The Obligation of Christmas
Some time ago, and I can’t really ever recall the moment, someone gave me the obligation to keep up the traditional Christmas tradition. Today I’m letting it go. And in the words of Sara Groves, I simply realized that “I can’t afford it.”
Don’t get me wrong. I love Christmas and will celebrate it this year. But I won’t be taking part in the flow that simply does it because were supposed to. I’m doing it because I want to. And there’s a big difference between the two.
I want to celebrate Jesus and engage what it means to live with a sense of expectancy rather than wait until the last moment and wonder, “Is it Christmas…again?” I want to discover what it means to give this year without expectation of anything in return, rather than mindlessly buy something for someone who doesn’t really need it anyway. I want to tell stories to my children about what the traditions mean, rather than just stick an ornament on the tree. I want to wake up on the 25th and realize that I’m celebrating the birth of Jesus, not the arrival of Santa Claus. I want to feast as a recognition of God’s blessing, not because it…because it…well it’s just what we’ve always done.
I think I know when I broke. I think it was standing in line at Starbucks and as I waited for my Chai tea latte, I overheard a woman talking about how she was just getting everyone gift cards this year because everyone complained about what they didn’t get last year. Or it might have been the girl at Chipotle complaining about how many people she had to buy for and how she simply couldn’t afford it this year. She didn’t know what to do. Or it may have been the moment I drove past Valley Fair on the freeway and the line to get into the shopping center was TWO MILES long. Or maybe it was hearing that we spend 45 billion on cosmetics in the U.S. and it would cost ten billion to SOLVE the clean water problem in the world. (I’m not picking on cosmetics. It just happened to be the stat I heard). And as I began to really listen to the people around me I realized that Christmas has become a burden, a thing, an obligation that has lost it’s true meaning. And the weight of that was evident everywhere around me.
Skye Jethani posted this excerpt at Our of Ur blog regarding his Christmas experience,
“Last week my wife and I got all of our Christmas shopping done—in one day. This blitzkrieg approach has become a tradition for us. It’s like pulling a tooth; better to have the whole thing out at once. In the evening we treated ourselves to a victory dinner at a restaurant. While savoring my accomplishment and my meal, I watched A Charlie Brown Christmas on the television above the bar. Ah, Christmas in America—spend all day battling the crowds at the mall and have Luke chapter 2 recited to you by a cartoon character at night.”
I listen to Skye’s experience and I know what that feels like. Somewhere along the way, it just somehow got screwed up. And the cost of that is a really bad credit card bill and a season that no longer is fulfilling. And I can’t afford that anymore.
I don’t really want to tell anyone how they should celebrate Christmas. I only know that how I don’t want to celebrate Christmas the way I used to. I want to abandon it so I can redeem the season. The church seems to be worried so much about how the world now calls the Christmas season “holiday”. And part of me is asking why are we surprised. They don’t know Jesus. And silly us. We’ve followed right along and captured the spirit of consumerism. I’m not throwing stones. I’m first in line of the guilty.
But I recognize that it must always be the church that leads the way to redemption. It must be His children that redeems the season, not the world. I don’t need other people to tell me the it’s okay to abandon so much of the traditions that we hold sacred yet have now become anchors to debt and confusion. I must first take that step on my own.
So I invite you this Christmas to abandon the obligation of Christmas, the vapid spending that provides an instant thrill but eventually leaves us with an empty heart as well as a pocketbook. I invite you to help lead the way to redeeming the season in such a way that the world begins to take notice. For those interested, you may want to check out Advent Conspiracy.
To Read Other Posts in this synchroblog, see below:
- Recapturing the Spirit of Christmas at Adam Gonnerman’s Igneous Quill
- Swords into Plowshares at Sonja Andrew’s Calacirian
- Fanning the Flickering Flame of Advent at Paul Walker’s Out of the Cocoon
- Lainie Petersen at Headspace
- Sam Norton at Elizaphanian
- Brian Riley at at Charis Shalom
- Secularizing Christmas at JohnSmulo.com
- There’s Something About Mary at Hello Said Jenelle
- Geocentric Versus Anthropocentric Holydays at Phil Wyman’s Square No More
- Celebrating Christmas in a Pluralistic Society at Erin Word’s Decompressing Faith
- Redeeming the season — season of redemption by Steve Hayes
- Remembering the Incarnation at Alan Knox’ The Assembling of the Church
- A Biblical Response to a Secular Christmas by Glenn Ansley’s Bad Theology
- Happy Life Day at The Agent B Files
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Bryan Riley
