Recently someone questioned Christmas celebrations.  He asked, “Why should we bother with Christmas?  Isn’t it just totally irrelevant for our day an age – after all it is 2022?!”  One of the chaps in the group responded, “So, it’s two-thousand and twenty-two years, since when...?”  There was a very telling silence in the group as they pondered the question.  Since no one answered, the second chap said, “Have a joyful Christmas!” as he walked away.

There’s no doubt that there are moves to sideline Christmas celebrations in our Western culture – particularly with regard to its religious connections.  Do we still dare to put up a nativity scene on our front lawn?  Hey, it might offend our Hindu or Muslim neighbours!  So the field is left to Santa and a whole bunch of Disney characters that have nothing to do with Christmas.  And as for trying to organise a Christmas carols sing-along in your street..?  Forget it.  Does anybody still do that these days?

It seems that the annual ritual of sending Christmas cards is also fast disappearing.  It’s much easier to post something on social media: Happy Christmas To All My Facebook Friends!  But it’s also increasingly difficult to find cards that honour the birth of Jesus.  It’s much easier to find cards with, ‘Happy Holidays’ or ‘Season’s Greetings’.

My Canadian penfriend mentioned already some years back, that where he lives there was a move to ban selling Christmas Trees and that if people still insisted on selling them they should be called ‘Holiday Trees”.  One wag found a novel way to protest.  He put up a sign at his farm gate that read: Holiday trees: $60; Christmas Trees: $40.

So is Christmas irrelevant in 2022?  Far from it!  The chap who asked: “Two-thousand and twenty-two years from when?” got it right.  For more than two-thousand years we’ve been counting our years from the year of the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Well, okay, we generally agree these days that we didn’t get it quite right and that we are probably about four years out... with Jesus most likely having been born in the year 4 B.C.

This means that Christmas is always relevant.  We may not always consciously think about it but whenever we write down the date we are (indirectly at least) honouring the birth of Jesus.

I have to smile at the way some people have tried to sidestep that issue.  For example it’s now fashionable not to talk about the pre-Christian era as the years B.C. – before Christ.  So, particularly those people who have a bee in their bonnet about Christianity, prefer to speak of B.C.E. – before the Common Era.  But that only raises the very obvious question: so what ended the Common Era?  And the answer of course is: the birth of Jesus Christ.

From a religious and spiritual point of view I find all this very telling.  Isaiah the prophet already predicted that when the virgin gave birth her son would be called Emmanuel – that’s a Hebrew name which means ‘God with us’.  On that first Christmas morning the infinite God stepped into time.  But he did that for a reason – so that we might know that the Almighty Creator is not a God who is distant and remote from us.  In the incarnation – the birth of Jesus – God entered into our history.  He is now Emmanuel “God with us” and every time when we write down the date there is a sense in which we are testifying to that reality.

Under the providence of God our Western society began to count the years from that moment when a virgin laid her new-born son in a cattle feeding trough – the coming of Emmanuel.

Today that makes our Christmas celebrations rich and meaningful.  And while we need to respect those of different faiths and those of none we ought not to apologise for celebrating Christmas as the birthday of Jesus the Messiah.  We should applaud those who put out nativity scenes on their lawns and those who arrange for a Christmas-carol sing-along and those who insist on still sending out cards with a Christian message.  Why?  Because there a lot at stake – far more than just the way we still number our years.  What is at stake is the very presence of God – Emmanuel, God is with us as the God who took our sins upon Himself so that we might be forgiven and enjoy that wonderful new life when time shall be no more.

John Westendorp