The Need for Christmas

One of my life-long dreams has been to be in a place with a white Christmas. To be rugged up, looking upon snow fall next to beautiful, coloured lights while hearing the soft, gentle carols being sung in a near-by church. The well-known painter, Thomas Kinkade, conveys this Christmas imagery in such fine detail; one of the big reasons why I love his work.

I suppose many of us picture a white Christmas, and certainly think of presents and family celebrations when the word "Christmas" comes to mind. However, I wonder if it’s getting too easy to get caught up in the fuss of this holiday season, that we forget what really matters. Christmas isn’t just about getting time off work, opening presents and singing carols, it’s so much more than the material pleasures and the temporary joy. Christmas is about having eternal hope, eternal love, and eternal joy. The birth of Jesus Christ that we celebrate at this time of year is about pondering and reflecting on the eternal gifts that God gives us, such as everlasting life in Heaven.

I believe it can be so easy to not recognise the importance of Christmas when all is going well. The true purpose I believe why we need and celebrate Christmas is not because our lives are perfect in any way, but because our lives are messy and uncertain. We need hope, peace, and comfort in our lives, and the reason why we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ in the first place is to remind ourselves, and others of those things we need. I remember a few years ago when social distancing was a massive part of society, and gatherings were limited to a small number of people. During those times I was to say the least, discouraged to celebrate Christmas, because what I knew as Christmas, was being discouraged itself.

Christmas has become a very secular celebration in the western world. I’ve noticed it when people use the term “Xmas”, or just the “the holiday season” instead of the word “Christmas”. Despite the nativity scene still playing a role in some people’s houses, many decorations and symbols of Christmas have strayed away from religious imagery and have been replaced with symbols such as Santa Claus, Christmas trees, candy canes and Christmas stockings. It’s simple to get absorbed in the secular way of celebrating Christmas, however, the authentic beauty of Christmas is about the light of the world literally coming to meet us where we are.

That first Christmas when Christ was born, was not all that peaceful, despite the calming words of Silent Night, or Away in a Manager that we may joyfully and peacefully sing to. Even the fact that Jesus was born where animals were kept, and that Mary or the Baby wouldn’t have received any medical treatment. We literally can't imagine having to give birth in a stable, let alone in the 1st century. Within one year or so of Christ’s birth, troops of King Herod were sent out in order to kill the infant Jesus. The Holy Family (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph) were sent into exile into Egypt to escape the massacre. But amidst all of that, people came to see the new Saviour of the world, and through that, they were given peace and hope. The world has always been filled with despair and hardships, but that’s why Jesus came, to bring hope into the world.

To be honest, until I read and understood the world that is shown through the pages of the Old Testament, I didn’t understand the true significance and amazement of having the Son of God literally come to earth. Before I understood this, I treated Christmas as a nice old story of a very special someone coming to earth and believing that life just went on as usual. It was a much too familiar story for me to understand the magnitude of it. However, to think of it now would be imagining myself being in Israel and Palestine, or the Ukraine, and being promised that someone would come to save me and give me hope, and then one day hearing that, that person had arrived.

One significant thing that I find beautiful is the typology and the relationship that Christmas has to the Old Testament. For example, in the story of the birth of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel, when it talks about the shepherds minding the flock and the Heavenly Host appearing and singing praises to the Lord; this isn’t just a sweet little story by itself. It was in fact the first time that the Heavenly Host appeared to people after centuries.

Christmas is truly a glorious thing, and since beginning to understand the deep essence of it, it has changed the way I view this time of year; and how I see the Old Testament. I hope and pray that I can always see the richness of what it means to have the Saviour of the world being born for me, and the whole world.