Thanksgiving was still a week away this year when the American Family Association called for a Christmas Season boycott of Target stores, saying the chain was refusing to allow the phrase “Merry Christmas” on in-store promotions and advertising. On his show recently, Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly offered a list of other retailers that he says refuse to use “Merry Christmas” in their store advertising. In Maplewood, New Jersey, the high school’s brass ensemble has been prohibited from playing even instrumental renditions of traditional Christmas carols, because as one school official put it, “If you’re familiar with the tune, you know the words. No religious songs!” It seems we can add the United States Postal Service to the list of “Grinches Who Stole Christmas” this year. It appears the USPS won’t be issuing any more “religious” stamps, as they are now considered “offensive.”
We go through this war on Christmas every year! Christians across the country are aggrieved by the secularization of the Season. Teachers in public schools are too intimidated to allow students to sing “Silent Night.” Business owners fear loss of fourth-quarter profits should they offend anyone with a Christmas (i.e. Christian) message. The majority of Americans (regardless of their religious background) believe it is ridiculous to ban nativity scenes in public places. And the war goes on. There’s a just-published book out now by John Gibson entitled, “The War on Christmas.” Now we can read about what we already know and commiserate with everyone else over the secularization of Christmas. Don’t we have anything better to do with the four weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas?
The message of Christmas is not that we should or should not tolerate a phrase or an act or a display that may or may not offend someone who does or doesn’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God! Whether someone believes in Jesus or not does not change the truth that Jesus Christ is a fact of history! This is precisely what President Ulysses S. Grant acknowledged on June 26, 1870 when he declared December 25th a Federal Holiday. But the message of Christmas is so much more than historical fact.
The message of Christmas is that God sent his Son into the world with the Good News of Salvation and Hope for rejected teenagers and wayward children and single parents and rundown husbands and weary wives and critical mothers and brokenhearted women and lonely men and depressed senior citizens and nosy neighbors and annoying relatives and homosexuals and drug addicts and preachers and you (and the guy who refuses to buy a Christmas tree unless it’s marketed as a “Holiday” tree). It’s painfully obvious that none of us are by nature perfect people. But God sent His incomparably perfect Son in the form of a little baby to be our Savior and He wants to change us into His likeness! (Romans 8:29) That is the message of Christmas.
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst.”
- I Timothy 1:15
We know that it was a cold, dark night in the little non-descript village of Bethlehem in Palestine, where a young virgin girl gave birth to this little baby Jesus in the most unsanitary wretched conditions imaginable, standing in the filth and manure of a stable. To call the birth of God’s Son “humble” is almost sarcastic. He lived just as humbly. He was obedient to His Father. He died a substitutionary death. And His powerful resurrection covered the sins of all people of every generation for all time! I Timothy 1:15 is a great summary statement of the Real Message of Christmas: “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners–of whom I am the worst.”
Nobody knows the exact month that Jesus was born, but it is a wonderful tradition that places Christmas one week before New Year's Day. New Year's is a time when we resolve to change things in our lives, and the Message of Christmas is that we can change. As 2005 comes to an end and we look back and reflect, consider the words of Charles Spurgeon:
“If this child who lies before the eyes of your faith, wrapped in swaddling clothes in Bethlehem’s manger, is born to you, my hearer, then you are born again! For this child is not born to you unless you are born to this child.”
- Charles Spurgeon
Has Christ been born to you? Are you born again? Has the message of Christmas touched you? It’s okay to say “Merry Christmas!” In 1870, the President of the United States declared the Birth of Christ a Federal Holiday. And the message of Christmas is that we can be forever changed by his Birth. What could be more Merry? Go ahead and wish people a “Merry Christmas!” The person offended by it the most probably needs the message of Christmas the most. (Might be the guy buying the “Holiday” tree.) Go ahead and say it!
May You Know the CHRIST of Christmas,
- Pastor Mark & Esthermay Bentley-Goossen
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