CHRISTMAS-GENERAL
Millions of
perfectly healthy and worthy men and women still keep Christmas; and do in all
sincerity keep it holy as well as happy. But there are some, profiting by such
natural schemes of play and pleasure-seeking, who have used it for things far
baser than either pleasure-seeking or play. They have betrayed Christmas. For
them the substance of Christmas, like the substance of Christmas pudding, has
become stale stuff in which their own treasure is buried; and they have only
multiplied the sixpences into thirty pieces of silver.
There were
only a few shepherds at the first Bethlehem. The ox and the donkey understood
more of the first Christmas than the high priests in Jerusalem. And it is the
same today.
This Gospel
anticipates a world far different from C.S. Lewis’s Narnia, where it is “always
winter, and never Christmas.” The promise of the Gospel is that it is “always
Christmas.” To be “in Christ” is to
enjoy each morning as a Christmas morning with the family of God, celebrating
the gift of God around the tree of life.
This We Believe, John Armstrong and John
Woodbridge, ed. Zondervan, 2000, p. 76.
The spirit of Christmas needs to be superseded by the Spirit of
Christ. The spirit of Christmas is annual; the Spirit of Christ is eternal. The
spirit of Christmas is sentimental; the Spirit of Christ is supernatural. The
spirit of Christmas is a human product; the Spirit of Christ is a divine
person. That makes all the difference in the world.
Meet Him at the
Manger, Christianity Today, v. 41, n. 14.
Jesus is not
to us as Christmas is to the world, here today and gone tomorrow.