KENTUCKY (12/2/12) – It’s the most wonderful time of the year. With the kids jingle belling and everyone telling you, “Say Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays.” I cringe in December every year because I hear so many Christians starting campaigns to “Keep Christ in Christmas.”

Christ, nor the Apostles, ever commanded us to celebrate the birth of Christ. We can sometimes act like Christ didn’t exist before his birth, but we know that the Word already existed in the beginning (John 1:2). We forget that the birth of Christ takes up only part of 2 of the 89 chapters found in the four Gospel accounts. Mark and John don’t even bother to mention it, because the life, ministry, death and resurrection are so much more important.
 
Yet I am flooded with Facebook and Twitter posts about it being dishonoring to Christ to say anything different than “Merry Christmas.” And let us not forget that if someone doesn’t say that to us, we are to arrogantly correct them like the good Christians that we are. This is not the joy of the Lord or the Holy Spirit that I know.
 
We don’t keep Christ in Christmas by being jerks and telling everyone what to say at Christmas time. If all we do is this, but then worship gifts, food, family, trees, lights, and reindeer, then we are so far from actually keeping Christ in Christmas.
 
We keep Christ in Christmas by being humble servants of him this Christmas. Whether that is something as small as being willing to throw someone’s garbage away during a family dinner to something as big as going to serve at a homeless shelter, we should do everything in the name of Christ (Colossians 3:17). Through these things, we talk about the Gospel with people.
 
Jesus said in Matthew 25 that at judgment day, his followers would be recognized by how they served people. He said that whoever would wish to be first must be slave of all (Mark 10:44). We serve Christ by serving others, not by being holiday jerks. There are vast numbers of non-Christians out there who are tired of Christians looking down on them in this way. They are not coming to Christ any faster through “Merry Christmas.” In fact, it’s the opposite.
 
We could keep Christ in Christmas in word only this year by being arrogant and trying to force people to say a certain phrase. Or we could do it by being humble and serving and worshipping him, for he is worthy.
 
Aaron Frasier
Bearing the Cross
www.twitter.com/aaronjfrasier
http://discipleslife.wordpress.com
 

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