Is Christmas Still About Christ?

Found a few thoughts from a couple years back, enjoy...

Christmas is just around the corner, or more like staring us in the face at this point, but you know what I don't hear people talking about much: Christ. The holiday is named after the guy! Sure, people know that Christmas is because Jesus was born, but the priority becomes about the here and now, this year. Over two thousand years ago, the Savior of the world was born, and in the most humbling way, and nowadays the holiday devoted to this event has become more about presents, Santa, lights, etc. If there was ever a reason to call the holiday Xmas that should be it! Not because people are "offended" that Christ is in the name (which is still stupid, but that's another matter), but because the holiday is no longer primarily about Christ! It's ridiculous!

Before you get too angry at me, I know we still talk about Jesus at Christmas. Churches still have their Christmas Eve Services, people still read and hear the story, nativities are still set up a lot of the time. We still have Jesus as a part of our Christmases, but he should be the CENTER of our Christmases! Many people start buying Christmas presents at least a month before Christmas, sometimes several months, but how many of those people think about the birth of Jesus that early in advance? We've made Christmas more about ourselves and the people around us than about Jesus. He deserves the attention. He deserves the glory. But in reality, he's not getting the majority of it. Even if when asked you say Christmas is about Jesus, your life may reflect the opposite without you even realizing it. 

I'm guilty of this at least this year, possibly every year ever. I started singing Christmas carols early, but I wasn't thinking about Jesus' birth when I did. Christmas shopping? Same thing. Decorations? That's definitely more about making things look nice than it is about worshipping Jesus. I know, the other stuff is fun, and I'm not saying it's wrong. What's wrong is making Christmas primarily about those things. Are they even Christ related? Do we think about Jesus when we see and hear Christmas stuff (okay, aside from the nativities and  "Mary Did You Know"s)? Jesus has every right to be disappointed with us about the focus of our Christmases. We, as a society, have made Christmas about materialism and pretty light shows, and that's not right. I'm not saying we have to put Christ back in Christmas. As I said before, he's still a part of it. What we need to do is make Christmas ABOUT Christ again. We need the Messiah to be at the center of Christmas, where he belongs. 

Honestly, I think Satan likes things the way they are now. We keep enough Jesus in Christmas that we feel good about ourselves without actually making Christmas about Jesus. We allow the distractions of the Christmas season to be central in our celebrations without thinking about what we're celebrating. We simultaneously create a season of giving and a season of getting, and the latter becomes a priority for the majority. Obviously, not everyone is this way, but so many are that it's basically a trend at this point. Maybe, just maybe, giving into the Christmas-y things is actually people giving into temptation without realizing it. This is something we're supposed to pray about, something Jesus himself said to pray about, yet even strong believers fall into the trap of the Christmas season year after year after year. 

You know, the Bible never once said Jesus complained about how his birth went. He was born in a barn by a virgin who could've been killed for getting pregnant before getting married. He was put in a food trough with a little bit of hay and was surrounded by smelly animals in their home (because Jesus was homeless at the time), and his only visitors wouldn't have come if some angels hadn't said to, and the visitors were shepherds (who were the equivalent of having a career of a sewage worker today). Sure, some wise men who knew who Jesus was came along later and gave him some nice gifts, but then his life was at stake because the king wanted to kill him. His birth story was a mess! The world he entered was a mess from the start! But, he still came. He still died for messy people like us, and he didn't complain about the messiness. He loved this world because of the people in it, despite the messiness. He was surrounded by screw-ups, but loved them and chose them and died for those screw-ups anyway. That's a man who deserves to be the center of attention on a holiday dedicated to him, especially when considering how messy the world was that the perfect Savior chose to come into. 

I think at this point what we need to do to fix Christmas is to forget about the presents and trees and stuff for a bit and instead spend the day focusing on the Savior, what he was willing to go through for us, and the miracle of his birth. Better yet, it shouldn't just be Christmas day, or even Christmas season, but all year. We should constantly be taking time simply to reflect on Christ. We should press pause on our lives to remember why Christmas is even a thing. Sure, it gets busy, and we all hit resume eventually, but the pause is important. It means forgetting everything else to focus on what really matters. The shepherds did this. Angels showed up in the middle of their work shift (you know, watching sheep), and the shepherds left their jobs to go see Jesus. They went back to work later on, but they pressed pause on what they had to do to prioritize the newborn King. Today, we could consider this the equivalent of our Christmas Eve services, but the problem is that we don't continue to talk about Jesus afterwards. We shift straight into our own lives again and often leave the Jesus part of Christmas at church. The birth of Jesus changed the shepherds' lives. They went and told everyone the good news of what happened. Do we?

From all of this, my point is: we've screwed up Christmas. Maybe it was screwed up before you and I came along, I don't know. I think we, as a society, deserve at least partial credit for the wreck Christmas has become. We made it about us. Jesus deserves better than that. We need to reprioritize and make sure we aren't only setting aside Jesus time, but making everything we do about Him, not about us. After all, Christ is literally in the name of the holiday...