Christmas!

It is Christmas week. Hopefully, the shopping is done, some presents are under the tree (while others await special delivery), celebrations are planned and gatherings are scheduled. Everything is ready. We are ready for you to come into our hearts and our minds again this Christmas, O Lord.

Wait. What? You write in mixed metaphor, there, Mr. Pastor, sir. What in the world do presents, celebrations, gatherings, decorations and ugly sweaters possibly have to do with the coming of Christ Jesus into our hearts and minds? What does any of it have to do with Christ coming?

Well, let me see if I can do this without making too great a mess of it.

Why do we decorate? Why do we gather? Why do we give and receive gifts? Why all those ugly sweater parties? Is it not because we are recognizing that something of extreme importance is taking place? As with bunnies and eggs at Easter, the means of our recognitions do not necessarily directly reflect the precise meaning of the celebration. We use them to express joy. We use them to articulate our happiness. But, lacking the words and the ability to speak to the depth and scope of the celebration, we perform more secularized, mundane means of articulation. That does not mean that we take for granted or ignore the true meaning of the season. It simply means that we have found common ways to practically express that meaning.

So what about all this talk about the secularization of Christmas being an attack on its true meaning? Doesn't all the commercialization get in the way of the genuine meaning of the season?

It can, certainly. We can reduce the celebration of Christmas to gifts and families and friends and decorations and carols and "bells on bobtails ring," whatever in the world that means. We sometimes supplant the genuine reason for celebration with the means by which we celebrate. Even then, it is no attack on Christmas or on Christians. It is, in the vast majority of examples, the ignorance of  honoring traditional practice without serious reflection. There are those who would never ask why we celebrate. They simply do so because it is done.

What I am getting at here is that the birth of Jesus is due cause for extreme celebration. It's okay that we have occasionally gone way overboard in our decorations, gift giving, celebrations, parties and gatherings. It is appropriate that we express the joy that we feel. Remember, however, that not everyone feels joy at Christmas. Some mourn losses. Some experience only suffering. Some feel only exclusion and rejection. If our celebrations leave them out, then the means of our enjoyment have eclipsed the meaning of the season. That is precisely why we do so much mission around the Christmas season, focused both here and abroad.

So celebrate. Have fun. Sing. Dance. Tear open those presents! Enjoy! But remember why! Remember that God's Son comes into the world, in and through us, again this Christmas season. Set aside guilt and shame for the celebration of the great good news of Jesus Christ.

Merry Christmas!