Christmas is beautiful. It’s winter-jackets and scarves and hats as you venture out into the cold with friends. It’s singing spontaneous carols in the car and in stores and at home. It’s lights, lights everywhere, and decorations and festivity and joy. It’s the end of the semester when you get to go home. There’s something about the holiday that inspires joy in people’s hearts. I mean, the day after Thanksgiving, BAM, there it is. Suddenly there's carols in the air and those old Christmas programs on TV. Suddenly we're digging our winter accessories out of storage. Suddenly we start thinking about giving gifts. We start thinking about coming home and spending time with family and friends.
Funny thing is, I don’t think many other holidays have this kind of impact. At least here in the U.S., Christmas seems to be the one that gets all the attention and makes the biggest shift in attitude. Makes you wonder why.
Now of course, a cynical perspective would be that it’s simply marketed more, since Christmas time is prime time for commercial America. But, while that might be unfortunately true, there’s something else to the holiday.
Oh, wait a minute. This is a Christian holiday, isn’t it?
Well, yes, I suppose so. Christmas was intended to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ (even though Jesus wasn’t even born in December!). But what’s interesting is that a lot of the people who celebrate Christmas aren’t actually Christian. And we are reminded of that—as the holidays roll around, more and more of those bumper stickers and signs pop up: “Remember the Reason for the Season”, accompanied by a cross or a nativity scene.
While it’s honorable that Christians want to retain the sanctity of their holiday, I think that Christmas, while originally meant to be solely Christian, has expanded into something more inclusive—and instead of fighting it, perhaps it’s a notion that should be embraced.
Let me explain.
To a lot of people, Christmas is a time for joy and giving. It’s happiness and spending time with family and friends. It’s putting decorations on a tree and putting a lot of effort into wrapping beautiful gifts and finding the best cover of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”.
There is of course the complaint that Christmas has become so commercialized that the original meaning of joy and giving has been lost. And maybe Christians look at the non-Christians celebrating their holiday, and think that they’re the ones commercializing it, stealing away the joy and giving that their Messiah is supposed to represent on December 25th.
That’s not necessarily true. There’s a lot of non-Christians who don’t like the commercialized side of Christmas. What’s amazing to me is that even if they don’t believe in Jesus or go to church, they are still able to feel the joy that Christians feel. They are still partaking in the giving of gifts and the sharing of love during this time of the year.
I mean, isn’t that awesome?
I suppose Christians would rather have these people believe in Jesus and go to church before they “take advantage” of their holiday. But to me, I think it’s beautiful seeing the joy and love and peace on earth being shared outside of the religious community. Back when I was a Christian, I always considered the Gospel to be less about converting people into Christianity, and more about spreading love. And if Christmas is what it takes to spread joy and love and peace on earth—regardless of whether or not those who celebrate it go to a church service on Christmas morning—then why not let it be celebrated by those outside of the church?
Christmas to me is joy—and I want to share that with whoever I can. There’s something magical about this Christmas feeling, and I love that even though I'm not what you'd call a "traditional Christian" anymore, I can still feel the joy that accompanies this time of the year.
