Written by Erin Grant
The season is here. Lights, ornaments and Christmas trees appear all over campus. Finals arrive and pass, and then we return home to family, an abundance of food and Christmas festivities. We rush from store to store frantically buying last-minute gifts, then feverishly work preparing meals and cleaning the house for guests. (At least, this is how it usually works at my home.)
And all throughout, we try to remember to pay tribute to the real “reason for the season” through casual and occasional lip-service over cake, punch and colorfully wrapped gifts. And in the back of our minds, we tell ourselves that Christmas is about something more, but our acknowledgement seldom travels beyond the boundaries of thought.
This is the frequently-experienced scenario. More and more, Christmas, instead of a remembrance of Christ’s birth and sacrifice, becomes an end in itself. This begs the question: how does Christmas affect us, really? How should it affect us?
Ultimately, Christmas is a time of remembrance. The most apparent occasion to consider is Christ’s birth, which is itself a breathtaking event. An old pastor of mine stated the situation quite aptly: Imagine living a life in a warm, comfortable household, possessing everything good you could ever need or desire. Then, one day, your father comes to you and says that you need to leave the home; not just for a day, but for years, in order to gather others who are less fortunate into your dwelling. But you cannot take any of your belongings, and the outside world presents a cruel and harsh life compared to your home.
Yet you step outside. It is bitter, pitiless and treacherous. Fear threatens, but still you complete your father’s task so that others might experience the joys you have known your entire life.
This is the scenario of Christ. His birth was not simply coming to earth, but surrendering the ultimate perfection in heaven to step into a world steeped in an evil from which, at the Cross, even God himself turned away. It was a situation in which even Christ faced fear; this fact reveals much concerning Christ’s relationship with mankind.
C.S. Lewis remarked, “You needn’t worry about not feeling brave; our Lord didn’t—see the scene in Gethsemane. How thankful I am that when God became man he did not choose to become a man of iron nerves; that would not have helped weaklings like you and me nearly so much.”
Christ does not exist as a distant deity who reaches down to pat our heads and console us when we face troubles.He is a Christ who lived among us, suffered with us and now walks with us, bearing our yokes with us so that we might not have to carry our troubles alone. He understands our sufferings because he went through them before us.
But why did Christ die for us, really? The answer to this also contributes heavily to the inherent meaning of Christmas. A man named George McDonald once stated, “The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.”
Christ’s birth and death were not merely about heaven for us, but about changing history and the way we view life. God didn’t say that because he died, we would live our lives in pleasure. He didn’t die so that we wouldn’t have to pursue a Christian life, but so that we could pursue a Christian life in him; he didn’t die so that the poor would no longer exist, but so that the poor could be given hope in him.
In the end, he didn’t die so that we wouldn’t have to carry our crosses, but that he might help us carry them. We are called to become like him, and that means to live out his ministry on earth.
Christmas remains notorious as a time of heightened generosity and purported selflessness, a time where Christ-like character often emerges even from normally morose “scrooges”; but what would it look like if we lived Christ in this way out for 365 days instead of 30? Christianity is a lifestyle, not an interim.
Christ came to show us how to live; he died so that we might have new life in him, and we are to show others this new life. He fed the poor; now, we are to do the same. He came to help us bear our own crosses; today, we are to help others bear theirs. In these actions exists the true significance of Christmas.
Ralph W. Sockman, a senior pastor and writer of several bestselling books, once said, “The hinge of history is on the door of the Bethlehem stable.” Christ not only came to give us new life, but to show us how to live it.
Christmas is not just about the child coddled in Mary’s arms beneath the watching eyes of angels, men and cattle, but about God reaching down to mankind in such a way that shattered the norms and traditions of this world, impacting history so that that nothing could ever remain the same.
The veil between heaven and earth was torn, our bonds to sin have shattered and the Son of God now dwells among us. And we are called to be like him. This is his charge. He fulfilled a ministry we are expected to follow daily. He created a path, and now we must follow his footsteps as people willing to impact the world the same way he did millennia ago.
We must possess the willingness to daily pursue his example toward others in ways that testify the cross, his name, and his ultimate will: to bring others to him. This is the true meaning of Christmas.
