Christmas and Secularism
It’s finally Christmas and I yet again find myself wondering what is so special about this holiday. My atheist, apatheist, and Jewish friends all celebrate it. In fact, the only people in this country who do not seem to celebrate Christmas are the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who don’t celebrate any holidays or birthdays at any point of the year. I worked last night, waiting tables, and saying “Happy Holidays” seemed contrived, even to those who may or may not have been Christians. So, I started saying “Merry Christmas.” Not in some politically incorrect act of rebellion, rather as a more genuine admission that most everyone will be celebrating today for one reason or another.
And it got me thinking, have non-Christians taken Christmas away from us? This is not an essay about us and them, it will evolve into something quite different. But at the most basic element I think we need to analyze what the secular world has done with Christmas. Department stores, magazines, retail employees, coffee shops, and really all manner of businesses and public matters more or less go with the “Happy Holidays” theme. The pages are splashed with reds and greens but the word “Christmas” will not be found.
Let’s face it: we all know what holiday we are celebrating. Red and green are not the colors of Hanukah, Kwanza, or the New Year. Snowmen and Santa Claus cartoons are also Christmas-specific and let’s not forget that the movie is called A Christmas Story. And strangely all of these things I just listed as associated with Christmas have nothing to do with Christ. Perhaps somewhere in their mythologies they did but that was certainly lost on the December issue of the Macy’s catalogue.
In another point, it is very unlikely that Jesus was even born during the winter season and December 25th is formerly a pagan holiday. To many, this is an irony, a sad underlying truth that Christianity is nothing more than another false religion come to replace the other silly pagan religions of the past. If Christianity was just any religion that might be true.
Not all, but many other religions share an extremely common culture. There’s a common dress code, specific times and directions to pray, standardized music and liturgy. Judaism, Christianity’s forerunner, is one example. Islam is another. Many fundamentalists Christians or hyper-traditional denominations might be accused of the same thing. There is something to be said for corporate liturgy and tradition, I’m not bashing that, but there is an element of Christianity that defies what many fundamentalist religions and denominations miss.
Christianity is redemptive. Jesus came to redeem cultures, not to convert them. It was to take what they already had and renew it, to show what was so great and rich and good about their lives. Lamin Sanneh says:
Christianity answered this historical challenge by a reorientation of the worldview…People sensed in their hearts that Jesus did not mock their respect for the sacred nor their clamor for an invincible Savior, and so they beat their sacred drums for him until the stars skipped and danced in the skies. After that dance the stars weren’t little anymore. Christianity helped Africans to become renewed Africans, not re-made Europeans.
Timothy Keller comments on this passage:
Sanneh argues that secularism with its anti-supernaturalism and individualism is much more destructive of local cultures and “African-ness” than Christianity is. In the Bible, Africans read of Jesus’s power over supernatural and spiritual evil and of his triumph over it on the cross. When Africans become Christians, their African-ness is converted, completed, and resolved, not replaced with European-ness or something else.
[Both passages are from page 42 of Timothy Keller’s Reason for God]
Africans retained their culture and music, but they redirected it and subjected it to a greater framework. They didn’t put down their drums for pipe organs, rather subjected their drums to a God who could explain and defeat the spirits they worshiped before.
If Christianity is redemptive and therefore Christmas is redemptive, then can it really be taken from us? In some small ways I suppose so. The media and retail stores have done well to sidetrack us all. Even Christians have more or less loss sight of the Christian elements of Christmas.
Even in its secularized form Christmas is still redemptive. Perhaps is Christianity never succeeded as a religion we would still observe some giving-based holiday like Christmas, but we don’t. It’s a time when homeless non-believers can go to soup kitchens and be fed by giving non-believers. It’s a time when people who are selfish are finally scorned and those who are giving, regardless of their creed, are praised. We as a society and culture formally recognize the power of love and giving and family. And we do it on a day that, whether we like it or not, is all because around two thousand years ago the most powerful example of love and giving and family was brought into this world. That's not a slight on non-believers, rather an encouragement to Christians. Because Christmas is rooted in something so powerful, it can't be taken away from us and as long was we remain in Jesus then we have nothing to lose by sharing our holiday with those who don't necessarily celebrate for the same reasons. We should be happy to invite others to the proverbial table.
Interesting enough, Christmas happens right after winter solstice. It happens right after the darkest days of the year. And every day is brighter from here.
