Ah, Christmas. As Andy Williams croons, it’s the most wonderful time of the year. With parties for hosting, marshmallows for toasting, even scary ghost stories to share.
Certainly not a traditional “Christmas” carol, catering instead like so many other popular holiday songs to America’s secular themes and customs surrounding Christ’s birthday.
Not that baby Jesus is completely left out in the cold.
At last count, 65 percent of American adults believe the four primary biblical accounts of Christmas: the virgin birth, the holy cradle (“wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger”), the magi journey, and the angel announcing the Savior’s birth.
A similar 65 percent describe being “Christian,” although Pew Research finds that number is dropping at a fast clip. Just over a decade ago, 77 percent of Americans identified as Christian.
Agnostics and atheists, meanwhile, make up about 10 percent of the U.S. population, with 17 percent believing “nothing in particular.”
Which isn’t to say that non-believers don’t similarly get caught up in the Christmas spirit, especially when it comes to the act of giving. Consider that 96 percent of Americans by the close of November had already purchased gifts for family during this 2022 holiday shopping season (the National Retail Federation reports U.S. holiday retail sales doubled from $416 billion in 2002 to $859 billion in 2021, despite periodic slumps in personal spending).
It’s no wonder Christians lament about Christmas becoming too centered on shopping and not on Jesus’ birth, the familiar refrain: “Put Christ back in Christmas.”
Reviving Christ on his birthday, however, isn’t just saying “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays,” educates the faith-based group Women of Noble Character, which provides an educational to-do list for families wishing to celebrate the “true” meaning of Christmas.
For starters, gather some friends and family to go Christmas caroling, except sing about Jesus, not Santa. Take the time to explain to children the meaning of the “red and green” Christmas colors: red symbolizes the blood necessary to produce life, while evergreen corresponds to everlasting life.
Christmas wreaths adorning front doors, meanwhile, are “circular” to reflect the eternal nature of Christ and His endless love. Even candy canes have Christian symbolism: fashioned after a shepherd’s crook (some suggest the J-shape also stands for Jesus) to portray Christ as the Good Shepherd.
Christmas lights herald Christ as the “light of the world,” even better when illuminating images of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, angels, stars and shepherds. Other suggestions: display nativity sets and read scripture in the home surrounding Jesus’ birth and attend a Christmas church service (the Flathead is home to 130 churches).
There’s still time this Christmas season (Christian theology marks the 12 days of Christmas as Dec. 25 to Jan. 5) to plan a “project of service.” A few frigid nights ago my Columbia Falls friends slept outdoors at the county fairgrounds to support the local youth shelter Sparrow’s Nest and estimated 350 homeless teens in the Flathead Valley.
“Gifts of service” can also be exchanged with family members, right alongside gift-wrapped toys, sweaters and slippers.
Bottom line, putting Christ back in Christmas doesn’t require abandoning shopping (it’s good for the local economy) and Santa Claus, who, believe in him or not, has become “the traditional patron of Christmas in the United States,” according to Encyclopedia Britannica.
That said, it was 125 years ago in 1897 that 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon of New York City sat down and penned a letter to her local newspaper asking if there was indeed a Santa Claus (her friends insisted that the jolly old elf didn’t exist).
The paper’s editor Francis Church promptly wrote back to the anxious girl, but if you read his words carefully you too might believe he was actually referring to Jesus through Santa’s name:
“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus … your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age … He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus … Nobody sees Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see … No Santa Claus! Thank God! He lives, and he lives forever.”