The Christmas Season is perceived as the family season. I do not refer here to the Christmas business season that commences in September and stretches into the New Year, when gift exchanges have been put away. Nearly a third of the year receives some Christmas accent, beginning with opening inventories and increasing in crescendo to the high point day of December 25. It closes down in a week, beginning with trash burning or disposal on the 26th. The tree commonly remains through New Year’s Day. Some revelers keep it longer. We know the season is closed on the first breaking of a New Year’s Resolution.
When a poll of prostitutes was taken it was discovered that business slowed during the last week of December, especially on New Year’s Eve, when customers (tricks) were with their families. It was, for the ladies, the loneliest evening of the year, and they felt the meaning of their own lost families. We do well to take note of the Christmas meaning to the general culture, and find ways to make sure the original meaning is not lost. Much of Christmas tradition as it is practiced in America owes some cultural beginnings to the writing of Charles Dickens, and the practices of Martin Luther. So we have the tree, the exchange of gifts, the shift to merriment and family – with food, accenting sweets, color, music and children perhaps also church. It is common to find in the Biblical record of Christ’s birth some support for traditions, such as the gifts of the Magi. Those gifts arrived, not as we have them in the creche of the stable, but during the period when Joseph had temporary housing in the Bethlehem area before going into Egypt to protect the infant from the ferocity of Herod. The reality was found in poverty, in the fear of death, in disregard for a simple, devout couple not fully understanding all that was happening, but totally submissive to the plan of God.
Christmas has become a mixture of pagan and Christian traditions. We should not protest too intently on the unneeded baggage in that it is appealing to the general world, to a degree that the original meaning, the lasting meaning, the divine meaning, has been maintained in human history. No other story has quite the appeal to the general culture as does the story of the first Christmas. It rises from the life of an ordinary couple in the context of the strenuous life of human generations. It reflects on the idealism of the ordinary person, of the concern and lack of concern for others, of the sometimes ugliness of the Herods/Hitlers of the world, and the underlying implication that there will be something better later on. In the natural world, this is rather good stuff. That is to say, it has a vision in it related to better things ahead with reward for the good, and escape from the worst of the bad. Even Santa looks for good (nice, not naughty) children.
The Christian concern remains – that the theological meaning of Christmas should not be lost. It observes Christ’s birth – God with us. The world does not have much difficulty with that claim, even when it is disregarded, especially since there is so much accrued to tradition that appeals to society. The point is that here is a unique birth. There was never one like it, and never will be again. A Child is born, not generated from a human male so must be perceived as something other than human only. Here is a Child bearing two natures, human and divine. Having the nature of God, as fully as did this Child, must be God. If there is some adjustment in the Godhead to permit the visitation, mankind doesn’t know, so does not understand that context. By faith we must accept it, if we accept it at all. But accepting it, changes everything. This is holy business that requires some understanding. That change means the person of faith accepts meaning emerging later from that beginning as relates to God visitation. The Church may need to find a fresh way to announce the angel’s message of meaning in Christ. Any other meaning than God is with us, supported by the Savior declaring his purpose and fulfilling it, fails mankind and God. As attractive as Christmas traditions have become the Christian must find a way to the birth of the Savior that extends to immortal meaning. Each family ought to be open to a creativity that turns Christmas into what it ought to have been – what it ought to be. I remember well the lady in a department store in Spokane, Washington complaining to the clerk that there was: too much religiosity in Christmas. I was appalled in discovering that she did not know the origin of Christmas in the person of Jesus Christ. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020