Do we want Christ or just Christmas?

In “the Great Divorce” C.S. Lewis tells of the ghost of an artist that has arrived in the valley of the shadow of life.  The artist’s ghost is struck by the beauty of the scene and has a great desire to paint what he sees.  In the following conversation the ghost and a person talk about how the artist lost his love for the ‘light’ and replaced it for the love of painting.  The person tells the ghost, “If you are interested in the country only for the sake of painting it you will never learn to see the country.”  Later the person tells the ghost that every poet, musician and artist is, “drawn away from the love of the thing he tells to love of the telling.  Till down in deep hell they cannot be interested in God at all, but in only what they say about Him.”

That is the danger that we face in the grandeur of Christmas. 

Christmas is the one time of year that a secular society seems most interested in the telling of the story of Christ.  Try as it might the symbols, stories, traditions, and rituals of Christmas point to the incarnation.  Everything points to the miracle of God eternal becoming fully human, being wrapped in cloth and placed in a feeding stall.  Efforts to debunk Christmas as myth always turn back to the fact that something happened that was beyond the realm of natural.  To attempt to replace Merry Christmas with Happy Holiday begs the question, “What are these Holy Days for which you wish me happiness?  Who and what make them holy?  What does it mean that these days are themselves holy? What does holy mean?”  Everything about Christmas points toward the manger.

As Christians we have to deal with the danger of loving the opportunity Christmas represents to the exclusion of the one we celebrate.   I consider myself a Christmas purest which can be a mistake for a Grinch.  I dislike the shallowness, commercialism, market exploitation and secularization of Christmas.  When in local ministry I worked very hard at leading the church to avail itself of the worship, evangelistic and discipleship occasion that was Christmas.  Beginning in September I began writing scripts, researching, and planning our Christmas Gala.  It became one of the things I loved most about our church year.  In retrospect, did I love the telling more than the hero of the story?  I wonder if creating the perfect event didn’t take precedent over the focus?  I look back with great fondness to the moments, but are they moments of worship or sentimental remembrance?

I hope your anticipation of the Christ and your celebration are wonderful and grand occasions.  But I also hope they pale in comparison to your encounter with the Christ.