Nothing sparks debate like Christmas. Ever since that day when the Creator of oxygen filled His own lungs with it for the first time, Christmas has brought contention into this world. Perhaps the nature of the arguments has changed, and different baggage has been thrown into the bandwagon along our trek through history. Whether it be the pagans hitching a ride with their Winter Solstice, or the Catholics and their Mass adding all sorts of trouble (and naming the holiday after it), or commercial consumerism trying to deck the wagon, the Christmas holiday attracts as much debate and dissension as it does peace and merriment.
Then there are those ardent Reformed Regulative Principle guys who refuse to not only touch the wagon, but to even look in its direction. An easy solution, I would think, for them to let their kids in on some of the fun, would be to see Christmas as a personal day of remembering the Incarnation of Christ, instead of a Church Holiday. Keep it at the level of a birthday, if that helps you. That’s what it is, in part. That way you can keep your modes of worship unstained, and still drink the marshmallow hot chocolate that’s being served. Although, I would strongly urge against the marshmallows. That, indeed, is a step too far, even on Christmas.
To make things more complicated, we also have the group of Christians who aren’t really aware of what’s going on in the bandwagon. They don’t take much issue or interest in any of that. Their problem is with the fact that we’re specifically in a material wagon riding along the ground. Shouldn’t we be up in the clouds among the transcendence? We are called to heavenly things. It’s the spiritual realities that matter. Celebrating like the world does – that is, with festive decor, good food, and fun people – is a disgrace to the folks in this group. They are along for the ride; they have to be. But they’re sitting up on the roof of the wagon, closer to the clouds and away from all the commotion. We’ve sure got a lively bunch.
For myself, I’m somewhere inside that wagon, amongst all the mess, enjoying the debates and the hot chocolate (although I prefer a glass of bourbon, but we’ve learned to be content). I let people smarter than myself do the talking, since there are many of them, but every now and then I ask a question, raise a point, or ask for another drink. All in all, I’m having fun. But I think the people on the roof are missing out, and it’s cold up there, even for a self-flagellator.
So, in an attempt to convince some of the Christians with gnostic tendencies to join in on the holiday fun with a free conscience, I’ll throw a couple points out.
The argument against the commercialization of Christmas typically revolves around the nodes of materialism. The decorations, the gifts, and the consumerism is a secular distraction from the point of Christmas, they say. Christmas is about Jesus. We should celebrate it, yes, but keep our focus on what matters most. And I say, yes. I agree. Let’s definitely keep our focus on what matters most in Christmas. In fact, why don’t we start there.
Christmas is about the incarnation of the Logos – the Word became flesh. Incarnation. Logos. These are definitely complex concepts that are worthy of our proper attention. If we were to spend a lifetime contemplating such ideas, it would not be sufficient. But the first thing that jumps out at us, like my 5-year-old out of bed on Christmas morning, is that the Infinite Logos, the Source of all Transcendence, took on a body. He took on the kind of body that gets hungry and stinky, that can laugh and cry, that can breathe and sleep. Christ did not come as a floating spirit. He came in the flesh.
Any attempt to not let the material world stain the meaning of Christmas is not just misguided but is completely upside down. Transcendence Himself took on material. He lived as a human and interacted with other humans. He was invited to parties, with good food and good drink. It’s not that the material stuff was just a necessity for Him to stoop down to our level and call us to a spiritual state of mind. He called the pot, and raised it. It seems His taste buds were more refined and His pallet more sophisticated than that of everybody else. When it was His turn to bring the wine, well, He brought it. He knew how to enjoy a dinner of herbs and what a fattened calf should taste like.
Not only was Jesus in a material body, but He is still today and will be forever more. Our bodies were not intended simply as a necessary storage to keep our minds and souls intact. Material creation was evaluated by its Maker and declared good. To put to rest pagan Gnosticism once and for all, the Maker took on the form of His Creation for the rest of eternity. When we sit in our silence, meditating in our spiritual state about the dangers of the material world, our Lord looks down at us with His eyes. Christmas is a celebration of the material, not a condemnation of it.
“Sure,” says the guy shivering in the cold breeze, “we can celebrate with our bodies. But commercialization and consumerism are not that. Lights, decorations, shopping sprees. The distraction is not the material. It’s the secular focus.” Ah, secularism. The great deception. The lie that has undermined a generation. Both those in the world and those trying to abstain from it share a similar mistake. Let me lift the green curtain for you.
The underpinning assumption is that secularism is some sort of descriptive category, like Russian, clerical, or democratic. We speak like secularism is a thing, as if it’s a reality that we have to deal with. The truth is that there is nothing in the entire cosmos that is secular. Secularism is a non-existent phenomenon, and not the kind that you find in fairy tales. People act as if it’s a threat to Christianity. But the only way it can be threatening is if we think it’s real.
For something to be secular, it has to have no religious association. It has to be neutral as pertaining to God. And that, we know, is an impossibility. There is no moral neutrality. There is only that which is obedient and that which is not. The categories in the public square are not Christian and Secular. The categories are Faithful and Unfaithful, Obedient and Disobedient. There is no alternative. Every molecule in the universe, every iota in the blogosphere, every current in the electrical grid, is either submitting to the Maker or rebelling against Him. There is not an alternative option. Jesus is Lord of it all. You either create, build, and operate under His objective standards of truth, goodness, and beauty, or you fight against them.
For us to start rejecting things because unbelievers are involved is to get into a mudslide that won’t stop. The root issue of rejecting the initiatives of the faithless is the same one the faithless have, that of thinking it’s possible to hide from the Lordship of Christ. We know that nature glorifies God all on its own, apart from calling it “Christian Horticulture”. What about the innovative and creative actions of man in the fields of science and art? Can the initiative of man honor the Maker, even if the man does not?
Let’s say a Russian Christian family invites an American Christian family over for Christmas dinner, and serves them borscht with sour cream and bread, plov, shuba (a pickled herring layered salad), and has a desert spread with fresh-brewed tea. The next year, the American Christian family invites the Russian one for dinner, and serves them a winter stew with a side salad, ham and mashed potatoes, and a centerpiece desert with fresh-brewed coffee. Which dinner is Christian, and which one is secular?
Depending on your cultural preferences, you might be able to judge which dinner you prefer. But trying to categorize the dinners into Christian and secular is a useless task. It’s an impossible task. Both dinners can be faithful and honoring to God, but they are presented differently because the cultural context is different. When man honors his Maker, he will always do so contextually. He either sings in English or Russian or Latin, but it will always be in the language of men.
So, when people celebrate in a material world, with body and soul, and show cultural initiative in doing so, what does that look like? It looks like festive decor, good food, and fun people. It looks like joy and gladness of heart that you can see. Our celebrations and parties are both material and cultural, and neglecting that is fighting against the wind. But I guess if you’re sitting atop the roof of the wagon, the wind is unavoidable. It’d be much more pleasant to come inside.
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