Christmas would not strike many as a
warlike holiday. It's traditionally considered a time of peace and goodwill.
Yet, Christmas has of late come under determined attack--not because of its
religious nature, although its attackers pretend so, but for the fundamental
point of the thing.
Christmas is not on the defensive side,
however, but the offensive. It is a martial idea that insists on being taken
seriously. It isn't because Christmas is a Christian holiday that it is
objectionable, for the holidays of other religions are tolerated. It is because
at Christmas one is brought to face a real and living God, which cannot at all
times be comfortable.
Consequently, secular society is not the
only force in conflict with the idea of Christmas. While the preservation of
Christmas as a holiday is due to Christian belief and effort, ironically Christians
themselves have been among its fiercest assailants. It was Cromwell who
proscribed Christmas in Britain, and the Puritans did the same in the New
England colonies.
Then and today, Christians object to three
main things about Christmas: where Christmas came from; how it is celebrated;
and why we should even celebrate it at all. This last point is the most
important of the three. Many Christians no longer celebrate Christmas, not so
much because of the first two considerations, but because of the third: why should we
celebrate Christmas?
*
Christmas is an observance of our Lord’s
birth, an event overshadowed by his life, death, and resurrection—it is related
in any depth in only two of the four gospels. Yet, Christ’s advent is the
subject of vast portions of the Old Testament, for many of the prophecies about
him were chiefly concerned with his arrival.
The obvious reason for this lies in the
idea behind the incarnation: God not only died for mankind but God actually became
a man, putting himself in our position and fully relating to our state. The
name “Immanuel”—God with us—is important because in all religions except the
Christians’ God is an impersonal god—a being of wrath or indifference, but
never sympathy; a deity to be feared and appeased but not one in which to seek
safety; an idea to be grasped with the mind, not seen, heard, or handled.
God did not have to take the form of a man
to redeem men, or even to understand what it is like to be a man, but he chose
to visit earth as the lowest and poorest of its inhabitants. He might have come
as a king, or at least as a grown man able to defend himself, but instead he
came as an ignorant and helpless infant.
Because God came to earth in this way, he
changed forever the way we see humble things. Many things that are weak and
despised—women, children, the poor, rude stables, draught animals—bear in the
Christian mind a symbolic beauty because God associated himself with all of
them that first Christmas. British apologist G. K. Chesterton points out this
primary importance:
There is in that alone the touch of a
revolution, as of the world turned upside down. It would be vain to attempt to
say anything adequate, or anything new, about the change which this conception
of a deity born like an outcast or even an outlaw had upon the whole conception
of law and its duties to the poor and outcast. It is profoundly true to say
that after that moment there could be no slaves…Individuals became important,
in a sense in which no instruments can be important. A man could not be a means
to an end, at any rate to any other man's end. All this popular and fraternal
element in the story has been rightly attached by tradition to the episode of
the Shepherds; the hinds who found themselves talking face to face with the
princes of heaven.i.
The greatest truth of Christmas is that
God thought man was important enough to be worth his while to save—and to prove
it God became a man. Christmas is a celebration and appreciation of humanity—a
humanity fallen and sinful, but still carrying the stamp of the Creator in
whose image it was made. Christmas is a different sort of celebration from Good
Friday and Easter, although it is just as necessary. In the words of William
Muer Auld,
Christian thought and devotion occupied
exclusively with the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Cross and Passion, or with the
Glorious Mysteries of the Resurrection, can take on a character too somber, or
too sublime. At the lowly Manger, confronted with the charm and innocence of
His Childhood, faith becomes human and homely, intimate and cheerful, receiving
with child-like grace this revelation of the Father of an infinite majesty, as
He essayed to make it to the infantile souls of mankind; while passing, if not
wholly devoid of mystic vision, none the less readily through this particular
portal into the realm of Eternal Love.ii.
This is why we celebrate Christmas. At
Easter we celebrate Christ’s atonement for our sins and his victory over death
and the grave, but at Christmas we celebrate the strange fact that he not only
wanted to save us, but to be with us as well. Some think that is worth
celebrating.
*
But there are the objections to Christmas.
First, the exact date of Christ’s birth is unknown and the date on which the
Church has chosen to celebrate it has many pagan associations.
The winter solstice, like the summer
solstice, has always held great significance, religious and otherwise, to the
inhabitants of this globe—particularly those who live near the poles where the
variance of the daylight hours is more noticeable. Nearly every culture has its
own festival centring around the winter solstice, many of them related to sun
worship. Christmas was introduced by the Church in order to replace these
heathen festivals with something more orthodox. But many pagan things carried
on into Christmas as we celebrate it now: evergreen boughs, mistletoe, fir
trees, feasting, giving presents, candles, fireworks, and many other traditions
are either heavily influenced by or come directly from pagan cultures.
Is it wrong to keep these pagan
traditions? If I involuntarily associate lighting a candle with making a prayer
to the sun for its eventual return, or if hanging a bough of mistletoe recalls
to me druidical rites, perhaps I ought to dispose of these traditions. But most
of the old associations have been lost and only their Christian significance
remains. We light a candle as we remember that Jesus is the Light of the world,
or decorate a tree in celebration of the eternal life he brought to us.
Christ probably was not born on the 25th of
December. Yet this date is so significant that for hundreds of years it has
been the one on which to celebrate his arrival. It is in the depths of winter
when hope is most necessary, and thus when the fulfilment of mankind’s most
glorious hope is most naturally remembered and commemorated. All the pagan
rituals and festivals surrounding the winter solstice may have not been a
heathen worship of the sun so much as an attempt to satisfy a longing deep in
the soul of every man for the True Light. Christmas may be less a
“Christianization” of those festivals as a fulfilment of that longing.
*
But what about today? Christmas retains
little of its religious significance and is now little more than an advertising
ploy. After standing in lines at department stores, wrecking the month’s
budget, and covering their living room floor with a litter of wrapping paper,
it is not surprising that many people object to celebrating Christmas. But any
good thing may be made bad by bad people. The only control we have over the
issue is whether we will keep it good or follow others in making it bad—or a
third option, which is to simply throw it away as not worth our while.
Fifty years ago everyone knew what
Christmas was really about. Now most have only vague notions of presents,
friends and family, and Santa Claus. It has been said that Christmas will never
be done away with because it is so profitable from a commercial standpoint, but
if no other significance is found for Christmas, people will eventually stop
celebrating it. Presents are not enough to replace Christmas: you cannot
celebrate a celebratory gesture.
Therefore, those who discard Christmas are
only doing a little early what the secular culture is in a gradual process of
doing. If Christians cannot keep Christmas, certainly no one else can.
If Christmas is not worth celebrating,
then nothing is worth celebrating. If God had saved mankind without any
intention of an intimate relationship with him, then we have no greater hope
than the Moslems or the Hindus or the ancient pagan cultures that worshipped
the sun—a deity impersonal and unapproachable. Christ’s short sojourn on earth
is an earnest of our eternal future with him in heaven. Christmas is an
anticipation of the future as well as a remembrance of the past.
i. The Everlasting Man by Gilbert Keith
Chesterton, 1925
ii. Christmas Traditions by William Muir
Auld, 1931
No comments:
Post a Comment