WHEN CHRISTMAS WAS A GIFT
“...the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” Romans 6:23
I think it would be safe to assume that up until a few decades ago the great majority of all households in Australia celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ at Christmas. Who doesn’t remember, when as children, our sheer pleasure of opening parcels with a variety of oohs and aahs as we ripped away the wrapping?
We all know this ‘ritual of Christmas’ was played out by believers and unbelievers alike and in many cases its message was soon lost on families as the busyness of life re-engulfed most of our population.
Today in this country, and I venture to say, in a growing number of Western Countries, Christmas has, at best, become something of a joke, or even a dirty word in million of homes across these lands. Third World cultures and First World cultures are facing off in ways never seen before and the atheists of this world have seized on this ‘clash’ to, they hope, hasten the destruction of Christianity.
The ‘Nativity’ rows in schools and shopping centres have waxed and waned over the decades whilst the banners and buntings of Christmas have all but disappeared, to be replaced by the less confronting symbols of a “Happy Xmas”.
Politicians and businesses alike have simply caved in to the pressure of our expanding population and Multiculturalism (for better or worse) has forever changed the faces of our Western Societies.
With the wilful excising of Christ from the Christmas message the world has, in fact, thrown God’s gift to humanity back in His face.
As an ever-shrinking minority in this country, Christians are becoming more and more the target and ridicule or abuse. The vitriolic nature of these attacks is evidenced in the correspondence concerning articles or videos on YouTube etc. Evolutionists such as Professor Richard Dawkins and his co-horts have raised the bar in their ridicule and slander of all things Christian - testing the faith some young, and not so young, believers.
Whilst we acknowledge that Christmas may well have its roots in a variety of pagan festivals imported in the Roman Church of the fourth century, it none the less has given multitudes of believing Christians, not only a time to celebrate the birth of the Saviour, but a ready harvest of souls more open to the Gospel than perhaps they may have been at any other time during that year.
One might ponder a while on how many people have come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus in a Christmas service!
This writer is well aware of more than a few who have broken their hearts before the altar and reached out to a loving God who had given this world its very first Christmas almost two thousand years before.
Christmas can work its wonders on even the most hard-hearted of men and women, for even that aforementioned super atheist Dawkins reserves a soft spot for Christmas and its trappings in his Gospel-hardened heart!
His own testimony details his defence of that season, which exclusively belongs to the followers of Christ, with a fervour that would outdo some believers as he freely admits that he celebrates Christmas - and enjoys singing traditional Christmas carols each festive season and that he happily wishes everyone a Merry Christmas - and also confesses that he used to have a tree at home when his daughter was younger.
Dawkins, one of the most famous atheists in the world, was interviewed by Sheffield born Travis Cocker when he stepped in as a Christmas guest editor on Radio Four's Today programme.
“I am perfectly happy on Christmas day to say Merry Christmas to everybody,' Dawkins said. “I might sing Christmas carols - once I was privileged to be invited to Kings College, Cambridge, for their Christmas carols and loved it”.
“I actually love most of the genuine Christmas carols. I can't bear Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and you might think from that that I was religious, that I can't bear the ones that make no mention of religion. But I just think they are dreadful tunes and even more dreadful words. I like the traditional Christmas carols.”
Dawkins said his family had a typical Christmas celebration each year like so many others.
“We are not kill-joys, we are not scrooges,” he said. “We give each other presents and when my daughter was a bit younger we would have a tree. We don't now.
“We go to my sister's house for Christmas lunch which is a lovely big family occasion. Everybody thoroughly enjoys it. No church of course”.
This double mindedness of Dawkins (or was that hypocrisy?) simply beggars belief - but it does give one hope that even one of the leaders of this world’s current crop of God-haters might only be a heart beat away from salvation!
Christmas in Church has always been a blessing to me personally but I am somewhat saddened by those good Christian folk who shun all forms of Christmas celebrations and especially avoid the chance to share with their unsaved family or friends after Church.
I will admit things can get out of hand when there is an excess of ‘merriment’, but a casual retreat to safer climes, is probably better than a no-show in the first place. Even that discreet withdrawal can evoke, in some, a silent witness that may prove to be more effective than a multitude of words.
Christmas evokes a multitude of emotions in peoples all around the globe. Some embrace the hope that was immersed in the birth of a babe in an obscure manger, while others despise the very concept of a sacrificial figure reuniting fallen man to an ‘angry god’. Others, on a purely sensual plane enjoy the fun of Christmas while others sense their great loneliness much more acutely than they do at any other time.
What parent, who loves his or her children, is not filled with an incredible rush of joy and pleasure as their gift is laid before his excited child or children? Will he like it, will he want to keep it and enjoy it for years to come?
Friends, as we celebrate the birth of our Wonderful Saviour please reflect for a moment on what responses must have pulsed through the heart and soul of our Heavenly Father as he laid His eternal Gift before mankind in that hand crafted crib in Bethlehem.
Knowing His parental pleasures would soon be crushed by the wilful rejection of His Precious Gift; God none the less un-wrapped the babe of His garments of Majesty to expose the swaddling cloth which encased His only begotten Son.
His chosen children, the ‘apple’ of His eye would mock, scourge and reject the most beautiful possession Heaven could bestow upon creation. Israel and the world at large, in the form of Imperial Rome, have turned away from God’s Love to embrace a dead religion or a secular cult of might and power.
It remains the same until today, save for those souls who have embraced the first Christmas to follow that babe, now the ruling Monarch of the Universe, to a safe and eternal salvation.
The “Christmas without Christ”, which Dawkins and millions of others like him embrace, is nothing more than a ‘bauble filled delusion of death”, one from which there is no escape.
Only those who experience, and know, the loving kindness of the great and gracious God of Creation, can receive His great Christmas gift of the Lord Jesus Christ! Rod Rowland
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