Christmas is a time of food and drink, manic shopping and maxing out credit cards, Santa and office parties, entertainment and enduring relatives your happy you only have to see once a year. Christmas is big business and for many high street stores the season to be jolly is measured by the happiness and satisfaction of their extended profit margins. To that end Christmas starts earlier and earlier each year. After all, it's all about them, as retailers and us, the CONSUMER.
I can think of nothing that has become so utterly detached from it's foundation as this. Even if you don't have a religious bone in your body you've probably had your own gripe over the pointlessness of the circus it has all become. As someone who has been on both the atheistic and Christian side of the fence I can understand both sides yet in fairness it's hard to credibly criticise something unless you have respect to and understand it's true foundation and it's hard to expect people to stay true to the foundation if they don't really believe in or follow. It's a bit like a Marxist who wants to live in America but doesn't buy into it's constitution. The truth is he doesn't really get what America is and although he technically lives there, it doesn't live in him.
So we are either left with a dissatisfaction of the shallow consumerist merry go round it has become or we make do with our own tradition of the festive season {which, in my childhood, was actually really enjoyable}. However, even if we enjoy the tradition and the things we do every year we are left with a fundamental problem.
Christmas without Christ at the centre is like celebrating the birthday of someone we either don't like or don't believe in. How weird is that when you think of it? The bottom line for us as human beings is that we usually gravitate toward those things we actually like and enjoy so trying to encourage people to be more religious when they have no genuine love for Jesus really is a case of pushing a boulder up a never ending hill. Sure, you can do it {to an extent}but you will soon tire of it and even if you continue out of a sense of duty there must eventually come the question of "what is the point?"
So if you are interested enough to wonder at a race of people who insist on throwing a huge birthday party for someone whom they won't acknowledge as the birthday boy then allow me {as a former atheist} to fill you in on why this is so important and why it really does make a difference.
Firstly, it's about the one who had an incredible idea. An idea to create everything that exists and everything we enjoy and the pinnacle of his idea is to create us. Human beings. Creatures so special we are able to reflect our creator in ways no other created thing does or can. Now throw into that heady and inspiring mix one of the most agonizing things it is possible to witness. The very pinnacle of God's creation make a concious choice to live their lives independantly of the one upon whom their very existence as well as their eternal destination is dependent on. This is, in a nutshell, what we call sin. I know we all have our own idea of what sin is. Usually things that other people do that we ourselves don't but sin is defined by the one who made us and made us for his purpose and that purpose is hugely dependent on our being in a trusting relationship with him.
Now let me stop for a moment. God wants a RELATIONSHIP with us? Lets be real here. When most of us think of religion we think of rules, regulations and rituals to appease a divine master and hopefully in that being able to do enough to qualify for a place in heaven, paradise, nirvana or a better incarnation or whatever view of the afterlife you subscribe to but God is more concerned about you not just knowing about him but knowing and experiencing him PERSONALLY. This is where Jesus comes in. Jesus was sent to do what we as humans have utterly failed to do. He lived the life we could not and in many cases {if we are truly honest about it} would not live. He was also sent to pay the ultimate price for all we had done wrong. You see, sin really is a big deal with God. It's a huge deal. Even the stuff we see as insignificant is significant with God because every choice to sin is a rejection of God's purpose for you and in a real sense is a rejection of him and a statement of rejection of his rightful authority over our lives. Because of God's perfect moral character this HAS TO BE DEALT WITH.
I know this may make God sound harsh and exacting but consider this. The same God who holds unyeildingly to perfect moral standards is the same God who was prepared to get his own hands dirty to help us out of the mess we are in. A mess of our own making and a mess that most of us are blissfully unaware that we are in. Jesus was sent to die. He died for every lie, every lust, every adultery and moment of hatred. He died for every act of dishonestly and selfishness. He died for every act of immorality. In fact everything you have ever done wrong in God's eyes he has paid for IN FULL by himself. The truth is that no religion or good works could ever pay this debt we owe to God. That's the great deception of most religion. The idea that sin against an infinite holy deity could be paid by finite sinful human beings is as bankrupt an idea as sub prime lending or building an economy on an artificially inflated stock market bubble. In God's economy the price could only ever be paid the hard way by God's own sinless Son. A price God was completely committed to paying in full.
That is God's Christmas gift to you.
In a world that is straining under the burden of unpayable debt we have good news. There is an even greater debt that has already been paid. The celebration of Christmas is, for us, a celebration of Christ's coming to earth. A celebration of the fact that this same God we criticise and question whether he cares and cry 'where is God' when things go wrong is the one who got involved in a way that few of us would even dare to ask of him. The coming of Christ to this earth is God's radical commitment to redeem and help those for whom he had great plans but who have let him down. It is God showing his commitment to us and nailing his colours to the mast knowing that 33 years later they would also be nailed to a cross. It is the launch of the worlds greatest rescue mission.
Seen in this light it changes EVERYTHING. Christmas is about Christ. The birthday boy is now the centre of the party as he always should have been. The giving of gifts reminds us that God gave the gift of his son so that we could live with him forever and have eternal life. Christmas now becomes a meaningful celebration that inspires thankfulness and the deepest appreciation. It becomes an inspiring agent of change that more than overshadows and overrules the empty new years resolutions that many of us make and break. Christmas is a reminder of just how much God wants us back and that he was prepared to make the first move even though the fault for the break was entirely ours. It is a reminder that he makes a way for us to get to him by first coming to us. A encouragement to know God because of his commitment to not only knowing us but actually becoming one of us.
Christians around the world declare Jesus as God in human form. The one who is fully God who in becoming fully man showed he was fully committed to winning us back.
It never really was about gluttony and drunkenness. It's actually about celebrating the one who provides all good things and the thing we all really need. The forgiveness of sins and a relationship with our creator restored. It's not about manic shopping but STOPPING to remember and appreciate the one who purchased our salvation and sent his son as the ultimate gift. It's not about maxing out the credit cards and overdraft facilities. It's about the one who was sent to pay the humanly unpayable debt so we could stand free and justified before a perfect and holy God. When I have children I won't be telling them about some fictional red suited character. Why should I when I can tell them the true story of a far more dramatic visitation? The visit of God to this earth to bring the ultimate gift and the real significance the giving of gifts can have in this context.
Who needs drunken and debauched office parties that have absolutely nothing to do with the person this time of year is supposed to be about. It's not about being entertained to death but being enthralled to life by the one who came to give life in all it's fullness. A life that cannot be attained by the things we attain in this world that will break, rust and fade away. Christmas isn't about retail profits but a rural prophet who started two millenia ago and whose words have been proven beyond ANY reasonable doubt. It's not about extending profit margins but extending a hand of unconditional love and grace to a fallen and broken world.
God's not in it for profit anyway. He already owns everything. Instead he committed to pay the ultimate painful price out of love for the people he so wanted to help. To God, we are not consumers. We are his creation, made in his image, fallen, fallible but redeemable and to that end God sent his son into the world so that whosoever would put their trust in him would never perish but have everlasting life and become a christian, a child of God. Christmas really does mean something because Christ means something to me. He means everything to me and he can mean to same to you. Every year I hear the same old songs on the radio including the line " I wish it could be Christmas every day". Oh but it is. In a very real sense it is. Christmas is a celebration of the coming of Christ into our world. When he comes into your life as he did mine 18 year ago it is Christ-mass every day. It is so much more than a tradition. It is the experience of a living relationship with the risen and living Christ.
That's why I DON'T wish it could be Christmas every day. In the truest and most meaningful sense of the word, for this former atheist, it already is.
Shalom....steve
