Dec 20, 2020
Every Day a Holiday
12-21-20
Christmas should not be confined to one day, or one season, a year. This is not an anti-commercialism rant, or not only that. Of course the “spirit” of Christmas should be with us all year long, but that veers to the sloganeering: Peace On Earth and other sentiments, as important as they are.
But anything that diverts us, even nobly, from the realization of the Incarnation – the astonishing, crazy, illogical, radical, loving invasion of our lives by the Creator of the Universe, should make us laugh and weep and sing every of of the year.
Jesus didn’t come for Christmas.
Jesus didn’t come for Christians.
Jesus came that all might become Christians – believers in Him.
Jesus didn’t come for a lot of the things we associate with Christmas… because those associations persuade us to unwrap them, and then put them away with other decorations, for another year.
God’s goodness and mercy are not meant to be commemorated and call down more in one “relevant” season, more than in the rest of the year. Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection should not be contemplated during Easter alone. I wonder if there has ever been a church that has celebrated Christmas and Easter on each others’ dates! Odd? No merely rare, but perfectly appropriate contemplation, veneration, and truths.
OK – I’ll tell you what’s out of place in this idea. Santa Claus, overweight, that full head of hair and whiskers, in that head-to-toe flannel outfit. Sleighs, snowmen, all those things on Christmas cards – in Springtime? Or… hunting for colored eggs; bunnies; fancy hats – in the middle of Winter?
The trappings of these holidays – holy days – are actually just that: Traps.
Jesus has been born into your life every day of your life; not on December 25. God chose to become human to bear witness, to remind us that He knows of our sorrows and dreams and hurts and joys. He came to fill the need we all have for a Savior… which is the case every day, not one day.
And Jesus took our sins, and takes our sins, upon Himself… not on one Springtime weekend, but every moment of our lives. Not only that, but while we were yet sinners. He suffered rejection, torture, death. Good Friday is today. He rose from the dead. That is still true, not an ancient tradition. He ascended to Heaven, and He still reigns.
I do not condemn Christmas trees because they had a pagan origin; nor colored eggs as symbols of fertility in some peoples’ rites. All things are made new. But let us not condemn ourselves to mechanical celebrations and misguided holidays, either. When we are Children of the King, wherever we stand is Holy Ground. Whenever we acknowledge Him is a Holy Day.
Maybe we need to give a new meaning to that nickname of Christmas and Easter Christians, “Chreasters”! Let’s take it back!
Oh, we need peace on earth, and we need goodwill toward men on whom God shows favor. We are compassed about by fears and dangers – some imagined; some very real. But our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness; not Santas and bunnies.
Lest I drift into even more clichés, I challenge you to call to mind “other” Christian observances, every time one greets you – especially at Christmas and Easter. Our Savior was, after all, the Alpha and the Omega.
The Beginning and the End. Jesus came to die. That we might live. The Lord of all, come as a baby. The Lord Almighty, surrendering to suffering and death.
A country singer named Joey Feek can give birth to a Downs’ Syndrome baby and then learn she has terminal cancer… and sings Jesus Loves Me. The blind opera singer Andrea Bocelli can sing Amazing Grace – “I was blind, but now I see,” and mean it.
You figure it out. I’ll just worship Him. Every day is a holy day.
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Indeed!