Defending Christmas

I posted this on facebook last year and felt it was worth revisiting...

It’s strangely interesting to watch Christmas evolve into something nearly unrecognizable. Each year, we as a society seem to take one more step away from the true meaning towards the politically correct atheistic/ agnostic “holiday season”. It has grown to the point where people feel self-conscious about saying “Merry Christmas” to others for fear of offending them. How long will it be until our calendars say “Festive Holiday” on December 25? Many people already refer to it as ‘Xmas’ (which drives me nuts).

Christmas is first and foremost the celebration and remembrance of the birth of Jesus Christ. That’s where it starts and ends.

Personally, I really don’t care that December 25th was once a Roman holiday celebrating the winter solstice and the Festival of Saturnalia. It could’ve been the Buldavian festival of the Holy Hippopotamus for all I care. What is important to me is what it is now, not what it was nearly 1700 years ago (it became Christmas sometime before 336 AD). We get to take one day to stop and think about Christ and what He did for us.

Whether or not you believe in Christ as the Son of God, a prophet, or just a wise teacher is up to you. I don’t believe that celebrating Christmas, or even calling it Christmas, detracts from anyone else’s experience or imposes a set of beliefs on anyone. I don’t feel threatened or that that I am being pressured into changing my beliefs when someone celebrates Hanukka. I’m secure enough in my own faith that I can respect and admire the beliefs and traditions of others.

In remembering the birth of Christ, we also remember His life, teachings, and example. But most of all we remember the sacrifice He made on our behalf in Gethsemane and on the cross. We remember how death is no longer the end, the resurrection of Christ means that we too will live again.

"Wherefore, how great the importance to make these things known unto the inhabitants of the earth, that they may know that there is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God, save it be through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah, who layeth down his life according to the flesh, and taketh it again by the power of the Spirit, that he may bring to pass the resurrection of the dead, being the first that should rise." (2 Nephi 2:8)

Do you remember when Christmas used to bring a feeling of goodwill to others? When people would give service to others just because it was Christmas? People wonder why “goodwill to men” is on the decline as the focus of the season moves further away from Christ. . .