Christmas, After All

When I was a child, although my father was not a Christian, and only hoped there was a god, my family celebrated Christmas every year. I loved the cultural trappings, such as Santa Claus and his reindeer, and dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh (even though we lived in Southern California, and snow was unheard of there), and singing Jingle Bells. I understood that Christmas involved the birth of Jesus, and I did have a special feeling for him due to my great-grandmother who had read to me out of the Bible when I lived with her for a time after my mother passed away when I was seven.

But after I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had obtained a testimony of Jesus the Christ as my personal Savior and Redeemer, Christmas with all its non-religious cultural trappings and its commercialism became a bit of an annoyance, to be honest.

Sure, it was important that He was born into mortality – intensely important! But he wasn’t born in the dead of winter, but in the spring of the year. Yes, the gift-giving was in remembrance of the gifts of the Magi, and so on, but half the people exchanging gifts give no thought for the Savior, but for what they are going to get in those finely decorated packages.

But I wasn’t Scrooge, so my family did celebrate Christmas in all its cultural glory. However, when we celebrated my wife and I made sure to remind them whose birthday we were celebrating, and we had the children briefly re-enact Mary and Joseph’s arrival in Bethlehem and seeking shelter for the birth. Our oldest son got to play the mule, and our young daughter sat on him, portraying Mary. And we read the story of his birth, before opening presents in remembrance of the gifts the Wise Men brought. There would be no Christmas without Christ in our household.

But for me, Easter was the superior holiday. Far more important than His birth was his Atonement and his Resurrection! So, forget Santa Claus, and his reindeer, too! Forget the snow and the jingling bells, because Judea is warm and that’s why the shepherds watch their flocks outdoors by night! Away with Christmas! Bah! Humbug!

But no… not really. Without his birth, there would be no Easter, and no Atonement nor Resurrection. When any child is born into the world it is always special. All the possibilities that are born with each child are marvelous to consider. All the love that is born with each child is even more marvelous to consider! This is why each succeeding birthday is important, for they signify the growing possibilities. But with Jesus’s birth, the usual possibilities suddenly turn into infinities! I’m speaking of His infinite Atonement, worked out in Gethsemane and on the Cross. So, perhaps the most important birth in the universe is being celebrated at Christmas. And never mind the fact that his birth really was in the Spring – it doesn’t really matter when we celebrate it, does it? And it is perhaps best that we don’t celebrate it around the same time we celebrate Easter. By separating the remembrances, we give each event a greater distinction, and this provides twice the opportunity of thinking seriously about what Christ should mean to us.

Christ means everything to us. He deserves to be remembered; and to have our love.