What Christmas means to me

I was asked to speak on the subject of what Christmas means to me personally, and this title invites me to describe my own history with Christmas – or in my case, my own history without Christmas. You see, I grew up without Christmas – without religious holidays of any kind – without birthdays, without church, without a lot of the social customs that are part of Christmas now. The day was not very special, though we would usually go to my grandparents’ house, but we did that every week. Grandma would usually give us a small present, and aunt Maxine often would, too, but we would have nothing to give in return. Christmas was always a puzzling holiday, a day that we avoided as well as a day that we acknowledged. It was the day we didn’t do.

In elementary school, each classroom had a gift exchange, in which we picked numbers out of a hat to see which student we would give a gift to. I remember having to ask the teacher to be excused from that – I don’t remember whether I went to the party or not, so it must not have been too traumatic. I think I participated in the exchange in a later year, but it didn’t make much of an impression on me.

So when I came into the church, and the church said we shouldn’t do Christmas, that was OK with me, although I thought that they were sometimes a bit too vigorous in avoiding Christmas stuff. Later, as the church was changing its doctrines, I helped write the explanation of why it’s OK to participate in Christmas customs. We are not indulging in paganism if we transform a pagan holiday into one that honors Christ. We are not worshipping idols unless we are actually worshipping idols – we don’t need to have superstitions about the date on the calendar.

So now we do Christmas, and in some ways it’s quite good. Christmas is a much better time to visit our family – the kids are out of school anyway, and the weather in New Zealand is much better. But in doing Christmas, sometimes I feel like a stranger in an alien country. I never know what is expected of me, of what I am supposed to do. I feel like people might expect me to do certain things, and I don’t know what they are. I’ve heard that in some countries, you might insult your host if you reach for something with your left hand, or if you expose the sole of your foot, or if you don’t ask for more food, or some other strange custom. Sometimes I feel that way with Christmas – this is an alien culture, and I don’t know whether I am going to accidentally offend someone by something I do or don’t do.

But Christmas is supposed to be more than that, isn’t it? It’s supposed to be about the birth of Jesus, about how God loved the world so much that he sent his Son into the world, to become a human like us, all for the purpose of dying for our sins so we would enjoy fellowship with God forever. Christmas is supposed to be about the greatest gift of all, Jesus, from the greatest giver, God, to the most needy people in the world – that’s us.

But it seems that in modern society, Christmas is being turned back into a pagan holiday – this time to the god of money. Christmas is big business, heavily commercialized. People are thinking too much about “What should I give Suzy, and what should I give Charles, when both of them already have too much stuff?” And movies about Christmas extol the virtue of giving gifts and being generous, and generally leave Jesus out of the picture. Jesus is a bit too religious for the American public, it seems. People can keep Jesus in Christmas if they want, of course, but we wouldn’t want to show that on TV or anything, because that might offend somebody who doesn’t believe in Jesus. Let them keep Christmas without Jesus if they want to, because Christmas is really about gift-giving, and not about Jesus, at least that’s the way it is in the world of commerce, in the temple of the treasury.

And everybody says, Yea, that’s right, Jesus is the reason for the season, and they continue worrying about what sort of gift they ought to give Suzy and Charles. Maybe it ought to be a nativity set, or maybe the card ought to have something religious on it instead of some phrase about sleigh bells in the snow. But they are still worried about the gift, and not much about Jesus. It’s much easier to give Suzy a new sweater than it is to give her the gospel. And people generally give more to Suzy than they do to Jesus – we go to the birthday party and give gifts to everyone but the person having the birthday. So that’s something to think about when we give an offering a bit later.

Well, there are some of my thoughts about Christmas – maybe not politically correct, whether in the church or out. But if what I say bothers you, just remember that I’m an alien in this culture and I might accidentally say something that isn’t polite. So forgive me, and maybe I’ll eventually learn what I’m supposed to do.

Well, I did want to say a few things about the birth of Jesus, because that’s what Christmas is supposed to be about. Jesus was not just some ordinary baby born in a stable and laid in a manger. Jesus was the Son of God, and the marvel of Christmas is that God choose such humble circumstances for the birth of his son. The Savior of all humanity was born not in the place where babies are usually born, but born with the animals. You see, he was also an alien coming to a foreign culture, and in time, he said a few things that offended people, and so the crowds demanded that he die, and he died to save them. He died to save all of us, out of the culture of selfishness, and into the culture of helping others. He died so that we could be rescued from the world of materialism, into a culture that thinks more about spiritual things that last forever.

The birth of Jesus also tells us something about what’s important in life. It’s not about power and wealth and status. You know, Muslims and Jews have a God who is the Creator, who has all the power of the universe, all the majesty and glory imaginable. We have that God, too, but we also have a God who became a baby in a manger, a God who can sympathize with our weakness because he shared in it. We have a God of love and compassion, gentleness and mercy. The lesson here is that simple power is not worthy of worship. It’s only when that power is used in a good way, that it is worthy of worship. It’s only when that power is used to help others – now that is truly worthy of worship and imitation.

If you have a God whose chief characteristic is power, a God whose strength is shown in the ability to force other people to do what he wants, then it should be no surprise if some of his followers try to force everyone else to do what they want. If God is a tyrant, it should be no surprise if some of his followers are little tyrants.

Unfortunately, some Christians think that God is a tyrant, and that true greatness is being a little tyrant. But the birth of Jesus shows them that God has another side, that true greatness consists not in throwing your weight around, but in humility and service to others. God is worthy of worship because he is love and compassion, and those are the spiritual values that we should be growing in. Jesus came as a baby, and died as a victim, to rescue us from the culture of power, to show us that there is another way.

There is a saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I think we can modify that a little bit to say that imitation is the sincerest form of worship. We honor God when we become like he is. We honor God when we are like Jesus, in being willing to give up some of our own comforts and willing to enter an alien culture. We honor Christ when we become more like he is, with humility and compassion, when we trust in God rather than fighting for our own greatness. We honor Christ when we serve other people, and this Christmas, we can give Jesus a great gift if we give him ourselves in service to him, and we serve him when we serve other people. That’s what he would do if he were here.

Jesus taught his disciples, Gentile rulers seek power and self-importance, but it should not be that way among you, because true greatness consists of serving other people.

The disciples didn’t learn that lesson very well, and Christians today still have a problem with it, too. We all struggle with it, because none of us is like Jesus in all the ways that we should be. None of us has all the fruit of the Holy Spirit; none of us have been transformed fully into the likeness of Christ, at least not yet. But we are on the way. It starts with humility, with being a baby in a manger.