by John Noppen

Created on: July 11, 2009   Last Updated: July 13, 2009

The question, it seems to me, presumes that Christians have somehow "lost" Christmas to somebody or something, but for the life of me, I can't imagine to whom or to what Christmas could ever be lost. Christmas is an affair of the heart, a personal encounter with all the magic that surrounds the season . . . carols, tinsel, the North Pole, reindeer with blinking noses, snowfall, a fat guy in a red suit, snowmen who come to life at the pop of a hat, and packed shopping malls.

For a Christian, this personal encounter, this affair of the heart, takes on an added dimension. In addition to all the happy stuff just described, a Christian encounters the magic of a quiet field outside Bethlehem suddenly turned raucous by the celebrations of angels, of advent calendars, of manger scenes standing on snow-blanketed front lawns, of carols sung in Latin to all ye faithful, and in German on a silent night, of midnight masses, and of Luke's immortal story of a child who would someday save the world, but at the moment placed carefully in a manger, wrapped only in swaddling clothes.

How can any of this possibly be lost? How can a person redeemed by God misplace, or lose, the seasonal celebration of his Son's birth? Can a faith made possible only by such a birth be erased from the memory of anybody who has ever knelt in his or her own spiritual manger in grateful adulation of a God who opted to live with us so that someday we might live with him?

If there is indeed any such danger . . . if belief in Christmas is ever really lost . . . it will be because of Christians. The world can't do it; those who disdain the notion of a Creator God and a Son who redeems us can't do it; commercialism can't do it; Satan, if he exists, can't do it. The only people who can take Christmas away from Christians are other Christians, and they come in two flavors:

There are Christians among us who demand that Christmas not be celebrated. "Jesus wasn't born on December 25", they tell us, as if we didn't already know that. "Christmas is only a thinly-veiled celebration of Saturnalia", they pontificate to us, not understanding that the Church has baptized those celebrations with the transforming power of Christ's gospel. "There's nothing in the Bible that commands us to celebrate Christmas", they whine to us, paying no attention at all to the biblical record of angels celebrating their angelic rumps off. Angels are God's messengers; they do nothing other than what God commands them to do. They

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>