The True Meaning of Christmas

Is there one anymore? Or have we just dwindled it down to a few basic options:

- Another reason to create elaborate productions at church to deliver the Gospel message
- A former religious holiday that now holds more to tradition and celebration than meaning
- Neither of the above...its all gone commercial
- A mix of all of the above?

We're going through another age of enlightenment, where we have information about how the origins of Christmas began. We know that at some point the church created a Christian holiday to be held at the same time as celebrations for the winter solstice. We know that traditional "Christmas" items like the Christmas Tree and Yule Log have their origins in the same non-Christian rituals. And there's even talk that the whole idea of celebrating Christmas the way we know it today didn't really catch on until Charles Dickins wrote some of his more famous works.

But regardless of how it came to be, here in 2007 Christmas is part of our yearly landscape. So what does it mean for us now? Every year Christmas is time where everyone decides that they should open their hearts to those less fortunate for ONE month of the year...that at Christmas time, for some ethereal magical reason, everyone becomes nicer, kinder, gentler (although you could argue that if you venture to the malls in the weeks before Christmas)...and then afterwards revert back to being self-centered, selfish, mean folks...like they've done their good deed for the year.

But what about the spiritual side of Christmas? What about celebrating Jesus' birth? What about giving our Lord and Savior the proper worship he deserves? Well...here's the thing...

Jesus didn't really want anybody to celebrate his birth. He didn't have a huge birthday bash, he didn't have a huge tree with piles of presents...he was born in a barn, and the only people that came were some shepherds and the animals in the barn (the wise men might not have shown up until Jesus was a bit older, unlike what most of the Christmas stories suggest). Christmas was created for social-political reasons, not for truly spiritual reverie.

Christmas was not created for Jesus, it was created for us.

Does that mean we shouldn't celebrate it? Of course not. Christmas though, more than ever, needs to be a celebration that is individual to you and your family. It's a time of celebration...and we as a race need that...we need times where we come together to celebrate. But is Jesus really the reason for the season? No. Jesus should be the reason for every month of our year. We don't just let Jesus in at Easter and Christmas, and the rest of the year we're too busy to help those less fortunate, or to volunteer our time and skills for charity, or to research and explore our faith.

Christmas should be a reminder, for us as Christians, that we ARE Christians...and to evaluate how we lived out our faith in the past year. It should be a jump start for the next year for us. Yet sadly, for many its a blip on the radar.

I hope that this season is meaningful to you in many ways.

CC