Beyond the Manger

The celebration of Christmas has become a cultural tradition as well as a religious observance in Western societies. When something religious becomes merged with culture, the original purpose and reason for the observance can easily become lost.

Many people who lament the secularization of Western culture often become especially irate during the holidays if any of the cultural symbols of Christmas are removed. At this time of year there are always fights between cultural conservatives and their liberal and more secular antagonists about the public displays of traditional Christmas symbols such as the Nativity Scene. The age-old discussion of the appropriate division of Church and State gets rehashed in the media during the holiday season.

Western societies cannot deny the influence of the so-called Judeo-Christian world-view on our culture and its laws and traditions. Of course, that does not mean that everyone in Western societies is Christian. The civilization that was built on these Judeo-Christian values was one of the first in history to recognize the separation of the State from the Church and promise the freedom of religion to its citizens.

But not everyone finds it easy to check their religious and cultural traditions at the door when entering the public sphere. How to actually separate Church and State means different things to different people. Those who would put a Nativity Scene in the lawn of every county courthouse would be horrified to suddenly be told that Ramadan was made a national holiday!

Originally the celebration of Christmas was the Western Church’s attempt to replace the pagan yuletide celebrations of the pagan barbarians that had invaded Europe. When the Roman Empire, which had already made Christianity its official religion, began to be overrun by Germanic hordes the Church sought to evangelize these pagan tribes. As the modern map of Europe began to take shape, most of the former barbarians had become at least nominally Christian. It was the Church’s goal to make sure these converted pagans did not return to their old habits.

In Christendom, as Christian Europe came to be called by historians, there was nothing like the modern notion of the separation of Church and State. Religious observance, like Christmas, simply became merged with the culture and soon calcified into tradition. And we know that tradition often takes on a life of its own, is almost impossible to kill, and can begin to blur the original meaning of the observance.

Christmas was meant to replace paganism. There is certainly nothing pagan about celebrating the birth of Christ, if that is all Christmas were about.

Unfortunately, we do not know from Scripture when Christ was born and there is nothing mentioned in the New Testament about celebrating the birth of Christ on a regular basis. In other words, Christmas is a human invention and not a Divine mandate. And all human inventions are subject to corruption.

Only two of the four Gospels include details about Christ’s birth and infancy. The rest of the New Testament is completely silent about these details. The burden of teaching in the New Testament has to do with what Jesus did during His earthly ministry, especially His death and resurrection. For the Gospel writers it was the Cross and the empty tomb that really revealed the identity of Jesus as the Christ.

There were some significant revelations when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but these were only given to a select few. The birth of a baby is not usually anything special for the simple reason that a baby has not done anything except be born, which is nothing special and happens in the world every minute of every day.

Now Jesus’ birth was far from ordinary. We would not expect the Son of God to come into the world just like everyone else. However, Jesus was still born a helpless infant and could not even care for Himself. He did not save the world by being born in Bethlehem! If the Mary and Joseph had not received angelic announcements to explain to them what God was doing it is certain they would not have figured it out on their own. The virgin birth certainly needed some explanation!

The point I am trying to make is that the birth of Jesus was not the central event of His life as no man becomes famous just because he was born.

Most of the New Testament was written by the Apostle Paul, who did not witness any of Jesus’s earthly life and ministry, and who wrote absolutely nothing about the significance of the historical details of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. These events were simply not what the Church was founded upon. When Paul and the other Apostles preached the Gospel for the first time publicly, as recorded in the book of Acts, there was nothing mentioned about Jesus’ birth. The Apostles always began the Story with the ministry of John the Baptist, not with the Nativity Scene in Bethlehem.

What has become the biggest Christian holiday celebration is actually based on the most insignificant details of Christ’s life. The baby Jesus could not save us just by being born. Christ’s work of redemption required His atoning death, resurrection, and glorification.

John’s Gospel gives us the theological meaning of Christ’s birth, which is incarnation: God became flesh (See John 1.1-18). The most important truth to be celebrated at Christmas was that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us so that we could know the true God. The claim of the New Testament writers that Jesus was God in human flesh has become one of the most hotly contested aspects of Christian doctrine. I daresay that most of the cultural conservatives who argue for the traditional observance of Christmas usually say precious little about the significance of the incarnation. When we start talking about such things, we have departed from the sentimentality of a cultural holiday and have passed directly into the realm of Theology, which is not so sentimental!

When the Apostles proclaimed that Jesus was Lord, or the King, they were preaching what was also announced at Christ’s birth. But when they preached Jesus as Lord, the Apostles always pointed to the resurrection for proof, not to Jesus’s birth. Even the virgin birth is given no significant doctrinal treatment or emphasis outside of Matthew and Luke. Now I will defend the truth of the virgin birth with all my might because I believe it is integral to our understanding of Jesus. But I also believe that the virgin birth is not the linchpin of the Christian faith.

We must move beyond the manger to Calvary and the empty tomb to really understand the essence of the Gospel message.

Our celebration of Christmas today involves more sentimentality than actual faith in the Son of God.

I am not moving that we strike down Christmas! I have heard people say that Christmas is really a pagan holiday, which is a serious oversimplification of the history of the holiday. Of course there are Christmas traditions that have almost no connection to anything Christian. Plenty of secular additions have been made to the celebration of Christmas. Whether or not this makes Christmas a pagan holiday must in some measure be left up to personal opinion and conscience. I do not think that putting up a tree, hanging stockings over the fireplace, or roasting chestnuts over an open fire have anything to do with the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. But neither do these things strike me as anything seriously connected to paganism!

If there is anything pagan at Christmas it would have to be, in my humble opinion, the gross materialism and commercialism of our celebration. For most people in Western culture the real meaning of Christmas has to do with getting more stuff. And this makes perfect sense because anyone who knows anything about Western culture in the twenty-first century must be aware of the fact that our true religion is not that of Christ but of silver and gold.