So why Celebrate Christmas?

If you’ve been at church either of these last two weeks you’ll have picked up on the Clarkson “Simply Christmas” theme. In line with Andrew’s challenge to think about Christmas and to try and simplify how our families approach it this year, I asked myself this question: What is the real significance of Jesus being born that should cause us to celebrate?

I did a bit of reading and came across this quote from NT Wright: “Take Christmas away and in biblical terms you lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke, nothing else. Take Easter away and you don’t have a New Testament; you don’t have Christianity; and as Paul says, you are still in your sins.”

Not a good start! But as I began to think I realized that Wright had explained for me what Christmas is not about. If the start of Christianity, the forgiveness of sins, the writings of and in the New Testament are all tied up in Easter; they can’t be the central theme of Christmas. OK, back to my original question, what is the significance of Christmas?

I went back to those two chapters at the start of Matthew and Luke and in particular, to what Mary had to say, because if anyone should know what Christmas is about it should be Mary right. I mean, she was the one who was pregnant; she was the one who got it straight from the angel’s mouth so to speak.

In Luke chapter 1 verse 49 onwards we have Mary’s song of praise to God for the child she was carrying inside her womb. Mary’s people, her community, her nation were in a mess, and they’d been in this ethical/financial/political mess for generations. But they had hope, a promise from their God YHWY, that He would send someone to save them. As I read through this song I realized that this song is about beginnings, it is about the start of something, is all about that hope.

Mary couldn’t see what would happen further down the road, she couldn’t see how her life and the life of her child would end up; she couldn’t see Easter. But she believed that the child she was carrying was that special someone, that special someone who was going to save and to bring hope.

Christmas is about hope for me this year. And I don’t want to spoil it by moving on too quickly to Easter. I want to stay here at Christmas, where God has acted and hope has come into the world. I want to think about what that means, and I want to hope for something that doesn’t just end at Easter but that can go on beyond Easter, that Easter is maybe a door through which all hope can be fulfilled.

Philip Chester