Be Christ For Christmas

About a year ago I published this for the In Port News. Since I'm starting to see the "Keep Christ In Christmas" silliness starting again, I thought it was worth repeating:



Another year has gone by and once again we’re just a few weeks away from Christmas. The signs are all around us. Christmas music and decorations in the malls, and we actually put our Christmas tree up much earlier than usual because our daughter wanted to. That was a good enough reason. There’s one other sign of the season that I’ve come to expect – once again we’re hearing the plea to “Keep Christ in Christmas.” Maybe it’s time to let that go.

Of course I understand the sentiment. Christ is central to my life and to my faith. Without Christ, my faith would be nothing and Christmas would be nothing, but I still think we need to move on. The reality of our world is that there are two separate and distinct Christmas celebrations. There’s the Christian Christmas which celebrates as it should the birth of Jesus, who came to us as God in the Flesh, who throughout his life revealed God’s ways and God’s will to us, and who ultimately lived and died and was resurrected for the world – part of the ministry of reconciliation he undertook, as throughout his life (from the manger to the cross to the empty tomb) “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.” As Christians, we celebrate this amazing display of divine love for us all, and we proclaim the love of God revealed by Christ, and we invite others to share in our celebration of it. That’s what Christmas is all about from a Christian perspective. That’s what we Christians celebrate; that’s what we should never forget.

But whether we like it or not, there’s another Christmas. There’s the secular Christmas. The secular Christmas doesn’t revolve around Christ. It revolves around the image of Santa Claus and is marked by an orgy of consumer-spending and gift-giving. And – in all honesty – it’s fun. If sometimes the world gets a bit silly with “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas,” I don’t really care. I’ll happily say “Merry Christmas” and leave it to others to decide what sort of greeting they want to offer. I’m not sure I get the angst felt by so many Christians about whether Wal-Mart greeters say “Merry Christmas” or whether a school has a “Winter celebration” rather than a Christmas pageant. It really isn’t the job of the world to keep Christ in Christmas, you know. That’s the church’s job. That’s our job as Christians. The whole “Keep Christ in Christmas” movement seems to me to be based largely on nostalgia for bygone days when Christian faith was the centre of everything. Those days are over. The church and the faith are increasingly on the periphery of society. Rather than lamenting the loss of past glory, as Christians we need to seize the present – even with all its challenges – and figure out how to move forward. The wistful lament “Keep Christ in Christmas” really doesn’t do that.

So – I have a challenge for Christians. To give credit where credit is due I actually saw this on one of those wall photos that are become so popular on Facebook! It was good advice. It suggested that rather than worry about keeping Christ in Christmas, we actually seek to be Christ this Christmas. That is our faith, after all – as Christians, we are “little Christs,” given both the privilege and responsibility of representing Christ to the world. Lamenting whether there’s enough emphasis on Jesus at Christmas doesn’t strike me as a particularly effective way of doing that. To be honest, I doubt that Jesus is particularly concerned with how or even whether we mark his birth. I think he’s much more interested in how we live and in how we love.

So – don’t worry about keeping Christ in Christmas. Strive to be Christ for Christmas. Find a place in the community to volunteer, find a neighbor who has a need you can meet, find a charity you can offer some support to. Spend time with someone who’s lonely. Care for and support the poor and the outcast and the oppressed. This was the life of Jesus, after all, who told us that the greatest commandments were to love God and to love our neighbours. At the very least, go to church – not just on Christmas Eve, but regularly, to be inspired to live this life of love God calls us to.

Be Christ this Christmas – and have a merry one! God bless!