If you’re like me, sometimes you catch yourself rolling your eyes at the traditional Nativity scene, or the Christmas season in general. To me, it just doesn’t feel like Christmas right now. I remember when I was a little kid, I’d be bouncing off the walls with anticipation, and that year when my brother opened up the package to reveal the black box that would contain our purple-and-grey Super Nintendo was probably one of the happiest days of my life. No joke.
But today? Not feeling it. For whatever reason, whether it’s what you might call growing up, or if it’s because I’m still in finals mode and haven’t fully recovered yet, or if it’s the overwhelming disgustedness at the commercialization and materialism-ization of Christmas, or if it’s because our family didn’t even have our Christmas decorations up until yesterday–when I realized that nothing was up and put up our Christmas tree on my own…
…for whatever reason, I’m not feeling it this year. And this is usually my favorite time of year.
So I stopped.
And thought about what Christmas was really about.
Yes, it’s about treating one another well and cherishing time with family. Yes, it’s about reconnecting with old friends you haven’t seen in months (years, even). Yes, it’s about reminiscing, sharing food and drink, and laughing about things that happened years ago, as if they happened yesterday. And yes, it’s about Jesus. It’s about His birth and coming into this world that He made for us, and the salvation that He would buy for us 33 years later with His own body and blood.
But what else?
More than Jesus, you might ask? Preposterous!
No, Christmas isn’t about more than Jesus, but there definitely is more to Jesus. Anyone whose conception of the Christ-child is shaped solely by the plastic Caucasian, smiling babe marketed so effectively to families across America has such an unfortunately skewed (and small) view of Jesus.
Sometimes, I wish I could see the supernatural spiritual world around us, a world where angels and demons fight for the attention of mortal men, where the “Sword of the Spirit” is not just a conceptual, metaphorical thing, and where the houses of Middle America that we see around us are pitted with craters and holes, not from shells and bullets, but from the attacks of the Devil and his host. “Surely,” I think, “If I could see that, then it would lend an urgency to my spiritual life that is often missing.” But then I’m glad that I can’t see these things. Demons and the Devil are hard enough to fight, without having to look at them, too.
So why all this talk about spiritual warfare, demons, battlefields, and Satan himself? It’s Christmas, for goodness sake! Lighten up a little. Why? Let me tell you why. Because if you ever forget the reason for the season, just remember this:
Never in history has so much hung in the balance as that fateful night 2000 years ago (well, and the 33 years following). I would like to have seen the battle fought (and won) that night. Not even the mass murder of all the young boys born in the area could prevent Christ’s coming, and I would have like to have seen Satan’s face when every futile attempt and every concocted plan of his fell powerless before… an infant child.
Not any infant child, of course, but God Incarnate, the Commander of the Heavenly Armies (wow, that’s a cool title), and the Judge of the Living and the Dead. Not any infant child, but the One to whom all authority on Earth and Heaven has been given.
Because of Satan’s failure that night, and because of Christ’s overwhelming victory (both that night, and every night to follow,) in the face of constant and unflagging opposition, THAT baby, now a man, had rendered the Kingdom of Lies and Deceit to ruin. In 33 years, one fell swoop by eternity’s standards, the seemingly impervious cord known as sin that had so securely bound humanity and death together was severed.
2000 years ago, God began the final push towards victory. A victory that trumps all homework and exams, all finals, all materialism all lust, all sin, all broken relationships, and all the failures and disappoints of the past year. A victory that is now ours as well, and that, my friends, has gotten me into the Christmas spirit.
The Battle of Hastings. The Battle of Stirling Bridge. The Crossing of the Delaware. The Battle of Gettysburg. The Hundred Days’ Offensive. D-Day.
Christmas.
In Christ,
David
