As We Celebrate Christmas...
12/24/2009 | Author: RCW
As you ready your hearts for Christmas, let us not easily forget that Jesus Christ is central to our celebration.

Certainly, we know that Jesus was not born on December 25th.  Few people would ever make such an argument (and if they did, they'd be flat wrong!).  But it is at this time every year that we remember His coming.  We as Christians anticipate Him throughout the Christmas season via Advent and we long for His coming---both remembering His first coming on the 25th and ultimately looking to His future glorious second coming as well.

The Christmas holiday season is a great time of year (like Halloween as I mentioned before) to ask yourself a question....
  • Does the way I celebrate Christmas bear the markings of something distinctively "Christian"?  
          OR
  • Does the way that I celebrate Christmas (or even my Christianity) instead seem to have adopted all the trappings and accommodations of our contemporary culture leaving nary an inch for Christ?           

As you ponder that question, I'll leave you with a humorous story.  C.S. Lewis once pinpointed the marked difference between celebrating the birth of Christ and "all this ghastly [Christmas] racket at its lowest" with this story actually, so the credit for the laugh is his and not mine... Lewis wrote to a friend: "My brother heard a woman on a 'bus say, as the 'bus passed a church with a crib outside it, 'Oh Lor'!  They bring religion into everything.  Look--they're dragging it even into Christmas now!'"


Prayer: Lord, help us at this time of year to think of this season as we ought.  Help us to enjoy the time of rest, the time with family, the time of reflection, and let this all lead us ultimately to savor this time of year as a time of worship.  You are the cause of celebration for us this season and forever.  Amen.


-RCW


   
P.S. For some of my Southern Baptist friends who live somewhat in a bubble and legitimately do not know what "Advent" is, click here and you can see what the majority of the universal church in western culture does around the holiday season.  (That means what other Christians do who aren't Baptist....Yes, I do mean to tell you that there are a great many Christians who aren't Southern Baptist).   :)   I don't mean to poke fun....for I was certainly once very ignorant of these matters myself.        

P.P.S.  For my scholarly friends, the Lewis quote is from Letters to an American Lady (29 December 1958), p. 80.  The letter itself is housed in the Wade Center at Wheaton...an amazing place should you ever manage a visit.  I know how several of you (like myself) have a nasty distaste for quotes that lack a citation.