The War on Christmas

With only five days left until Christmas, it's time once again for us Christians to stand up and say what Christmas is all about: the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as man. All the other peripherals surrounding this holiday - from the carols to the presents to the pageants to the decorations - can serve to highlight and celebrate Christ's birthday, or they can take on a meaning of their own, devoid of any religious significance. For example, the tradition of gift-giving on Christmas recalls the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh given by the magi to Jesus, and this tradition can also connect very well with the message of "goodwill toward men" that the angels proclaimed and the unconditional love that Christ calls us to show to others. The tradition of a Christmas tree can remind us that, like the evergreen tree, God is always living; and the lights of the tree (representing Christ as the light of the world) and the angel or star toppers (from the Nativity story) can also lead us back to the heart of the Christmas celebration.

Unfortunately, there are those out there who want to separate the religious from the secular to such an extreme that they advocate taking Christ out of Christmas. Earlier this week, the Louisville Courier-Journal published an OpEd titled "Christmas should be more commercial." The conclusion: "America's tragedy is that its intellectual leaders have typically tried to replace happiness with guilt by insisting that the spiritual meaning of Christmas is religion and self-sacrifice for Tiny Tim or his equivalent. But the spiritual must start with recognizing reality. Life requires reason, selfishness, capitalism; that is what Christmas should celebrate -- and really, underneath all the pretense, that is what it does celebrate. It is time to take the Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly egoistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration."

It's almost hard to take this article seriously, but what it really does is show what we Christians are up against in our world today. The world needs Christ now, just as much as ever, and we need a Christmas that celebrates what he came to give us: unconditional love, joy, peace, generosity, and the hope of eternal life. There is much to celebrate on Christmas, but nothing more so than Christ himself.