Focus on the REAL reason for the season: the birth of Christ
By
Mike Haynes
Kathy and I watched “A Charlie Brown
Christmas” the other night on Panhandle PBS. It’s been around since 1965, and
nothing has changed about the commercialization of the holiday that helps send
Charlie Brown into a gloomy funk.
Near the end, Linus reminds us that the birth of Jesus is what Christmas is all about.
Today, I’m looking at some comments
about Christmas from three of my “heroes of the faith” who saw Christ as “the
reason for the season” before somebody coined that catch phrase.
Let’s go in chronological order:
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| John Wesley |
John Wesley (1703-1791)
United Methodist Professor David
Watson wrote in 2016 that while many Christmas sermons focus on the Golden
Rule, giving and being kind – our relationships with others – Methodist founder
John Wesley stressed the transformation that Christ’s coming to Earth made
possible in each life.
Watson wrote, “This transformation – receiving the capacity to serve God
faithfully – was made possible through the Incarnation.” He quoted Wesley’s
notes on John 1:14:
“In order to
raise us to this dignity and happiness, the eternal Word, by a most amazing condescension, was made flesh, united Himself to our miserable nature,
with all its innocent infirmities….” Wesley continued that Jesus’ coming to
Earth accomplished change in men and women that the Law of Moses could not do.
Wesley’s
brother Charles expressed Christ’s gift of potential change in his hymn, “Hark,
the Herald Angels Sing,” according to Watson, in lines such as “peace on earth
and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled,” and “Born that man no more may
die, Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth.”
“So for Wesley,
the coming of Christ means that we can be changed,” Watson wrote. “We no longer
stand in guilt before God, and we are no longer compelled to sin by the power
of original sin. We have peace, happiness, and an abundance of divine goodwill
and favor.”
By the end of
Charles Schultz’s story, Charlie Brown was closer to those gifts of God.
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| C.S. Lewis |
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
Another Brit, writer and professor
C.S. Lewis, would have said “amen” to Lucy’s declaration, “Look, Charlie, let’s
face it. We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket.”
Lewis was no less blunt when in 1957
he wrote in “What Christmas Means To Me:”
“Can it really be my duty to buy and
receive masses of junk every winter just to help the shopkeepers?” In fact,
Lewis even called it a “commercial racket” eight years before Lucy did. “The
idea that not only all friends but even all acquaintances should give one
another presents, or at least send one another cards, is quite modern and has
been forced upon us by the shopkeepers,” Lewis wrote.
Jennifer Graham and Lois Collins
listed in the Deseret News several of Lewis’ comments about Christmas, including
that he thought it “important and obligatory” but that in a letter, he said, “I
send no cards and give no presents except to children.” In another letter, he
wrote to friends, “Is it still possible amid this ghastly racket of ‘Xmas’ to
exchange greetings for the Feast of the Nativity? If so, mine, very warm, to
both of you.”
In a 1954 essay, “Xmas and
Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus,” Lewis created a fictional country
that celebrated two festivals: Exmas, involving excessive gift-giving, and Crissmas,
a quiet observance of the birth of a child.
Of course, Lewis wrote eloquently and sometimes
wittily about the meaning of Christmas. In “Mere Christianity”: “The Son of God
became a man to enable men to become sons of God,” and “The Eternal Being, who
knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but
(before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a woman’s body. If
you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.”
In “Miracles”: “The central miracle asserted
by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other
miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this.”
In an interview, Lewis said, “The birth of
Christ is the central event in the history of earth – the very thing the whole
story has been about.”
And showing his wit again, he wrote in a
letter, “My brother (Warren Lewis) heard of a woman on a bus say, as the bus
passed a church with a crib outside it … ‘They bring religion into everything.
Look, they’re dragging it even into Christmas now.’”
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| Billy Graham |
Billy Graham (1918-2018)
American evangelist Billy Graham
echoed both Wesley and Lewis. In sermons and books, he pointed out the
secularization and commercialization of Christmas, and like Wesley, he believed
that the ultimate purpose of Jesus’ birth was to change people.
“That baby who was born to Mary was
more than just another man – He was God in human flesh,” Graham said. “He came
into the world for one reason: to make it possible for our sins to be forgiven
so we could become part of God’s family forever.”
He preached, “He loves you and wants
to transform your life.”
Another Graham message certainly is
fitting in 2020: “This Christmas season, when the world seems to be in turmoil
– wars are breaking out in different places, crime is rampant, many things are
happening that are great sins in the sight of God – but in that crib is the
Person who would grow up to save us, and He did.”
As Linus recited on stage, “For unto
you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.”
