The Meaning of Christmas

Watching Christmas movies and TV Christmas specials over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed they share a common trait. Each show tries to sum up the meaning of Christmas. It gets distilled down to a central point something like, “The spirit of Christmas is the spirit of giving.” It’s often presented as a wintry retelling of the proverb, “It’s better to give than to receive.” That’s not so bad, really. The idea has some merit. But is giving what Christmas is really all about?

I have a little trouble buying Christmas as the season of giving as that comes across as a bit self-serving for our consumer-oriented society. Everything is geared toward selling and sellers need buyers. So isn’t encouraging giving just another way to encourage spending?

Is promoting sales through promoting a spirit of giving bad? Why wouldn’t advertisers want you to feel like you should give until it hurts at Christmas time? For that matter, why wouldn’t charities, churches included, not share this view?

There is nothing wrong with the idea that it is better to give than to receive. But to teach that the spirit of Christmas is the spirit of giving is a bit short sighted. It reduces Christmas to the least offensive, most highly marketable version of itself.

If we strip away all the glittery ad-ons to Christmas we find a mother, an adoptive father, and a miraculous child born to this peasant couple in an occupied and oppressed land. At the heart of the Christmas season is the Christ Mass, the worship service on the day Jesus was born to Mary in a cave used as a barn in the village of Bethlehem.

The holiday is a Holy Day for remembering with wonder the miracle of Immanuel, meaning “God with us.” In that humble stable, to that poor, but faithful couple, the unimaginable became true. God came to live among us. To make the whole story all the more amazing, God’s son was not born to Caesar, the chief priest, or even Herod.

Jesus was raised by Mary and Joseph—people with nothing but their love of God to recommend them for the job. They had no status, no power, and no wealth. The only thing they really had to offer their son was love. Having nothing to offer but love fit perfectly with God’s plan, which was all about love anyway.

            For the Christmas story did not start in that stable in Bethlehem, with the angel appearing to Mary, or even with the prophets who foretold of the event centuries earlier. The Christmas story began with God. God looked on the creation so lovingly made and so needlessly gone astray. God could have scrapped us all and gone on to something else. Instead, God had the bold and daring plan of the Word of God becoming human, living among us and showing us great love as one of us. God came to redeem us as one of us.

            God’s plan was bold because it carried within it the possibility of failure. God created us with the ability to reject all God offered. And yet, God took the risk and became flesh in the person of Jesus. At this point in the story it is easy to fast-forward to Easter. But for the moment, let’s pause at Christmas.

I don’t intend to negate the power and importance of the cross, yet neither should we ignore the manger. God would show God’s love for us most fully at Calvary, yet already in Bethlehem there was miracle enough to last the ages.

God gave of God’s own self fully and without reservation in becoming that frail babe in a manger. So the spirit of Christmas is not the spirit of giving, but the spirit of receiving. Christmas is not about giving until it hurts, but about receiving God’s presence in your life until it helps.

No matter who you are, where you have been, or what you have done, Jesus has never given up on you. Jesus remains ready to give you the gift of himself this Christmas season. Give receiving a chance. Make some more room in your heart for God this Christmas. The best Christmas gift you’ll ever receive is the one God gave more than 2000 years ago.

(The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland.)