Secular Christmas went global in 2007 and 2006 - how should we Christians focus on celebrating a true Christmas? Our review of today’s international Christian debate points out that the secret of guarding our Christian hearts lies in expressing our holy joy about the birth of Christ.

By Gloriscope staff — December 20, 2007

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This year’s international controversies about Christmas are not about Christmas celebrations versus absence of Christmas celebrations, but about true Christmas versus false Christmas. The spreading secular tradition of celebrating a December “holiday season” - with Christ taken out and consumerism left in - has gone global and “secular Christmas” is now a huge public event on six continents.

Yesterday, December 19, Pope Benedict XVI criticized secular Christmas in his speech to some 5,000 visitors during his final audience before this year’s Christmas. The Pope said: “If it is not recognized that God was made man, what sense does it have to celebrate Christmas? The celebration becomes empty.”

The rising global popularity of secular “Christmas” is a new phenomenon that has prompted Christians all over the world to think deeper about celebrating Christmas, aiming to safeguard Christian hearts against worldly temptations of secular Christmas.

SECULAR CHRISTMAS GOES GLOBAL

In 2006 and 2007, secular Christmas became a December event of the entire planet, involving hundreds of millions of people on all continents except Antarctica. This turning point has happened because China is the latest big country to have been “conquered” by secular Christmas.

In Asia, where Christians are only a tiny minority of the population, secular Christmas is now a general seasonal celebration in Japan, India, and China. In Japan, where Christmas is not a public holiday, Santa Claus has become the central figure of secular Christmas, Christmas presents are exchanged, stores all over the country carry “Christmas cakes,” “Christmas Chicken” dinners (popularized by Kentucky Fried Chicken company) are increasingly popular, and Christmas Eve has been hyped by Japanese TV. In India, non-Christians celebrate secular Christmas, called “bada din” (”Big Day”), with Santa Claus and presents.

In China, a quick rise of the standard of living over the past few years has created a huge wave of Christmas-style consumerism. Canadian Christians in the large city of Chongqing (population 31 million) in central China, for example, reported a year ago that secular Christmas could be seen everywhere. Department stores played Frosty the Snowman song, waitresses wore Santa Claus caps, and there was huge commerce in Christmas cards, tree ornaments, and Santa Claus suits. The secular Christmas spirit had become so pervasive, that some people started to warn against a Western cultural invasion, reported Philip Bender on the website of the Canadian Mennonite Church.

In Europe, widespread secular Christmas has been a regular annual phenomenon for many years. In Italy, for example, Babbo Natale (”Grandfather Christmas”) is the “Santa Claus equivalent” of the Italian secular Christmas. In Great Britain, secular Christmas is treated as a part of national cultural history – something that even atheists can celebrate. For example, the outspoken British atheist Richard Dawkins declared on BBC ten days ago, “I am a cultural Christian,” and added, “So, yes, I like singing carols along with everybody else.” In fact, secular Christmas carols are a big part of secular Christmas celebrations on all continents.

In the United States, the roots of a federally-legitimized secular Christmas go back to the Great Depression in the 1930s. President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed fighting the Depression by moving the date of the Thanksgiving holiday in order to extend the Christmas season and boost the economy. In 1999, secular Christmas received its official legal legitimacy when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that “the establishment of Christmas Day as a legal public holiday does not violate the Establishment Clause because it has a valid secular purpose.” Officially, secular Christmas is now treated as a holiday celebrating U.S. history, not the birth of Christ. Christmas Day is a legal public holiday mandated by U.S. federal law.

WHAT’S THE BIG DIFFERENCE?

What can Christians do to resist the rising flood of secular Christmas?

First of all, we Christians must recognize the deep difference between Christian and secular celebrations of Christmas. Secular celebrations are products of a godless concept of man, a concept in which questions about God are only marginal in a person’s life. On the other hand, Christian celebration of Christmas springs from the essential identity of a Christian believer as a person in eternal relationship with the living God, who sent His Son to the world to save sinners. These are two radically different conception of man.

We can see these two concepts of man (and Christmas) in all Western societies. In Spain, for example, a blogger wrote yesterday in the blog of the major Spanish newspaper El Pais that “Christmas in our society is a fruit of a certain concept of man.” He wrote: “The man of today’s Spain is a man indifferent to God. Although there are many Catholics, Spain is not a Catholic nation. In practice, people live just as if God didn’t exist. In this way, it is suggested that Christmas touches man only provisionally, in his periphery.”

Non-Christians focus their secular Christmas celebrations on family fun and exchange of presents, because Christ is not real to them. Peter Sellick, an Anglican deacon associate in Western Australia, wrote in December 2003: “The secular celebration of Christmas is really a celebration of the family, of ourselves. … Christmas is not about the family, even though the two birth narratives we find in Luke and Matthew contain references to Jesus’ family. Christmas is about the incarnation: that in Jesus the ‘Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father’ (John 1). If this means nothing to us then we have no pretext to celebrate Christmas.”

The Christmas tree is not the problem.
The problem is my heart.

- Glenn, 29, Wake Forest, North Carolina

The important connection between a believer’s relationship to Christ and a true understanding of Christmas was pointed out also by Cheryl Burge in today’s edition of Winona Daily News, a local newspaper in Minnesota, U.S.A. She writes: “”Presents, decorations and holiday fun cannot satisfy the need for a savior. The message of Christmas is beautiful in its simplicity, wonderful in its promise. John 3:16 tells us why Jesus was born – ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’” (John 3:16)

In South America, the church Jesus Unica Forma de Vivir in Santiago de Chile published an article today that says much the same thing: the true meaning of Christmas is not in presents, but in the fact that God sent His only Son to Earth to liberate us from our sin. “In this birth, there were no presents, trees, cards, and turkeys,” writes Alan Lopez. “Christian Christmas reminds us of the fact that Christ came to the world to make human beings recognize their sin and accept God’s invitation to be free in Christ.”

CHRISTMAS IS A TEST OF OUR HEARTS

“Prove me, O LORD, and try me; test my heart and my mind.”
(Psalm 26:2)

In this perspective, recent international Christian debate about Christmas celebration has focused on a right attitude of heart to Christ’s birth as a source of enormous joy of the Christian.

This spiritual perspective is well illustrated by Glenn, 29, a Christian blogger in North Carolina, U.S.A., in his interesting article “A Biblical Approach to a Secular Christmas.” He writes:

“Putting up a Christmas tree in my living room is not a sin in and of itself. It is only a sin when I value it above my relationship with God. I anticipate bringing it home more than I anticipate my Savior’s return. I get frustrated trying to take it through the front door. I am given to pride when [it] is finally standing tall and decorated in the corner. The Christmas tree is not the problem. The problem is my heart.”

Pope Benedict XVII also points out the that true celebration of Christmas takes place in our heart. In yesterday’s audience speech, the Pope said: “To invoke the gift of the promised Savior’s birth means also to engage oneself to prepare the way for him, to prearrange for him a worthy residence not only in the environment around us, but above all in our heart.” He concluded his speech: “Let us ask the Lord to open up our hearts, so that we would be able to enter into the mystery of his Christmas.”

The central importance of the right relationship with God in celebrating true Christmas was also highlighted during Salvation Army’s annual Christmas concert in the Royal Albert Hall in London late last November. Salvation Army’s Commissioner, Betty Matear, said in her speech that Christmas is not about white snow or Christmas trees, it’s about Christ. “It’s a right Christmas when we are right with God.”

The U.S. blogger American Orthodox Patriot says that “our campaign to reclaim the [Christmas] season begins, as usual, with ourselves – the only thing we do have power over, by the grace of God.” He suggests that we, individual Christians, should “start – or restart – a daily routine of prayer and Bible reading” as some of the things we could do to put true Christmas into our hearts.

THE SECRET OF TRUE CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say, rejoice!”
(The Bible, Philippians 4:4-5)

If Christmas celebration is a spiritual test of our hearts regarding our individual relationship to God, how can a Christian believer “pass” this test? The answer: By expressing a holy joy that God sent His Savior to the world to save us.

Orthodox Archpriest George Morelli in San Diego, California, says in his radio podcast that Christmas is “testing our hearts: the kingdom of God or the kingdom of creatures?” He says in his podcast “Combatting Secular Christmas In Our Families” (posted Dec, 13, 2007) that a Christian has to make a choice in his heart regarding Christmas celebration: “Remember the words of Christ, told to us by St. Matthew, ‘For where your treasure is, there would your heart be also.” (Matthew 6:21)

The test of our hearts is about joy. What is our Christmas joy about: the material trappings of Christmas or Christ’s arrival into the world?

Fr. George Morelli says well in his podcast, ‘The important thing is to unite our joy to Christ. We have to Christify all things. This is the ultimate act of joy.”

“Brothers and sisters, we must not allow such worldly issues as secular Christmas to sidetrack us,” writes pastor Jacky Duncan of The Church of Canoe Creek, a small nondenominational church in Rainbow City, Alabama. “The merry heart of a true Christian comes not from the secular world and its trivial debates, but rather from knowing and loving our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. ‘Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.’ (1 Peter 1:8-9)”

But what about children? How should we teach them the true celebration of Christmas?

Fr. Robert J. Fox of the Fatima Family Apostolate International in Waite Park, Minnesota, a Roman Catholic ministry founded at the encouragement of the Vatican, writes in his article “Is Christ in Christmas?” (published Dec. 11, 2007): “Only Heroic Christian Families Will Survive in our secularized society.” His advice: “Do not excite children about many gifts that Santa might bring. Such leads only to disappointments.” He continues: “Parents, remind your children that Christmas is Christ’s birthday. Ask them: ‘What are you going to give Jesus Christ for his birthday this year?’ Don’t smother children with gifts. Share with them Christ’s love. Christian parents must make their family lives counter-cultural or Christian Families will not survive.”

THE DUTY OF CHRISTMAS EVANGELISM

“So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby,
who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him,
they spread the word concerning what had been told them
about this child, and all who heard it were amazed
at what the shepherds said to them.” (Luke 2:16-18 (NIV)

But holy joy is not the whole point of true Christmas celebration. We need to communicate our joy to non-Christians and explain to them that our Christmas joy springs from remembering the fact that Jesus Christ came into this world to save us from sin and death.

The leader of the British branch of Salvation Army, Betty Matear, said at the Christmas concert in London last November that we should worship Christ for who He is. “We declare unapologetically, clearly and confidently that He is the Son of God.”

Pope Benedict XVI said in his audience speech yesterday that we Christians have a duty to evangelize non-Christians about the true meaning of Christmas: “We Christians must above all reaffirm with conviction the deep and felt truth of Christ’s Nativity, in order to testify in front of all the awareness of an incredible gift which is a treasure not only for us but for all. Out of this springs the duty of evangelism, which is the communication of this ‘eu-angelion’, of this “good news.”

Counter-cultural evangelism can be a source of spiritual pleasure. This is illustrated by Bishop Philip Tartaglia of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Paisley in Great Britain.. Bishop Philip, who was born in Glasgow in Scotland, said in his sermon during the mass on the 3rd Sunday of Advent this December: “Christmas was not even a public holiday when I was a wee boy.” He continued: “To tell you the truth, there was something special about giving witness to the Christmas mystery as a minority group by going out to Mass. It felt a bit like being part of the Church of the catacombs and of the martyrs, and that made Christmas all the more special.”

So, how should we resist secular Christmas and evangelize people around us at the same time? Bishop Philip emphasizes that we can achieve both things by expressing our holy joy about the birth of Christ. He said in his sermon:

“Christmas of course is about being with family and friends, and about exchanging gifts, and we all look forward to that on Christmas Day. But without the joy of the birth of Christ, what would that be? I suspect that even the godless depend on us to give them a reason to celebrate Christmas and to make their Christmas special.”

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(This international media review was first published by Gloriscope.com on December 20, 2007 U.S. Central Time.)

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TO GOD BE ALL THE GLORY!

Published in the U.S.A. Copyright © 4T4C News Corp. 2007. All rights reserved.