Ho, Ho, Ho, Merry Christmas!
What do American’s celebrate at Christmas? The Urban Dictionary claims we celebrate “the birth of commercialism.” The Santa Clausification of Christmas has caused many to become cynical thinking, “Christmas is all about one thing …a Swiss Colony beef log!”
What is Christmas All About?
We learn something about the Christmas story from Dorothy Sayers. Sayers was one of the first women to graduate from the University of Oxford and beginning in the 1920s wrote a series of popular novels.
The hero of her novels was Lord Peter Wimsey, an eccentric, aristocratic sleuth who solved mysterious crimes. Halfway through her Wimsey detective series, a woman suddenly shows up.
Sayers’ new character is named Harriet Vane. Like Sayers herself, Harriet was a successful mystery writer and one of the first women to graduate from Oxford. Harriet and Peter fall in love.
Until that point, Wimsey was an unhappy bachelor — then Harriet showed up and her love starts to heal his broken soul.
What had Sayers done? She looked at her character, Lord Peter, and saw he needed someone to help him; he was lonely and unhappy.
Sayers looked into the world she created and loved her chief character, so she wrote herself into the story as Harriet Vane to heal the broken bachelor with her love.
What does it have to do with the Christmas story? Said Pastor Tim Keller, “God creates the world and we’ve turned away from him and we’re screwing up our lives royally and we’re unhappy and God looks into this world, and he loves us, and he writes himself in. (At Christmas) God writes himself into the story in the person of Jesus Christ who comes and begins to heal us by his love…”
The therapeutic value of love is undeniable. As the song says, “You’re nobody ‘til somebody loves you…” But we miss the larger meaning of Christmas if we limit ourselves to its therapeutic message.
In describing love, Scripture says, “This is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins… we love him, because he first loved us.” The Christmas story never separates God’s love from God’s law. As the angel told Joseph, “… you will call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.”
The true meaning of Christmas always involves the crib and the cross.
We learn the true meaning of Christmas from an unlikely source, “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” In this animated short film, first airing in 1965 on CBS, Charlie Brown is disillusioned with the materialism he sees during the holiday season and his friends try unsuccessfully to cheer him up.
As Charlie Brown is still wondering about the real meaning of Christmas, his friend Linus gives the biblical account: “…And the angel said unto them Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day …a Savior, which is Christ the Lord… ye shall find the babe …lying in a manger…”
As Linus said, “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”
By contrast, author Natasha Crain says America’s Secular Gospel asserts that “Happiness is the ultimate goal, feelings are the ultimate guide, God is the ultimate guess and judging is the ultimate sin.”
The secular community defines sin very differently than the Bible which declares “all have sinned.” We shrink back from the biblical diagnosis of our true spiritual condition because, as sociologist James Davison Hunter said, “We Americans generally want to think of ourselves as good people. That, in many respects, is where the trouble begins.”
In the end, Christmas is all about news, bad news and good news. The bad news? We are sinners, we need a Savior. The good news is at Christmas, God lovingly writes himself into his story. This is good tidings of great joy for all people. But for those who cannot yet accept this news…Happy Festivus!