What Christmas Means To Me

Here I go again, stirring things up and asking for trouble. This is a post that I intended to write last Christmas but never got around to it. It's something that I've been wanting to get off my chest for a few years now. As I've pointed out many times in my musings, I was raised in the Church of Christ. I dearly love the CofC, and right now, I can't imagine ever worshipping with any other denomination. That being said, as an adult in the CofC, I began to question some of our traditions. In this way, I've made religion my own, and not "just my parents' religion". I think it is completely healthy to question, and I encourage everyone to discover for yourself what it is you truly believe. I sincerely hope that my family and other Christians from my childhood don't take this post as a slam against the Church of Christ.

As I was growing up, there was a firm belief in the Churches of Christ that Christmas should NOT be celebrated as the birth of Christ. One reason for this was that the specific birthdate of Christ is not given in the bible. Celebrating Christmas as Jesus' birthday would be in violation of the command to leave scripture as is; do not add to or take away from the word of God. I can't remember ever being given a "book, chapter and verse" for this command, but now that I'm researching, I've found a couple of scriptures in the OLD Testament (Deuteronomy 4:2, and Proverbs 30:5,6) and a scripture in Revelation pertaining specifically to the prophecies in that book (Revelation 22:18,19). The second reason for not celebrating the birth of Christ at Christmastime was that, according to scripture, we should not keep any holy days. Again, I can't remember any specific scripture being given to me, but I found one in Galatians (Galatians 4:10,11).

As a kid, we celebrated Christmas as that day that Santa Claus brings you presents. We had a tree, stockings, "Jingle Bells" and "Rudolph". All of the PAGAN aspects of this holiday, but none of the religious. We didn't sing traditional Christmas songs like "Joy To The World" or "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" or hear sermons about the birth of Christ at all during the month of December. I don't think I even knew what the term "Nativity" meant until high school. I can remember a sermon from a preacher one year giving us his list of reasons, based on research, that the world had it wrong. Jesus could't possibly have been born anywhere near December 25th, because it would've been too cold for the shepherds to be out in the fields that time of year, or something like that.

I remember vividly when my beliefs became known to all of my friends. Back in the 80's (and especially in the south), it wasn't yet completely taboo to talk about God in school. In the fifth grade, we were given a writing assignment: Write your version of The Christmas Story. In describing the assignment, our teacher said he was talking about the birth of Jesus. Naively, I raised my hand and said, " But I don't believe that's 'The Christmas Story'". The gasp from my classmates was audible. To them, I was the Anti-Christ! If I remember correctly, I still wrote about the birth of Christ, but I ended it with a paragraph about not believing this was the Christmas Story; that it was "against my religion" to believe this. Try as I might to explain why my family felt this way (like, we choose to celebrate Christ's birth EVERY day, not just at Christmas), I did not win a single person to the Kingdom of Christ. All they heard was that I didn't believe in The Christmas Story.

I can't remember exactly what point it was in my life when my beliefs about Christmas began to change. When Tim and I dated in high school, he invited me to his Baptist church's Christmas program, The Living Christmas Tree. In it, was a live Nativity scene. Boy, did I struggle to sit there for what I thought was a completely blasphemous performance. We had many arguments about this subject throughout our years of dating. Once we became engaged, Tim became a member of my church and we didn't argue about Christmas anymore. It wasn't until we moved to Nashville a few years later and began attending Antioch Church of Christ that I began to see that not all people in the Church of Christ held the belief that Jesus' birth was not to be celebrated at Christmas. We actually sang a few carols during the month of December and had at least one sermon about baby Jesus. One year (the memory is kind of hazy, because I can't recall if this was a sermon or just someone expressing his thoughts before the Lord's Supper), we heard a story from someone confessing his guilt about a situation similar to my story from fifth grade. He'd had a fight with a girl in school about Christmas not being Christ's birthday. Now as an adult, he mourned that he hadn't acted very Christ-like. The impression he left with her about the kind of Christian he was, was that he thought it was more important to argue about Christmas than it was to share the love of Christ. His confession had a huge impact on me.

I think the transforming of my mind has happened rather slowly. I choose to celebrate Christmas as the day that God came to live among us in flesh as a newborn baby. Born to a virgin, in a dirty stall. I think this has been a gradual shift for many in the Church of Christ. The church I grew up in now sings carols and talks about the Nativity during the month of December. My parents do as well. It really gripes me when I hear the old thinking in the CofC regarding Christmas. There are many that still hold fast to the old beliefs. I read a blog written just a couple of weeks ago proclaiming that if Christ had wanted to be a part of Christmas, He would've given us specific instructions in the bible that His birth was to be celebrated on December 25th every year. It even implied that people that celebrated Christ at Christmas don't celebrate Him the other 364 days a year. How presumptuous! All I know is that if the world chooses to celebrate Christ's birth during Christmastime, I think we should take this opportunity to spread the gospel to ears that are willing to hear, instead of debating timelines and scriptures. If we win more souls for the Kingdom at Christmastime, how can this approach be wrong? So, yes, I'm going to wish you a Merry CHRISTmas, and a Happy New Year!