Christmas

Well, it's Christmas Eve and I wonder, what does Christmas mean to you? Is it just a time to get together with family, eat until you can hardly breathe, and exchange gifts that you hope everyone will be happy to receive? Is it the one time of the year you actually think to be a blessing to others. Do you send out hundreds of Christmas cards, go caroling, and make every effort to spread Christmas cheer. Or are you the person who tosses spare change into the Salvation Army buckets for just a brief moment of peace as the bell ringers stop their incessant ringing to thank you for your generosity.

Christmas to many is just another holiday. It is a time to miss the family they are away from, a time to be charitable and feed the hungry and allow their emotions to govern their actions as they do their good deeds. Though the Christmas season may have begun as a celebration of the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, it has been adopted by the world as a revenue generating holiday; open season for retailers to return their books to the black.

I find it interesting that so many Christians get upset that the world doesn't know, believe, or celebrate the true Christmas story. They go off on their tangents about Santa Clause and Rudolph, Frosty, and all the other fairy tale stories that have permeated the season - foaming at the mouth about how these stories mislead people from the truth of the birth of Christ. But I must ask, whose responsibility is it to tell the world of the true Christmas story?

Then there are many who call themselves Christians who dually become outraged about the consumerism of Christmas, yet they will proactively celebrate Halloween. I believe that one of the things in which Satan has been successful is the deception of the saints. II Timothy 3:13 says that in the last days, "evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived." And in James 1:22 Christians are admonished to "be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." It is sad that not only have many been deceived, but that so many more are deceiving themselves. This deception usually comes not in the form of an outright lie, but in a form of a partial truth that is just close enough to the truth to sound like the truth and yet it is a lie.

It is the responsibility of true believers to tell others and to share with others the true Christmas story. In this day and age, Christians must commit to become a people of Truth. They must tell the world who it was that left his throne in Heaven to be born of a virgin and laid in a manger in the humble town of Bethlehem. But that is just part of the story. They must also share why he came; to live a sinless life, and die a shameful death on a cross. An attempt of the masses to purge themselves of their conscience; an act of sacrifice acceptable before an Almighty God for the atonement of the sins of the world. If the Christmas story were to stop there, it would pale in its magnificence and remain just a story. Only when we learn of His resurrection from the dead does the story have power and become alive and dynamic.

This is why I believe the world celebrates Christmas as a Santa Clause-reindeer-snowman-feel good party rather than acknowledging the birth of the Son of God. The world does not believe in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and without the power of the gospel, the Christmas story is nothing more than a story of a baby being born in a stable where you can add or take away any details to tell it to your liking.

I will tell others the truth. Will you?

The true Christmas story may be dead to this world, but it is alive and well in my home.