Why We Should Keep Christmas

I ran across a list of the “The Top Ten Reasons We Should Keep Christmas.” With all the hustle and bustle of this season of the year, maybe we do need needed to be reminded why Christmas is a good idea. If it were not for Christmas--

• The fruit cake industry would completely collapse!
• Our boring, uneventful lives would have no stress at all!
• Eggnog would just be a slimy, high cholesterol beverage.
• Santa would just be a strange fat man with poor fashion sense!
• Three words— “No Christmas bonus!”
• Goofy snowmen and reindeer sweater would look even more goofy
• You'd have to spend your own money buying stuff that doesn’t fit.
• We would never wonder if reindeer really know how to fly.
• Your cat would never know the joy of coughing up tinsel!
• Number one reason—without Christmas, there could be no Easter!
  

That last one wasn’t meant to be funny (unlike the rest which just weren’t funny on their own). Without the birth of Jesus, there could be no cross and no resurrection. Without the Christmas story, Christianity has no message of eternal life. Unless Jesus really was born into this world as God in the flesh, then there is no story of redemption.

Christmas was originally a pagan holiday that Christians appropriated and connected to the birth of Christ. Sometimes this is cited as a reason not to observe the holiday at all, or at least not connect it to Jesus. Actually, I think that was an ingenious move-- keep new converts from reconnecting with their pagan past by connecting their main holiday with Jesus' birth! Brilliant! To avoid the religious significance of Christmas because of its pagan roots is like refusing to see The Chronicles of Narnia because C. S. Lewis was once an atheist! Lewis was converted long before he sent Lucy through the wardrone. And Christmas was converted long ago as well!

The way we choose to observe or not observe the Christmas holidays is entirely optional as long as our desire is to glorify God (Rom 14:5). What is not optional is the story. If this season reconnects you with the special and central nature of that story of Jesus' birth, then that is a good thing indeed. Merry Christmas.