While driving through Clearwater during our most wonderful trip to Florida, I happed upon a sign posted at a large Presbyterian Church. It said simply, "Christmas IS Christ." I was at least a little while distracted from the birds and the flowers and the most un-Chicago-like temperatures.
Christmas IS Christ? Does that mean, the celebration as we know it today?
Are they saying that what we celebrate every year is truly a Jesus event?
Christmas IS Christ? Is that supposed to be a historic statement? Was the
holiday meant from the beginning to honor the Lord and remember His birth?
As more Florida miles got away from me, I began thinking, if there had been
no incarnation, would there have been a winter celebration anyway?
I wasn't too happy with any of my responses to my questions.
Yes, Christ is honored by some, but those folks honor Him all year. No, much
of what goes on in the season has to do with greed and paganism. Yes, the
winter holiday itself goes back way before Jesus came, and honors the birth of
the sun. It has a life of its own. Rome baptized the festivities when it
declared it would celebrate the Christ-Mass at a time that coincided with the
pagan celebration. Take Christ out of it, as many do, and it continues
merrily on its way. Ho-ho-ho.
There is of course no command to celebrate any event in Jesus' life except
His death (Lord's Supper) and burial (baptism) and resurrection (by our daily
fellowship with the risen Lord.) I guess there is no explicit prohibition from
other celebrations, but when they start looking like the world, we need to flee
from them as from anything else Babylonian. Or at least not call them
"Christian".
It's over for a year. But damage is done in so many lives. I, as a
counselor, talk to students whose parents, I'm sure many of them believers,
obviously went into great debt to buy them the things that their peers were
getting. The pressure is so incredible. And it trains and feeds a greedy
spirit.
It's over. But is the church richer? Every year, for a month, the
church is stuck on a handful of songs that teach only one thing about Jesus.
The Biblical texts and sermons, ditto. Then there's the cancellation of truly
profitable church ministries as they are replaced by parties and food. These
things ought not to be, in my opinion.
Let the world celebrate and go into debt and be gluttonous and drunken.
Don't we have more than they? Has Christ ordained this strange time of year? Is
Christ truly "Christmas" ?
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