Conflicted Over Christmas

David Buza Adds the Angel

Christmas has always been a happy time in our family. This year it is, for me, a time to remember:

• When I was a child we always took a ride as a family just to see the beautiful lights and displays at homes, schools, and businesses. The air was punctuated with glowing sights and breathless exclamations. "Look at THAT!" "Oh, WOW." "It is so beautiful". 
• Another fond memory was our Sunday School program. Once my cousin Andrea kept stealing baby Jesus from the manger (her doll) and I kept grabbing it away and returning it until someone finally let her keep her baby! 
• I loved it when I was "big enough" to help pack the boxes of candy, nuts, and popcorn that were given to each child attending the Christmas program at Church. 
• Our children, for quite a few years, always gifted us with their own, costumed rendition of the nativity. Their Dad usually played the inn keeper from his seat on the couch and offered Mary and Joseph his stable. 
• We liked to cook Christmas goodies, a tea ring for Christmas morning, and we loved decorating our tree. 
• Family devotions grew at Christmas time until we added our own family communion service, using unleavened bread that we made at home. 
• Practicing and singing in the Christmas Cantata was something Wayne and I always enjoyed. 
• In our later years we try to go to each of our children's homes sometime in the last week or two before Christmas. Of course, that is a rare thing with Valerie's family. Time with our family members is cherished deeply. 
• And we love Christmas Eve service and singing the beautiful carols that we do not hear often enough!

So why am I conflicted? It is partly because the most important thing to remember about Christmas does not take its proper priority. Christmas is not primarily about lights, cookies, gifts, and spending money. Not at all. Christmas is a day that was set aside to remember the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Deliverer, the Redeemer, the Messiah. It is a day set aside to remember and celebrate one of the two most significant days in all of history (the resurrection is the other). Christmas is the day to remember a birth, the most extraordinary and most important birth EVER. 

Another reason I am conflicted is the controversy over creche displays, the public singing of traditional Christmas Carols, even calling our national tree the Holiday Tree instead of a Christmas Tree. People say "Let's Keep Christ in Christmas". I understand that on the one hand, but on the other hand I wonder why unbelievers would even want to celebrate Christmas? If it is about sharing love and gift-giving, that could happen at any time. What about New Year's Day? The fact is that without trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, Redeemer, and King, there is no reason to celebrate the Incarnation. Only the Christian understands why. We know that people need Christ in their lives far more than we need Christ in Christmas. 

If your are a Christian, please consider the following verses and take them to heart during our celebration of the first advent of Jesus Christ. Remember and cherish in your heart that the day of His birth in Bethlehem was the day GOD became flesh to live on this earth for thirty-three years and then to offer himself as a sacrifice for our sin:

" Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.  Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." From Philippians 2 (ESV)