The practice of celebrating Christmas began as a community festival to celebrate the birth of Christ much like Easter was already celebrated. It was a worship gathering and a festival to be shared. In our individualistic culture it has shrunk from the community celebration to a family gathering. This has changed the celebration in many ways and taken some of what is special and redemptive out of Christmas.
Jesus' birth marks the beginning of a new people a new stage in God's work to establish his Kingdom on earth. Jesus' life exemplifies Jesus' love; his death and resurrection establish the possibility of being united with God; and the gift of his Holy Spirit unite us together as the new community of God. As Paul says when describing communion, "And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf." (1 Cor 10:16-17) Our individual commitment to Jesus leads to a new corporate reality where love, care, and forgiveness are actively practiced.
The celebration of Jesus' birth should be a celebration of his mission. No wet blanket here. Celebrations are a good thing. God gave Israel feast days to celebrate and remember his great works. The work isn't finished, but that doesn't mean that we should be miserly in our celebration of Jesus' decisive and game changing acts. God's promises were fulfilled in Jesus and the angels heralded Jesus' birth as the day everything began to change.
But Christmas is also a day to remember that the Kingdom has not yet been fully established. Many believers come from broken, damaged, and damaging families. As a community we encourage, heal, and give hope. As individuals, people remain alone. Many twenty-somethings are separated from their families due to jobs, education, and even missions. Young professionals today tend to be more isolated. Many of this generation are now labeled nomadic Christians because they have ceased to belong, but maybe our focus on the nuclear family, orphans those who don't have a nuclear family of their own. Families are important, but the New Testament places its emphasis on the gathered community of God.
Christmas was also a time to remember the poor and the abused. To include the outsider. It was not seen as the one day to make up for ignoring the poor the rest of the year. Instead, it was a reminder that God's justice was meant for all, a reminder of how we were to live the rest of the year. It was a reminder that God expected more of us than to be good capitalists. The pagan villain of Dickens', A Christmas Carol was a great capitalist. He would have made modern writers like Ayn Rand proud.
I don't reject capitalism. It has much to commend it. But any "ism" must be tempered by God's wisdom and love. God's love doesn't only extend to the poor, the forgotten, and the abused, but it even embraces my enemy. And it extends - and this is hard in today's protective political climate - to the stranger, the immigrants among us.
How do we celebrate and care for those around us without wearing ourselves out or giving up in despair? We do it together as communities. Christmas doesn't really have to be less than a feast, a time with family, and even a football game. But it can be so much more. Presents aren't necessarily an evil, but people are more important. Together, Christmas can be an active celebration of God turning back the curse, of love breaking into the world, and a foretaste of what God has in store for us. Christmas was meant to be a public, community feast and celebration that reminds the world who we hope in and what we hope for. Enjoy it together.
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