Christmas!

Eh – do you mean going on holiday, or public holidays? I’ll assume the latter.

Culturally, Christmas was always the happiest time of year, though it was in the middle of winter. It’s then that we got toys and scrumptious food as kids, and everything seemed very magical. And it was a wonderful time for families to get together. I always enjoy the runup to Christmas too. Winter would be awful if there wasn’t any Christmas.

And of course, Christmas celebrates the incarnation of the Son of God, His coming into the world to save sinners.

Matthew 1:21 
She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,^[a] because he will save his people from their sins.”

The funny thing is, there’s nothing in the New Testament to suggest that we should have a specific day or season to celebrate the incarnation. It’s a tradition that developed in later centuries. By the early 4th century, the Church fixed the date as December 25, possibly to align with existing pagan festivals such as Sol Invictus or Saturnalia, both midwinter celebrations tied to the solstice. And of course it’s often said that Charles Dickens and even Coca Cola shaped the Christmas that we know and love in the present day.

At the time of the Protestant reformation, when the radical reformers wanted to ditch all church traditions and return to the church of the New Testament, some wouldn’t celebrate Christmas, particularly the Puritans.

Yet, it’s an opportunity to remind us all of Jesus. If we had eradicated all signs of cultural Christianity – the sort of thing that developed since New Testament times, where would we be? I can look around the world and see all these beautiful church buildings. I probably differ theologically from most of them. I’m a bit of a Puritan myself. For most of my evangelical life, I’ve gone to church in community halls, homes, and so on, in addition to a few simple Baptist church buildings Many modern churches do that. Yet, though I’m no longer a Roman Catholic (since August 1980), I’m often uneasy when I see an old church buildings closing or being put to other uses. And I don’t like it when left wing factions try to remove Christmas and other Christian traditions from the public square. So despite my Puritan tendencies, I’m a big fan of Christmas.

I think that I would enjoy Christmas even if I were an atheist. And music-wise, I love all the old Christmas hits. I first got into pop music in 72/73, and 1973 gave us a few Christmas classics:

Here are two pop songs from 1978 and 1982 that focus on the birth of Christ:

And here are two of my favourite older hymns: