What is Christmas Really About?
How the Meaning of Christmas Changed After I Became a Christian
This article is part of the blog’s 2021 Advent series where Claritas writers are exploring the meaning of the incarnation in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
BY SABRINA TANG
My home has been a family of six for as long as I can remember, but during December my dad and I climb up to our attic to awaken our seventh family member: the plastic skeleton of our Christmas tree. We revive the tree atop a red rug, adorning it with reflective ornaments and colorful string lights. As much as I grumble about its prickly, plastic fir branches that droop just a bit more with each passing year, the finished tree still stirs up the childlike Christmas spirit within me, and its warm glow has saved me more than once from tripping in the dark at night. Over the years, my family’s Christmas tree has become something akin to an extra family member.
Every December, my grandma likes to sit on the sofa and watch us put up the tree. Two years ago, as my dad and I took turns unraveling the lights, my grandma remarked: “So much work to put up the tree. We don’t need to celebrate, we’re not even Christians.”
Unphased, my dad replied: “You don’t need to be Christian to celebrate Christmas. We celebrate because it makes us happy.”
My dad was right—Christmas does make my family happy. As I dig through my memory, Christmas is playing UNO with my cousins squeezed together on my sister’s bed, each of us taking turns wriggling out to retrieve a second slice of Aunt Lydia’s banana bread. It is taking silly family photos in front of the tree and choosing who will distribute this year’s gifts while wearing the honorary Santa hat. Christmas is happiness, and two years ago, I was satisfied with my dad’s answer to my grandma’s question. My satisfaction would be short lived, though.
After accepting Jesus during my freshman year of college, I began to hope for my “fullness of joy” to be found in Christ alone. [1] Returning home from a Fall semester filled with Christ-centered fellowship, weekly Bible study, and routine devotions, I prayed for my Christmas of 2020 to be centered around Jesus.
Spoiler alert—it was not.
It dawned on me then, in the midst of my family’s usual Christmas festivities, that I would be alone in my new convictions regarding the meaning of Christmas. For me, Christmas had become about celebrating the birth of Jesus and the beginning of a promised eternity with God, but for my family, the holiday remained an excuse for extended family to gather under one roof.
What scares me is how easy it is to be content with the latter and to be swept away by a day’s worth of fleeting happiness. Because, to appreciate Christmas for what it is, we must reflect on the gospel and the significance of Jesus’s birth. God gave us His one and only Son to die on the cross for our sins; he gave us grace and love when we were most undeserving of it. [2] We need humility before God to acknowledge the brokenness of our human condition and to realize that only Jesus can restore us.
Considering the depth and gravity of the gospel message, it is no wonder why it is easier to be content with Christmas as a gift-giving holiday. After all, they don’t make many Christmas movies about humans being broken sinners. That is precisely why Advent is so important.
Advent creates a space and time for us to prepare our hearts for Jesus’s coming because, left to our own human devices, it is all too easy to trade the goodness of the gospel for eggnog and string lights (not to mention that in our roles as students, the semester does not end until the week before Christmas, leaving little time for reflection and preparation in the midst of travel and self-care).
Yet this Christmas, I pray that God’s word will be the well from which we draw our joy—that whether it is the first or hundredth time we read the Christmas story, the gospel would be just as convicting and freeing in the knowledge that we have been given grace. I pray that we would be disciplined to ground ourselves in scripture and make the most of this Advent season, even if it’s only in these last couple days. Christmas is a day abundant with happiness, sure, but in Christ, I know that an eternity of happiness awaits me.
SOURCES
Psalm 16:11 ESV
John 3:16 NIV