Why I Don’t Celebrate Christmas
by Joseph Bragg
We all know what Christmas has become in the world. It is essentially a worldly and secular celebration of greed, consumerism, materialism and self-indulgence. The focus is on parties – eating and drinking, decorations, buying and entertainment. More and more these self-indulgence aspects dominate, and more and more the efforts to erase all connections to anything Christian are successfully increased.
And each year we hear the usual lament from Christians –
“It’s Christmas, not Xmas”
“It’s Merry Christmas, not Seasons Greetings”
“Let’s keep Christ in Christmas”
“It’s St. Nicholas, not Santa Clause”
“Jesus is the reason for the season”
And all the rest…
And so each year Christians try to salvage and retain some spiritual meaning and emphasis in the midst of the world’s takeover of Christmas.
But let’s be brutally honest. These efforts have failed and are failing. They are like the last gasps of a drowning man. The takeover of Christmas by the world has essentially been accomplished. A few faint cries and protests here and there make no difference, no difference at all.
Why is this so? Why are all such efforts by Christians doomed to failure? Could it be because the Christians who are protesting have long ago, unconsciously or not so unconsciously, become a part of and assimilated the secular worldliness and self-indulgence they are tying to protest? How can you fix something if you are a part of the problem? How can you protest something that is essentially what you are doing? How can you object to something that you have embraced? How can you reverse the greed, consumerism, materialism and self-indulgence when that is how you, too, are celebrating? Adding some Jesus words or phrases into the mix hardly dilutes the materialistic self-indulgence that Christians, too, have embraced.
All the efforts of Christians and Churches to reverse the world’s takeover of Christmas – all the protests, Nativity scenes, Christmas carols, Christmas plays, cantatas and Christmas greetings – all are set square in the middle of a Christianity that is itself largely characterized by the same greed, self-indulgence, consumerism and materialism that it is protesting.
After all, what are these Christians doing in the weeks leading up to Christmas? Shopping, getting stressed out, buying, spending, partying, self-indulging, going to see the Rockettes, the latest movie and all the rest? Is it any wonder the protests against the secularization of Christmas rings hollow and has no effect?
And what about the churches? The worship and message of the churches protesting the paganism of Christmas are themselves a form of secular and self-indulgent entertainment and consumerism. The churches, with their feel-good-affirmation-of-self “gospel” and entertainment forms of worship, bless and sanctify greed, consumerism and self-indulgence. How can you protest that which characterizes yourself – your own beliefs and forms of worship?
The Christians and churches of American Christianity cannot redeem Christmas from the pagan hold on it when they themselves in lifestyle, message and worship have become like unto the worldliness they are protesting. The only answer to the world's celebration of “Christmas” is a total withdrawal from and disassociation from all its secular forms and characteristics. In the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, God never tells us to try to reform the paganism that surrounds us by participating in it while throwing in some religious words and activity. He tells us to come out from among them and be separate, to be in the world but not of the world, to be not conformed to this world, to love not the world’s lust of the flesh, lust of the eye and pride of life but to be a holy, separate and unique people of God.
But won’t this make us odd and weird? Won’t this deprive us of what our flesh wants? Precisely! But only then can we find the path to the true worship of the Incarnation of Jesus the God-Man. We can’t retain the true Christ and the true worship of Jesus the Christ by throwing some religious words into the self-indulgent secularism of the “Christmas” of the world.
The true Christ and the true worship of Christ is not found in the world’s materialistic self-indulgence nor in the “sanctified” materialistic self-indulgence of Western Christianity. It is found only in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ which Christ founded and which still exists today holding the same unchanged message and worship separate from and uniquely different from the spirit of this world. In the Church we celebrate and worship the Feast of the Holy Nativity of Christ God. But the feast is preceded by four weeks of fasting, prayer and self-denial. The celebration comes only on the Feast Day and then lasts for the Twelve Days of Christmas until the Feast of Theophany – the manifestation of Jesus as God in His Baptism at the Jordan.
The world has its “Christmas”. The Church has its Feast of the Holy Nativity. They are two completely different approaches and conclusions. In the Church, the true worship of the Incarnation has never been lost and doesn’t need to be reclaimed. This is why I celebrate the Nativity of Christ in the Church and not the “Christmas” of the world. I need to be redeemed from my greed and self-indulgence by the true Christ and Saviour, not confirmed in it by a pseudo Christmas.
