Dear Edwards Church Community,
Why do we only celebrate the birth of Christ in late December? In fact, we don’t! For the last two years, Deb Moore has designed and led a Sunday service she calls Christmas in July. It is a wonderful reminder that the crux of Christmas, the irreducible essence, is not the date on which the historical Jesus was born, but the arrival in our lives of a God who wants so much to be part of our lives and have us be part of God’s.
Three years ago I shocked a confirmation class by mentioning – I thought in passing – that Jesus was not born in late December. Silly me. We spent most of the rest of that class putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.
We celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25th because church leaders in the 4th century wanted to draw energy away from the festival of Saturnalia, a week of ribald activities that was part of Roman pagan practices. The church leaders thought that by co-opting the final day of the festival, Roman Christians participating in it might be drawn to be “more Christian.” That is not how it played out in history.
Until the 1950’s, the era many TV fans now regard as the era of “Mad Men” marketing, the celebration of Christmas was an overwhelmingly family affair. Gifts were given, but they were fewer, often homemade and more personal. The merger of modern marketing and Christmas, which eventually created the merchandising madness we call “Black Friday,” had just begun.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Christmas, from the cookies and other seasonal tasty treats to the Christmas stockings and sneaking this year’s just right gift into the house while my wife is not looking. So please, don’t read this as simply yet another pastor’s screed against materialism run amok (even if it is, in part).
Religions and their customs are a human creation, a form of cultural expression crafted in response to genuine experiences of the divine. To the extent they faithfully reflect the divine, drawing people into a deeper relationship with it and prompting us (and helping us) to live accordingly, religions convey the holy. To the extent they merely reflect the culture in which their expression takes place, they are something else.
The Christian story, of which Christmas is a part, speaks of a God who wants so much to be part of our lives and have us be part of God’s, that God became one of us. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That same God, which all our attempts to describe are but blurred reflections, joined our common lot and identified with us completely.
Christmas celebrates the arrival in our lives of a God who wants to be part of our lives and have us be part of God’s. And since God knows what our lives are like, she is happy to be part of the party, so long as we remember what the party is all about.
Blessings,
Michael