When you consider the meaning of Christmas, what comes to mind? Family traditions such as shared meals or cutting a tree? A time for your favorite holiday movie or classic TV specials? Maybe you have a young child and you wrestle with their question, “Is there really a Santa Claus?”
How about a worship service or sacred choral event? When I was growing up in the 1960s, we always had to go to midnight Mass late on Christmas Eve. That was what Christmas meant to me. I was often an acolyte or sang in the choir. We gathered to celebrate that God came down to earth and took human form to save us all.
Later in life, having moved away from home and to a community with a much larger Episcopal congregation, I spent many years looking forward to the service of Nine Lessons and Carols, which we typically held at our church on the Sunday evening before Christmas. We had a fantastic organist/choir director who added string accompaniment to the organ, extra voices from other choirs, a handbell choir, and a number of wonderful soloists.
It became the most attended service of the year, sometimes standing room only. The church was all decorated, there were lots of candles, and the lights were low. It was a glorious occasion, with dramatic Bible readings and carols both moving and joyous, some sung by the choir only, others including the congregation. It was in some ways the peak of what Christmas meant to me: people coming together to hear and marvel at the story of the birth of the Christ child.
These days, my wife and I play in the handbell choir at Covenant Methodist Church in Helena, and we do an annual Christmas concert. It’s nothing nearly as ambitious as that old Lessons and Carols service, but it can still be a wonderful, uplifting spiritual experience, and it is presented as an offering to the greater community, not just the church.
Things change, and nothing in this world is forever. But I still wonder: Why do we celebrate Christmas?
As recently as 1990, about 90% of the U.S. population identified as Christian. That percentage has declined to the low 60s, with the majority of non-Christian people categorizing themselves as “unaffiliated.” I suspect the majority of those unaffiliated folks still celebrate Christmas in some way — probably getting a tree, exchanging presents and coming together as a family for at least one meal (or maybe to watch a football game). Others might volunteer at a homeless shelter or other organization to help feed the needy or bring some Christmas cheer to the less fortunate.
What does this say about how the meaning of Christmas has changed? Is Christmas now less about its Christian origins and a celebration of the mystery of the Incarnation, and more about a secular sense of serving, sharing, family and belonging? Could we simply say now that Christmas means being kinder, more caring, more loving, celebrating the “season” (whatever that means to you), and maybe rejoicing in those people or things that give our lives “meaning”?
In other words, is it no longer just the “meaning of Christmas,” but rather a season when we look internally to see “what gives my life meaning” for each of us? One doesn’t need to believe in the virgin birth of the Christ child to reflect on how much the world needs hope, caring and peace, and how we are or are not a part of all of that.
Does that make this season any less “Christmas” for each of us, however we experience this season?
Christmas for me today is not the Christmas I used to know. Some of that is good, as I embrace a deeper caring for the world around me. Some is not so good, as I lose traditions and rituals that brought the meaning of Jesus’ birth into my heart every year in special ways. I still believe, deeply, in the Incarnation. But does the season of Christmas move me spiritually in the same way it used to in years past? And if not, how should I feel about that? What does Christmas mean to me now?
That is something perhaps we all need to reflect on.
Reynolds is an ordained Episcopalian deacon. He lives in Jefferson City.
