Thank you for the great lunch and for
inviting me to be with you today.
I
was asked to share a holiday message today which creates a bit of a dilemma for
me. We preachers feel the pressure to offer our very best sermons on Christmas
Eve and so I really need to save my best stuff for then.
Christmas is a huge deal in our culture.
Great crowds of people come to church on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve is when a lot of unchurched
people seek out a church. We have to set
up several rows of chairs in a room next to our sanctuary to accommodate the
large crowds.
At
our 11 o’clock Christmas Eve service a couple of years ago, I stood up to
welcome everybody. And in the middle of
my welcome, I was taken aback by a stray dog that had somehow entered our
sanctuary and was coming down one of our center aisles.
It
was one of those moments when you question if you are really seeing what you
are seeing. But sure enough, it was a
dog loose in our sanctuary. The dog
decided to stop at one of the pews and was enamored by one of our
worshippers. A kind hearted church
member decided to grab the dog by its collar and take it back outside. But it
got loose again and came down a different aisle.
Eventually, we helped the dog to find its owner here in the
neighborhood. That Christmas Eve, we had
a total of 1,402 people in worship; 1,403 if you count the dog which of course I
did.
Christmas is a huge deal in our culture.
I read an article by the National Retail Federation that forecasts that
the US will spend over 586 billion dollars this holiday season. They have also predicted that up to 625,000
temporary workers will be hired to meet the demands of this holiday season.
Sociologist
and activist, Tony Campolo critiques our fascination with Christmas and the
holiday season by saying, “It’s all about
producing more stuff. We buy and buy. At
Christmas, we buy things nobody needs for people who already have everything.”
Christmas is getting to the point where it is less about the true
meaning of the season and more about the retail dollars that are needed to
maintain a certain economic level. Has
Christmas become too big?
It
wasn’t always this way. I’d like to
offer a brief historical sketch of Christmas to help us keep this holiday
season in perspective.
I
recently came across a book by Dr. Bruce Forbes entitled, “Christmas: A Candid
History.” Dr. Forbes is a professor at
Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. He’s also an ordained United Methodist
pastor. He offers a big picture of how
the celebration of Christmas has evolved over the centuries.
In
his book, Dr. Forbes reminds us that the way we approach the holidays today
with spending and decorations on every street corner is a far cry from its humble
beginnings. From a religious perspective, it may be surprising to note that the
church did not even celebrate Christmas for the first two hundred years after
the time of Christ. It wasn’t until the 4th century, that Christians
began celebrating Christmas on an annual basis.
Jumping ahead several centuries to the time of the Puritans in England,
the celebration of Christmas even becomes illegal because of the Puritans’
concern that the church was missing its true meaning. Not celebrating Christmas was strictly
enforced to the point where town criers would go around in England on Christmas
Eve shouting, “No Christmas! No
Christmas!”
The Puritans downplayed Christmas for about a 150 year period. There are some historians who have scoured
through the London Times between 1790 and 1835 to look for any references to
Christmas and to their surprise, they discovered that over half of those years
had zero references to Christmas. This
just goes to show how Christmas wasn’t seen as that special of a day in that
long time span.
Many of our early colonists here in the New World didn’t make a big deal
about Christmas since the culture of that period had been influenced by the
Puritans. It’s hard to imagine a time in
our country when schools and businesses were all open on Christmas day. It was
business as usual for early colonial America on Christmas day.
I think of my own Methodist history. Since the Methodist denomination came out of
England many of the early Methodists deemphasized Christmas as well. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism was an
Anglican Priest in England. He preached
over 40,000 sermons and not one of those sermons was a Christmas sermon. In contrast, this Christmas Eve will mark my
26th Christmas sermon.
One
of the reasons the Puritans were against the celebration of Christmas was because
Christmas had become increasingly associated with parties than with the birth
of Christ. I’ve been wondering what the Puritans would think of how we
celebrate Christmas today. I’m trying to
picture a group of Puritans walking through River Valley Mall or shopping at
Target or eating at the Cheesecake Factory in Easton. I just can’t get that image in my mind.
It
wasn’t until the mid1800s, that Christmas began to become the popular holiday
that it is today. This was due to the
Victorian Age which brought us the tradition of the Christmas tree. Around the
same time, Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol” was becoming very popular and
the reading of the Night Before Christmas gave St. Nicholas a modern day
makeover that remains with us to this day.
From the middle of the 19th century on, there has been a
rapid fascination with a feel good Christmas spirit and the whole Santa Clause
gift giving frenzy. Just listen to this
long list of how Christmas has taken off over the past 150 years.
·
1843
– First Christmas cards printed in London.
·
1872
– First carving & painting of soldier nutcrackers.
·
1879
– Department stores begin setting up Santa workshop displays.
·
1882
– First electric Christmas lights are sold.
·
1920
– Candy canes begin to be packaged and sold.
·
1924
– For the first time, Santa rides on the last float of the Macy’s Parade.
·
1930s
– Kids start leaving milk & cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve.
·
1939
– Santa’s 9th reindeer, Rudolph is added to the Santa’s team.
·
1950s
– We began tracking & reporting on Santa’s flight patterns & we began
buying first non-green artificial Christmas trees.
·
1994
– First Christmas e-cards are delivered thanks to the computer.
·
Last
Decade – Demand for Christmas fad toys reached new heights.
Christmas and the holiday season have become a huge industry and it
doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon. The truth is that there’s always been the
commercial component of Christmas as far back as the mid 1800s.
Or
we could go back to the Puritan days and make the celebration of Christmas
illegal but that would probably create another huge fiscal cliff for our
economy to overcome. And personally, for the most part, I don’t mind the
festivities and build-up of the holiday season.
These celebrations are a way to for us to offset the shorter days and
the colder temperatures.
But
here’s what I think we can do in keeping with the spirit of this season. We can
offer our gifts and words of hope to the people of our community. And I want to thank this organization for all
of the many good things you are doing and for being a light of hope in our
community.
The commercialization of the holiday season may be with us to stay, but
that doesn’t mean that we can’t live out the spirit of Christmas.
For the past two and a half years, people in
our church and from the community gather at our church’s Crossroads facility on
W. Fair Avenue from 8:30 am to noon on the second Saturday of each month. Our mission is simple. We want to be a blessing in our community. We
call this our Second Saturday outreach ministry.
We
have painted several of the city’s fire hydrants, painted over graffiti on
bridges, serve as volunteers for charity events, helped with house repairs,
laid new flooring at Foundation Dinners, given away quarters to people at the
Laundromat, helped residents at a nursing home play bingo and chair volleyball,
taken bags of fruit and cookies to first time responders and to people who are
shut-in, raked people’s yards, helped with the Habitat for Humanity resale
store, made warm blankets for nursing home and hospice patients, helped build a
tree house for the students at Forrest Rose, along with some other projects just
to give you an idea of what Second Saturday is all about.
A
couple of weeks ago, we had fun assembling and wrapping Christmas presents for
several needy families in our community.
I am terrible at gift wrapping and even I ended up wrapping several
gifts that passed inspection.
One
of the people we helped for Christmas is a man in his 50s who shared this note
with us. Here’s what he wrote:
“I receive disability and both kids live
with me right now. Me and my wife
separated a year ago and in February, we learned that our son who was 5 at the
time was being sexually abused by a cousin.
My wife had a mental breakdown and had to
stay in a hospital for a while and we both agreed that it would be best for the
kids to live with me but while my wife was in and of the hospitals, me and the
kids were homeless and we stayed in a shelter for a couple of months and
recently received help to get me and my kids into an apartment.
From April to July, me and the kids have
lived in a tent, took baths in creek water, cook food over an open fire.
Community Action helped us get into an apartment.
In September, I had a heart attack and
found out I have a big blood clot in my heart.
They say I have not got much time so I hope that this Christmas will be
a good one for me and the kids. The kids and I don’t have much but at least we
have a home thanks to people who have helped us.”
I
recently called this dad to let him know that I received his letter and that
our church was glad to help them for Christmas. I offered him words of support
and shared in a prayer with him, reminding him that God was with him and that
God loved him.
Has Christmas become too big in our culture? Probably.
Has it become too commercialized? No doubt. But this time of year also
seems to bring out the best in us.
· It
will even get us out of bed on an early Saturday morning to deliver Christmas
presents to a dying man and his young children,
·
split
wood out in the cold rain so that a disabled veteran can heat his home this
winter,
·
make
blankets for people nearing the end of their lives,
·
and
take bags of fruit and cookies to the homebound.
Thank
you for having me today. Merry Christmas!
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