Why keep Christmas?

With all the commercialization, gluttony, avarice and vice that has corrupted the celebration of Christmas is it still worth the trouble?  Maybe we ought to rename it commerce day, recognize that it is nothing more than an economic stimulus scheme and be done with “Christmas”.  Why keep Christmas?

We must keep Christmas so that we do not forget to remember.  What is at stake in remembrance is nothing less than the eternal destiny of our souls.  A fall from grace maybe difficult, but it is possible and from apostasy there is no return.  The very beginning is not the wrong action, not the indulgence in any of the seven deadly sins.  That is the midway point; that is the end of the beginning and the starting point of the end. 

The beginning of the beginning is in the forgetting.  Forgetting makes it easy for me to imagine grace as a license to sin.  Forgetting makes it easy to occasionally worship at the altar of lesser gods.  It allows me to replace loving obedience with dead ritual or think cold knowledge is a substitute to love God with my whole being.  In forgetting there is familiarity with God, but no longing for Him.

That is why I must make remembering the priority.  I must remember that I am called to love and serve, to faith and works.  I must remember that holiness is more than only the rejection of evil, but also the embracing and engagement of righteousness.  In remembering we are doubly protected, pulled away from the evil that lurks in the dark places of our heart, drawn toward the higher life our Father would see us live. 

That is why we need the rituals of remembrance.  That is why God gave to His chosen people seasons of feasting and days of fasting.  That is why we need moments and mementos of recall.  That is why we need a season to recall the waiting for and the occasion of the incarnation.  That is why we need a season to revisit the garden, the cross, and the empty tomb.  That is why I need the season of the church year and the morning moments with the Bible.  Not because I earn some merit of favor.  But so I don’t forget.

Better men than I have forgotten.  They forgot their place, their commitments their calling.  David forgot and the moment of passion cost him years of misery and a heart in agony.  Moses forgot and his moment of pride became jail bars through which he could see the Promised Land.  Gehazi forgot and he changed from prophet- -heir-apparent to leprous outcast.  Peter forgot and the sound of a rooster sent him crying into the night with the sound of his own curse ringing in his ear.

I am entirely fickle; it is easy for me to forget the challenge of the morning devotion before I have settled into the workday.  The only answer for such a capricious heart is reminders, daily, weekly, hourly-constant reminders.  

I need Christmas to help me remember.  Even in the gratuitous commercialism, the inanity of secular traditions and the blatant appeals to my base nature I need Christmas.  I need to remember that, “God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son.”