trying to push a square peg into a round hole and forcing the story of Jesus’ birth to apply to our traditions, we examine what the Bible says about each tradition and develop convictions about what we should embrace and what we should discard.
3. We use Christmas as a way to teach our children biblical principles that actually relate to our celebrations. For instance, “Mom, why are we buying presents for Grandma?” “Well Sally, buying presents is one way that we can show Grandma we love her. I’m so glad that God has blessed us with such a wonderful family. What do you think are some other ways we can show love to our families?” or “Kids, you are doing such a great job decorating this Christmas tree! Isn’t it fun to have an actual tree in our house? I’m so glad that God made different trees for us to enjoy. And doesn’t this tree smell good? I’m happy that God made so many different smells. God is so creative!”
4. We don’t view the incarnation through the rose colored glasses of Christmas. If we stop connecting Jesus’ birth with family, presents, soft lights, and cinnamon buns, we can read the story more accurately as a scary, harsh, and beautiful piece of history.
5. Pastors don’t have to devote a month of each year to the same story and can focus on the specific needs of their church.
Treating Christmas as a secular holiday does not mean that we forget about Christ’s birth. Perhaps we just choose to celebrate it in different ways. For instance:
1. We listen to and sing music about the birth of Jesus all year long at home and at church. Some of the best hymns ever written are songs about Jesus’ birth.
2. We reflect on Jesus’ birth whenever it comes up in our personal Bible study or a pastor’s sermon series.
3. If we want to focus on the incarnation during December, we refuse to link it with Christmas celebrations and treat it as something separate.
Agree? Disagree? Let me know what you think. I'm going to drink some egg nog and rock around my Christmas topiary (my apartment was really too small for a tree.)
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6 comments:
(oops, published when I should have previewed!)
Let's ask a Yeti!
Wow that's revolutionary! I've been teaching on Jesus second coming all Advent and its been a really different experience. And it has been great! We are making ornaments related to the parousia as well as some nice gifts for homebound folk which fits well with "Christmas Season." Its nice to focus on something we can really hope for, rather than retell the same story every kid knows.
I remember a few years ago when we actually had a birthday party for Jesus. I was wondering if the spirit wind would blow out the candles or if the lightning would do the job. It really seems irreverent to take the incarnation and turn it into a cheesy time of processed sugar and presents. Let's decorate a cake with a "Happy Birthday!" and between 2011 to 2013 candles. When did Christ instruct us to give each other gifts to celebrate his birthday? While we are drinking our nog, opening our Wiis, singing our carols, Christ returns and asks, "Why weren't you ready? Why were you not watching for me?" The guest of honor is forgotten as we celebrate ourselves.
The Spirit of Christ is not the spirit of christmas as most celebrate it. It is the Spirit of self sacrifice, of humbling, of God becoming flesh, it is a real reason to party.
Jenny, as usual, I couldn't agree more. I think cultural inertia is deadly, and especially so within the church. We appear to have this notion that Christmas is inherently sacred or special. That's a lie. It's not any more sacred than any other day. Jesus begins to do away with Jewish notions of sacred time and space (Jn 4 - Space; Mk 3 - Sabbath, Mk 7 - food) and Paul finishes the job (Rom 14!). Moreover, this entire age is the day of salvation, and therefore it is incredibly significant (1 Cor 6). Might I suggest yet another reason to take Christ out of Christmas (hasn't his name already been besmirched enough by the holiday?). If we let Christmas become a secular holiday, it's one less cultural war that Christians need to fight about. We don't need to freak out because some people don't celebrate Christmas and would rather celebrate the "holidays" (btw, I've always been extremely confused why Christians get so upset that people opt for celebrating "the holidays." Who cares if non-Christians don't like Christmas?). Moreover, I want to (1) care about helping people every moment of my life, (2) live my whole life as a continual celebration of the totality of Christ's ministry, (3) not be a materialist, and (4) sing Hark the Herald Angels Sing at least 12 weeks out of the year.
I could go on and on, but I think you're dead on. Let's start deconstructing the holiday, so it can become just like the 4th of July or something like that.
And to clarify, if people mean by Christmas the incarnation/birth of Jesus, I think it is sacred and precious beyond word. I was referring to our modern celebration of Christmas.
Yeah right Jeff. Try to hide behind your little qualification all you want, but I know you hate the incarnation you dirty gnostic.
Anyway, I'm not ready to say that I think you're "dead on" quite yet. I think there are a few real points to be made to be sure that are too often overlooked, probably the foremost of which is that we ought to stop getting our panties in a wad about the "happy holidays" vs. "merry Christmas" issue.
Couldn't we be throwing the baby Jesus out with the bath water on this one?
For one thing, I really don't know the history well on this at all, but could our low church upbringing be a lot of the trouble for us? If any of us celebrated Advent as a season in the church calendar I think it would be a lot more difficult to make the argument you are making. Don't get me wrong: I have plenty of problems with the high church and would have a really hard time seeing myself ever consistently attending one, but one of those problems is not the church calendar. My own church has been observing Advent this season as both a looking-back at the Incarnation and a looking-forward to the Second Coming. Honestly it has probably been the most complete, biblical way I've ever corporately (and personally?) meditated on both of these at the same time. It's been amazing. Christmas is a helpful point of reference for that.
Of course I suppose we could go ahead and celebrate the Incarnation apart from Christmas, but I'm not convinced that there are enough reasons to do so still. And speaking of corporate concerns, Christmas is one of the only times that a doctrinally/denominationally divided Church celebrates the same thing at the same time. You could go to a Methodist or Reformed Baptist church on Christmas Eve and be pretty confident that you'll see some real similarities in emphasis and celebration. I imagine your arguments could be similarly applied to Easter. Quitting on both would make it so that the only two times a year when all of us Evangelicals can actually experience that universal "uniformity on essentials" we use when we want to respond to those who say that our obvious divisions make us a bunch of individual bodies instead of one big one.
I guess I think you could probably do most of the stuff you're suggesting without actually quitting on Christmas celebration. Go ahead, sing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" year round and get rid of "Away in the Manger" and "Silent Night." So maybe you have to do some work to explain "the real meaning of Christmas" to kids - but then, how many kids grow up and honestly think that Christmas lights have much to do with Jesus? And for those that do think so, is it that hard to explain otherwise?
Challenging though Jenny. I need to think about it more. This comment was basically my only way to process my response, so pardon their being vomited.
Chanukah and Christmas are on the same day, but not on the same calendar. Chanukah is on the 25th of the Jewish Month, Kislev, and Christmas is on the 25th of the corresponding Gregorian Month. The days sometimes almost align, but because one calendar is based on the moon and the other the sun, there will always be differences. So, in essence, we are both celebrating the LIGHT coming into the world on the same day (day of conception). This is also the time when Jesus formally declares at the Temple, “the Father and I are one.” (John 10:30) With that, the Light came into the Temple as the miracle of the lamps had prophesied.
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