Much is made these days of the toxic pollution of the modern Christmas spirit.  Secularization and commercialization are destroying the spiritual vitality of the greatest holiday of the year, or so it is reported annually right along with turkey leftovers.

Certainly Christmas has been burdened down with a season running as long as modern presidential elections and with the expectation that it will annually balance the bank accounts of the nation’s retailers.  This year the holiday is touted as the last great hope in the current melodrama of economic woes.

There has long been a great gulf fixed between the secular and the sacred in the holiday season.  Santa and the Babe in the manger rarely meet, except in awkward bumps.  When they do clash, jingle bells seem to drown out the ringing of the church bells.  There are special days for certain minority groups (Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Kwanza, for example) and then Christmas for everyone else, even the truly nonreligious, for whom Santa or winter lights serve as manger babe substitutes.

But before we Christians jettison this supposedly evil spirit of Christmas Present, let’s take one more look at what it might have to offer.

The China Story

When my family and I first moved to China in 1995, Christmas observance was all but banned.  Slowly but surely Christmas found its way into the national landscape, particularly the urban one, until today Christmas Eve rivals Chinese New Year, at least for intensity among the youth.  Offspring of Communist party members, the privileged and the educated throng the streets on this “Peaceful Eve”, mixing Valentine’s Day roses and sentimentality with New Year fireworks and partying while packing the open churches and homes of Christians with the curious and spiritually hungry.

Party cadres and government officials invite foreigners to present the true biblical Christmas story (in all its meaning) at public school parties and village ceremonies.  Police are called out to help manage the crowds of youth packing into the churches by the thousands.  For one night a year, church attendance is the “in” thing where the gospel is freely preached.

How has it happened that a nation that so aggressively promotes a religion of secularism and atheism has come to so readily embrace such an overtly religious holiday?  In China, the only ones who openly oppose Christmas are the few Westerners who pronounce “bah humbug” on any too joyful and carefree a celebration of the Advent. 

The secret of China’s embrace is in the secularization of Christmas in the West.  Christmas has become a truly global holiday for all people, not just Christians.  If it were a purely religious event, Christmas in China would be as unknown as Easter is. 

Are we really being shut out?

Even in America, Easter lies faintly in the shadows, a mere shell of a holiday in comparison.  There are various theories as to what has caused this disparity.  Regardless, secularized commercialization of Christmas is clearly the reason the true meaning of the Advent can be so openly proclaimed in the world’s largest nation which is also officially atheistic and one with scarcely any Christmas traditions of its own.

There may be plenty of examples of how the true message of Christmas has been shut down in our modern America.  But is the message of Easter any less “shut down”?  Who hears about Easter, or better yet, Good Friday anymore, with the notable exception of the release of the movie, “The Passion”?  When I was a teenager, Good Friday was a school holiday and townspeople thronged to three-hour long community services.  Today the spring dates barely register on the public psyche, except for egg hunts and chocolate-filled baskets.

Not so with Christmas.  Over the next two weekends, the calendar will be packed with events.  My own kids are singing in a musical performance proclaiming an overt Gospel message.  Neighbors, schoolmates and all sorts of secular types who never come to church otherwise will swell the attendance to 15,000 during the 10 concerts at Portland Christian Center.  If it were not for the holiday hunger of our non-religious neighbors and the commercial thrill Santa brings, might not Christmas be as ill-celebrated among modern Christians as Easter and Good Friday are? 

On final analysis, are we Christians actually hindered in celebrating a truly spiritual holiday?  My family will observe traditions older than we are along with some new ones we just invented yesterday.  At the heart of gift-giving and charitable donations and “The Nutcracker Suite” and a family reunion feast of biblical proportions, we will know and communicate the message of Jesus’ birth just as much now as we did when I was a kid a half-century ago.  As ever, Christians are free to do what they will with their own sacred holidays.

What should WE do?

I too am concerned that the true spirit of the season not be lost in the festive frenzy.  As Christians we do well to hold ongoing evaluation of our lifestyles, spending and expressions of exuberance.  For example, Advent Conspiracy and the Oregon Center for Christian Values call for thoughtful effort to be made to imbue Christmas with its original intent to reconcile the Good News to the poor.  But the onus to do so is on us, not on the world which has come to our party by our invitation.

Sure, Christmas used to be respected as a religious holiday by even the heathen, but then I am not certain the audience was any more or less responsive to the Savior’s arrival than it is now.  Meanwhile, the secularization of Christmas gives the Gospel an open door it has at no other time of the year.  Not everyone will receive our greetings of “Merry Christmas” in the check out line, but far more people may well hear the true message of Christmas than if it were not so awkwardly and enthusiastically embraced by our modern secular world.

How quickly we forget that Jesus was not born on December 25.  Scholars tell us that the ancient church embraced a pagan non-Christian holiday to bring the Good News of Messiah’s birth to the larger marketplace of ideas.  We should do no less: reclaim Christmas by embracing the secular and infusing it with the sacred where we can, welcoming the profane throngs of the modern marketplace to experience the true meaning of Christmas along with their own secular and commercialized trappings. 

Such was the spirit of the original Christmas when the vulgar shepherds and later the religiously questionable wise men attended the Manger Babe’s birthday party.  An opportunity for the sacred is often found in the open doorway of the profane.  Come and see just where this Babe was born.  You’ll be surprised to find the world there, too, because the world is where he was born.