Rescuing Christmas. . . From Whom?

A lot of us seem to be concerned about Christmas. More specifically, we seem to be deeply concerned about how other people treat Christmas. Great offense is taken and spirits are troubled when people, businesses, and governments replace "Merry Christmas" with the generic phrase "Happy Holidays," giving rise to warnings about the secularization of Christmas. Those who want to fight those battles are certainly free to do so, and I respect their motives and intentions. Personally, however, I think there is a greater issue of concern when it comes to the secularization of Christmas: our own behavior, attitudes, and priorities as Christians.

On one level, I expect the world around me to secularize Christmas. After all, if someone is not living in a relationship with Jesus, they're probably going to treat Christmas as a general holiday rather than a sacred event. As the followers of Jesus, however, it falls to us to live out and bear witness to the true significance of Christmas. It's at that point that I believe we need to express some serious concern. While we've been busy pointing the finger at the secular world and how they observe or fail to observe Christmas, we have turned a blind eye to the secularized spirit that so often governs our own observance.

The season of Advent should be for us a time of genuine worship, prayer, and reflection that renews and awakens our hearts, fills us again with the wonder of God's love, deepens our gratitude for the God who is truly "with us," brings our attention to His Kingdom at work in this world, and challenges us to lay down our lives in a spirit of sacrificial love. Too often, though, this is not the reality of my Christmas observance. Rather than a time of worship and spiritual renewal, Advent becomes a month shaped and directed by the culture around me, filled with busyness and distraction, planning and spending. In our intent to celebrate the season, we too easily and frequently set aside those things that bring our attention to God, sacrificing time in the Word and in prayer for the surface matters of the holiday. And so, we enter the new year like so many of those around us: tired, overfed, and in debt.

Who is it, exactly, that is responsible for the secularization of Christmas? It's easy to say that secular people are to blame, but perhaps it's really those of us who should know better and are simply blind to our own secular habits. Before we criticize the world around us for its treatment of Christmas, perhaps it would be in order to honestly evaluate our own observance. We might find that, in spirit and priority, we're not really all that different from those we criticize - only the title has been changed.