How to Embrace the True Meaning of Christmas
Since the early centuries of Christianity, the church has embraced Christmas as a season to celebrate Jesus’s coming. Thanks to the historical intertwining of church and state, Advent and Christmas have played a crucial role in the social fabric of Europe and the Americas. Christmas not only drives the social imagination—it also sustains the economy. Western society can’t seem to live without Christmas. This fact both thrills and annoys many Christians.
As secularism continues to grow, however, Christmas increasingly loses its Christian character. What should the church do with Christmas as our society loses touch with our faith? Should the church wage war against society in order to enforce a more pious remembrance? I think not. But perhaps a better question to ask is this: what would it look like for Christians to embrace the true meaning of Christmas?
One misguided option is to lean more heavily into the secularity of our world. Sadly, this has already become a reality in much of North American Christianity. Being a Christian today has often been reduced to being a relatively good person. The presence and action of God is often immaterial to the lives of many church-goers and self-proclaimed Christians. Their view of Christmas epitomizes this perspective.
One might refer to this as a “Hallmark-channel version” of discipleship. The Hallmark channel is not to blame for ruining the Christmas story, but its depictions are a clear symptom of the bigger problem. Modern life for many Americans, including most North American Christians, has become one in which God does not act in any meaningful way beyond as a fairy godmother or guardian angel. For many people, God’s main purpose is to be a happiness-producing vending machine on high.
Samantha DiPippo, Vice President for Programming at the Hallmark Channel, admitted in a recent interview with the Washington Post that her channel produces content that is out of touch with reality. She noted, however, that what people want is a happy ending, gift-wrapped in a beautiful bow. She said, “People want to live in that Hallmark Christmas bubble.”
It might be tempting to laugh at the plot lines of most Christmas movies, but this thinking has flooded the minds of many Christians. They have relegated God into that same bubble of gift-wrapped fuzzy feelings. This turns the Christian Christmas story into something unrecognizable when compared with the gospel depictions of Jesus.
A second misguided approach would be to adopt an elitist or grumpy stance toward the misappropriation of Christmas. Finger-wagging has apparently not gone out of style in some church circles. Some don’t even acknowledge Christmas. Or if they do, it’s only to scoff at the “misguided ignorance” of those who think Jesus was actually born on December 25.
I call this the “Ebenezer Scrooge” mentality. It is typified by a belief that the world has been overtaken by soft, decadent, lazy people who don’t know the value of hard work and strong morals. This mindset proclaims that life is hard and we should all be miserable. The current regime in Russia exemplifies this behavior with their recent decision to brand Santa Claus as a “foreign agent” and ban him for his role in a plot to “undermine traditional Christmas values.”
How might Christians embrace a healthy stance toward Christmas? Can the church in North America navigate its way between unhealthy extremes?
In the season of Advent, we recall the incarnation of Jesus. The fact of Jesus’s coming is not an oddity to be admired. It exemplifies how God works in our world. And it models how the church is to relate to the world around us.
The most important stance for the church is to embrace its role as an incarnational community. Christians are to embody the love, mercy and kindness of God. And they are to do so, not by seeking goodies from God. And not by huddling with fear and anger in their church buildings.
As Christ-followers, we are to live in the world around us. We are to be a flesh-and-blood presence of God and God’s people in our neighborhoods, workplaces, schools and communities. This is the call of God in the Christmas season: we are not to be overly drawn into the world’s secularism, nor to be detached from the world around us.
Rather, we are to enter into the world for the sake of representing the real presence and action of God. This is what Jesus did when he came as a child born in Bethlehem. Christmas reminds us that Jesus has come and that he will come again.
In the meantime, the church is to represent the Coming One by living out the incarnation as best we can. That’s how we can embrace the true nature of Christmas.
