Through the years I’ve asked many folks what they thought about Christmas, and I was saddened at many of their responses. 
Most of them talked about crowds in the stores, traffic-jams, discourteous people, gifts they had to return, the price of the gifts, how much to spend on family members, Christmas debt, and a lot more. Several folks even said that they wish Christmas didn’t exist. For them, the season was merely X-mas. Or more appropriately $$-mas!
Very seldom did I hear a response about Jesus, the Holy Son of God, His entry into the world, going to a Christmas Cantata, or worshiping the Lord for HIS gift to humanity. I’ll come back to this in a minute, and in more depth next week; but let’s look at some of the data related the seasonal stress.
Do you know how much a family spends during Christmas? Here are a few numbers – admittedly several years old, but it gives you an idea of the problem.
According to an MSN article in December of 2011, Americans planned to spend approximately $271 per child. When one mother was asked about that amount, she said that wasn’t nearly enough. In that survey, almost 10% of the responders planned to spend over $500 per child.
One father figured $50-$75 per infant or toddler, $100-$150 per elementary age kid, and $200 or more for high school age. Others said $400 per child is not bad.
Of course, the amount of spending can depend on where you live. Some shoppers in New York City (families of four) planned to spend a total of about $1200, while same-sized families in Texas wanted to top out around $700. I also found that some lower income families spend as much as upper middle-class families – they just go deeper into debt.
I read that the average spending in 2001 was $1,052 per family; dropping to a low of $417 in 2009; but back up to $882 per family in 2015. Please remember, those are averages.
Recently there has been a decline in the complaints of crowds, traffic-jams, and the rest because a tremendous amount of buying is done online. That does save money for the buyers. Another benefit is that it reduces traffic, which, in turn, which reduces traffic accidents. But buying online has also caused thousands of business – including many Sears stores across the nation – to close down. That eliminated many thousands of jobs.
But I have a question: Is any of that truly about Christmas?
To answer that, let’s look at the word.
Christmas came from Christ’s Mass – a worship service about Christ. (Christ is a title which came from the Greek Christos. The Hebrew word is Mashiach, translated as Messiah. They both mean anointed, or anointed one.) In the 14th century, Christ’s Mass evolved into Christmas.
So, is all the hustle-and-bustle of shopping really about Christmas? Is all the debt, stress, worry, gift-giving, traffic-jams and all the rest truly about Christ? The answer is a resounding No! It’s a terribly expensive misunderstanding. Apparently true worship of Almighty God has devolved into a financial, secular frenzy which brings disgrace on the name of the Lord.
How do we get back to the truth? We start by reading the Truth.
Luke 2:8-15 says, “That night some shepherds were in the fields outside the village, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terribly frightened, but the angel reassured them. ‘Don’t be afraid!’ he said. ‘I bring you good news of great joy for everyone! The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born tonight in Bethlehem, the city of David! And this is how you will recognize him: You will find a baby lying in a manger, wrapped snugly in strips of cloth!
“Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God: ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to all whom God favors.’
“When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, ‘Come on, let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this wonderful thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.’”
Regarding an event that took place almost a year later, Matthew 2:9-11 says, “The star
appeared to them (Wise men, Magi), guiding them to Bethlehem. It went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were filled with joy! They entered the house where the child and his mother, Mary, were, and they fell down before him and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasure chests and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”
Getting stressed out over buying and giving causes us to miss the joy of Christ. We miss the purpose of Jesus coming to earth. We join the secular world in actually disgracing the Lord Jesus Christ.
But Christmas, if we celebrate it, is supposed to be about worshiping Almighty God. Jesus’ purpose in coming to earth was to give US a gift – the gift of eternal life. We can give gifts to others, but our primary response is to give God a gift – the gift of ourselves.
We’ll talk more about this next time.
Gene Linzey 