Christmas Icons | Too Much Christmas?

Hey friends, welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast as we finish our series today on Christmas,
a kind of a short Advent season podcast that we’ve been doing as we think about the ways in which
the Christian Christmas story and the cultural Christmas story help one another and perhaps
compete with one another.
And we have saved this one to last because in some ways it’s the most
obvious and in some ways it may have been tempting to start here.
But the characters of Christmas, of course,
in the Christmas story, Michael,
from the religious perspective,
from the Christian perspective,
the character of the story is the Christ child,
the incarnate one, the son of God
who comes to earth.
But as that story expands culturally,
so do the characters that go with
it.
And we touched early on in this podcast how interesting it is that while the Bible tells a
very simple version of the story without a lot of details,
the cultural Christmas stories and the
stories that have come later and become a part of Christmas are by contrast very elaborate,
long backstories,
lots of details,
and they’ve easily captured people’s attention.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so this is the juncture in the conversation where I’m going to speak for
myself.
I’m not going to speak for Reverend Loveall here,
but this conversation is not intrinsically
let’s beat up on the other stories of Christmas.
We’re not here to trash Santa and the elves and
the reindeer and to get after the Christmas elves and the angels.
When you hear a bell,
the angel gets– that’s not why we’re here.
And if you think that’s why we’re here,
you’re going to miss the substance of the conversation.
I really mean this.
We’re here to try to bring a little bit
of reflective conversation regarding the power of the stories that we put in the front.
And I think a lens that maybe we can bring to it is an explicitly religious lens.
And I think we
were talking ahead of the conversation here,
Clint.
I think maybe it’s even helpful to look
to a religious tradition that isn’t intrinsic to our Presbyterian heritage,
to find a conversation
that maybe doesn’t quite land directly at our doorstep.
That might help us to engage it with
a little less emotion.
So to just introduce it,
we’re going to talk a little bit here about the
church’s experience, particularly the Protestant Reformed Church’s experience,
what are called icons.
And icons are images used in other Christian traditions as a means of worship.
They’re often images,
hence the name icon,
and they often are saints.
Sometimes there will be an icon of Jesus,
but there’ll be an image that is supposed to be an aid to worship.
Now, there are other forms of icons, sculpture,
other forms of art,
but basically the idea is a thing
that has been created that is intended to provide a means for you to have an aid in worship.
And that’s a very suspect of icons.
Yeah. So let’s talk about how those icons,
because it is very different than an idol.
When we talk about an idol,
we talk about a thing that is worshiped in contrast to God.
The idea of an icon
is that it was an image or a physical thing that directed attention to God through itself.
And so
one way that we can get there,
and I think it’s helpful to remember that for a lot of the church’s lifespan,
the assumption was, and this is still true in parts of the world,
that the average church attender may not have been literate.
And so rather than writing,
rather than written liturgies,
things like paintings,
things like sculptures,
things like religious symbols were used to draw attention for those who maybe didn’t read and to create
for them an experience of the gospel,
to tell the biblical story in physical form.
And we came to
know those things as icons.
In the Catholic church,
for instance, in the Orthodox church,
much of that iconography would have been saints,
pictures of saints, and remembering the acts of
those saints as a way to honor them and to see through them what God did in their lives and what
they in turn in their faith did in the world.
And our people as Presbyterians inherited a moment in
which they felt like that had gone too far,
that there was too much of that.
Sanctuaries were full of that.
Churches were full of that.
These things were being bought and sold.
They were being
treated as if they were a thing themselves.
In fact,
some of our ancestors would have charged
that they had left the realm of icon and actually landed in the realm of idol.
And so we inherit, as Presbyterians,
a tradition of being a little bit skeptical about physical representations.
Right.
And so in fact,
there’s this word that came out of that era called iconoclasts,
and it was a way of thinking theologically that said that we need to remove these things.
In fact, there was a period in the Reformation which had many violent aspects to it in which sanctuaries
were raided and many of these pieces of art were forcibly removed,
many times destroyed.
And you would be shocked to know that there are some things that today we defend as a integral part of worship,
such as some instrumentation in sanctuaries was actually destroyed by the
reformers in the fear that it too had become a distraction in worship.
But that’s a, that’s a historical aside.
The point for the conversation today is the church has had a long history of
engaging with this question about what leads us to the Christ and what becomes a distraction unto itself.
And so as we now turn that idea upon Christmas,
I think we’re going to find a fertile
ground upon which we can have some conversation because surely if we’re going to be honest,
if we’re really going to dig down into this conversation,
we’ve got to confess that there
are narratives that exist around the Christmas celebration that not only make it more difficult
to find the Christ child at the center,
but in some cases they’re actually working against it.
They’re, they’re teaching very different world under world views and understandings of what
it means to be human.
And I think that those narratives,
then those images, even yes, those icons that we’ve created of the Christmas celebration,
these things deserve some reflection
and maybe in some cases even some rejection.
So let’s think about,
and let’s be honest as we
start, that there is iconography on both sides in and outside of the church.
When you see baby Jesus
in a manger as part of an activity set,
that is very much a Christmas Christian icon.
That is a symbol that we use,
a representation that we use,
and that speaks of Christmas.
On the other hand,
outside of the church,
you would see something like Santa Claus,
Rudolph,
Frosty, and you would instantly associate those images with Christmas,
but without the religious connotation.
It’s not that they’re anti-religious,
though some have felt that they were,
it’s that they belong to that
cultural story of Christmas.
And then I think, Michael,
interestingly,
there are some
icons that live in the middle.
For instance, the Christmas tree,
lots of churches put Christmas
trees in the sanctuary,
the same tinsel,
the same kind of ornaments,
the same decoration, the same basic thing that you would do in home,
in a home whether or not you were Christian or
religious in any way.
And those icons, we have generally been comfortable with living inside
the church at Christmas,
and so we have this long range, some icons
exclusively Christian,
some arguably not Christian at all,
and some in the center in which both sides,
or at least both perspectives,
let’s say, not sides, are comfortable with them.
So let’s just make this really concrete here,
Clint.
I don’t know if you’ve seen
Christmas story, the classic with the don’t shoot your eye out, right?
I have seen now for several
years everything from ornaments all the way down to full-scale replicas of the leg lamp.
Now, if you’ve seen the movie,
you know what I’m talking about.
Clearly,
that has lots of
things that make it funny,
right?
But it is this extreme example on the far end of a thing that
has no religious connotation.
No one is going to get to say that that lamp is somehow a symbol of the Christian Christmas.
So I raised that as this illustration to say there are many homes
of people who would consider themselves Christians that have some version of this leg lamp because
it’s funny and because it connects to a film or to an experience that is meaningful to them.
Maybe it’s even a marker of the season.
It’s probably something they have some nostalgia for,
and so they’ve made a place for it in their homes and in the decoration,
which we’ve already talked about in
the last conversation about how substantially ramped up our Christmas decorations are.
So this becomes for them a sign or a symbol.
Now, I’m not going to take it too far.
I’m not saying that they
are worshipping a leg lamp.
Obviously, that’s not the point I’m trying to make.
I am trying to suggest, though,
that it as a symbol or it as an artifact does represent an understanding of
Christmas, which is not intrinsically or inherently Christian.
How sensitive to that should we be?
And, you know, this is, I think, where the conversation begins to find the difficult gray
where nuance must be required,
because on one hand,
you know, I don’t think that God looks down
upon Christian decoration and thinks,
you know, that this is in no way allowable within a home that confesses Christ.
On the other hand,
it probably doesn’t help us keep the thing at the center.
And yet we let it in.
So should we?
And how thoughtful should we be in drawing those kinds
of lines?
I think that’s where the conversation is going to get messy really quickly.
Yeah. And I think we can see where it overlaps,
Michael, maybe in a,
you know, I don’t mean this in a
politically charged or a culturally charged way.
But when we have unhappiness over what a business
puts on their holiday signs,
or whether they put Merry Christmas on their coffee cup or Happy Holidays,
in some ways, that’s a battle over an icon.
That’s Christians saying,
“Wait a minute.
We treasure the words Merry Christmas.” Our foundational understanding
of Christmas, Christ-masse, is in that, literally in that word that’s dear to us.
Arguably, even you could apply a word like sacred to us.
And the culture says,
“Well, we have a different icon.
We sell coffee to lots of people,
and we want to put Happy Holidays.” And
it creates a kind of tension.
Neither is necessarily wrong,
but from each other’s perspective,
both have some downsides that create some unhappiness.
If you live on the Happy Holidays
Day side of the fence,
you’re a little uncomfortable with forcing Merry Christmas on people.
If you love Merry Christmas,
you’re worried about Happy Holidays being a very weak substitute that
takes the religious aspect out of the very day itself that it celebrates.
And I think we see in
that kind of a battle over icons.
And then, Michael, we might as well jump right in and
kick the hornet’s nest.
Santa Claus,
right?
You see the church making a case that the origins of Santa Claus, St.
Nicholas,
belong to us, that they’re inside the family story.
And there’s truth to that.
But if we’re honest,
we have to say that the current evolution of Santa Claus is
something very, very different.
And if we ever kind of had a tether on Santa Claus,
I would argue that
it’s by and large been lost.
Santa Claus is not a church figure,
not a Christian figure in the way
that he functions in the broader narrative of the Christmas experience, the Christmas story.
Now,
there are Christians opposed to Santa.
I mean, hold that at arm’s length because they believe
it to be cultural.
There are other Christians that are comfortable embracing that and making room for
that inside of a faith-based Christmas.
And again, maybe the fundamental icon of Christmas,
certainly on the cultural side,
but even on the religious side,
probably nothing screams
Christmas faster than the jolly fat guy in the red suit.
Yeah, so this is really complicated.
You know, I’ve got two things here.
First of all, literally this morning,
I mean, this happened the morning that we’re recording this,
my daughter was talking to me about which plate are we going to put cookies on for Santa?
I mean, my six-year-old
is conceiving of what I’m going to use the word liturgy of Christmas,
this sort of practice of
these are the things that we do to celebrate this particular season.
And I would be a complete liar
if I did not confess to you.
That makes me really uncomfortable.
That conversation is really tough
for me because all of her friends are making reindeer food and they’re putting food out for
Santa and they’re going to put milk out.
In fact, it’s funny, my daughter was asking if Santa needed
lactose-free milk or not because her dad’s lactose intolerant.
But, you know, so this is the concern of a child, right?
The reality is in our household,
we’re trying to navigate
that with them because we can’t like somehow take them out of the cultural context in which they live.
Santa is a real thing amongst their friends.
It is literally built into some of the crafts that
they do in their educational setting.
The reality is they live in that culture.
On the flip side,
you know a thing that makes me really uncomfortable about Santa is this narrative has built into it,
this idea of rank moralism.
And maybe you’ve never thought of it this way before,
but I mean think about it.
You’ve got naughty,
you’ve got nice, you have a list that identifies
who is good and who is bad.
That is very much against the core narrative of Christian faith,
which is that there’s no meaningful list of moral righteousness amongst humanity.
That ultimately everyone stands before God in the need of grace and that fundamentally it is not our own
merit that makes us eligible for that gift,
but rather it is the free choice of God made for us.
Now,
I want to name that there’s a sense in which I’m going all in here and maybe I’m even
stressing my point and I’ll confess that to you,
but the point here is I do not want my children
internalizing this idea that they’re being evaluated based upon the this or that of their
actions.
Of course, as a parent, I hope that their morality is shaped by the faith,
but we have to,
as a Christian family,
work very hard to get away from simple moralistic judgment when the core of
the gospel is this gift given to us by Jesus Christ.
And Santa as an image,
as a story,
I think has built into its very fundamental DNA,
I think that cuts against that grain.
And so as a parent
and then also as a Christian,
you know, I work very hard to try to push against that narrative
because I see it as being antithetical to what is, I believe,
as a person of faith,
the more core fundamental narrative of Jesus Christ.
I think, Michael, where you’ve led us is
the tension between the two stories,
the faith, Christmas, and cultural Christmas,
and they can speak to one another.
They need not be in conflict with one another,
but also we cannot simply assume that all on everything on the other side is great.
You cannot start with the Jesus who comes to save the world and comes humbly to the manger and calls the poor
and the hurting and calls the wealthy away from materialism and self and get to a present-filled
tree where you got everything you wanted because you were “good enough” by the guy who keeps track
of that without asking some questions.
Again, we’re not here to say that these things can’t
live together.
We’re not here to say that you shouldn’t celebrate Santa Claus and elves and
have fun with all of that,
but we should not consume the cultural narrative without asking some questions,
without being thoughtful,
because when we do that,
when we go all in,
we find that there are some places that don’t match up and that we should be cautious of.
I’m not opposed.
There was a time in my life I think I was more anti-Christmas than I am now.
I have largely come to the point of saying,
“I think there is a way for these things to
live together, even to nurture one another.” I think they can be a benefit.
The faith Christmas and the culture Christmas,
I think, can be good partners.
They can work together.
But only if the
people at the center of that intersection are doing some thoughtful work and putting some effort
to make that happen.
You cannot,
in my opinion,
it would be unwise for us to simply open up
and back the dump truck of cultural Christmas up and let it all flow into the church.
I think we would regret that, and I appreciate some of the guidance of our fathers and mothers in the faith
who asked some very difficult questions of icons.
Now, in some cases, I think they went too far,
but they helped us learn a framework to try and evaluate carefully what it is that we’re consuming.
I’m going to make what I think is probably potentially maybe a bit of a controversial
point, but I think it’s worth at least considering, if you would,
that one of the critiques of
Christmas from the religious community has been that culture overtaking Christmas,
the idea that culture is pushing Christmas out and making it happy holidays.
Nativity sets are getting taken down in courthouses.
Yeah, right.
That narrative.
Here’s the point that I want to put on the table
for us to evaluate.
Isn’t it possible that in that context,
that we may be,
as Christians, in a uniquely new opportunity amidst Hanukkah and amidst other religious traditions that are also
being lifted up as this season,
that maybe Christians have an opportunity in that to
differentiate a little bit,
to make a case for our own children in our own communities,
to say
that we do have distinctives.
You come into our house,
maybe there is something that’s
fundamentally different from the Starbucks or from the courthouse or from the store shelves.
Maybe there’s an advent tree where you’re hanging ornaments that are explicitly filled with images
of the Christmas story,
or maybe you have some particular tradition that your family does that
wouldn’t be recognizable in your child’s third grade classroom.
That, I think, may be a gift given
to us amidst this season because it helps to create those boundaries to say,
yes, we live in a culture that does these things.
That’s good.
We participate in some of them,
but we also are distinctively Christian.
That means we do some of these things.
I wonder if amidst that feeling and
sense of maybe loss that we have, maybe there’s opportunities,
Clint, in that for some differentiation
in a healthy theological way.
Yeah, I think so, Michael.
I think that
it has become possible to have Christmas completely unattached to anything religious, to anything spiritual.
Christmas for many people is a secular holiday in the same way that
4th of July or Memorial Day.
It has really lost its attachment,
its mooring, its anchor
in the life of faith in many ways for many people.
And I think that means that for Christians,
we now know something about Christmas that some of the world has forgotten.
And that does give us
opportunity as those who approach Christmas thoughtfully,
faithfully,
as those who don’t
simply go and break down all the icons.
Again,
our Presbyterian people historically,
we stormed churches and we busted up organs and we tore down paintings and we burned tapestries.
It doesn’t need to be that.
That’s what they felt led to do.
Their passion led them that direction.
I think we probably do ourselves a disservice when we take that stance and want to fight Christmas.
The reality is Christmas is probably too big for us to attack.
But I think as we celebrate it faithfully,
carefully,
responsibly,
as we avoid the temptation to make it all about self, as we
advocate and demonstrate generosity and graciousness and mission in the midst of Christmas,
as we lift up what is fun and good and joyful in the cultural celebration,
but we use it
to point toward Christ as icons were intended to do,
then I think we offer a better path,
a sort of third way and a way to say to people and to demonstrate to people that if you really
get to the heart of whatever Christmas means,
what you find there is Jesus Christ.
And we,
I think, then have moments with an opportunity to lead that direction.
So Clint,
I have a case I want to make here for really an empowering kind of what can I do
sort of thing.
I realized that as we speak theologically,
there may be even a sense of
kind of dread surrounding like,
well, goodness gracious, what how do we get out of this?
And can we get out of it?
And should we, you know,
it may feel like there’s a sense of lack of agency
in how we can celebrate Christmas.
So I want to sort of make this case.
I think both for Christmas
and by the way,
make the same case for Easter,
the best way to prepare your heart for the
celebration of those Christian celebrations,
those massive moments of faith and rejuvenation
and reconnection with the deepest story of our faith.
I think it is determined by the season
that precedes it.
So in the church we have before Christmas,
what we call Advent,
before Easter, we have what we call Lent.
And I think it is the practicing and participating in those seasons
that gives agency back to the community.
I think it gives us as individuals an opportunity
to practice our faith in really intentional and thoughtful ways that does not get wrapped up and
swept away by the cultural tradition.
Because December 24th and 25th has this massive cultural
weight.
I think this is the weight I hear you talking about.
That’s the Christmas I don’t know
that we can fight,
sort of stand our ground and say this is going to be only Christian.
I don’t think that we can make that case.
Even within our Christian families,
I think that would be
very hard to do in an American context.
I do think, however,
that we can make a case for every single
day of Advent that we are returning to that critical story.
So one very practical way to
this, I don’t want this to just sound theoretical.
Go buy an Advent devotional that would be appropriate
for you or your family.
I mean there are many of them.
In fact, if you need recommendations,
we could provide them.
But every day before bed,
sit down yourself and maybe your family and do a
reflective reading on Advent.
This is a thing that really has no competition in the church,
or sorry, in the culture.
You’re not going to have,
I mean, I guess you do have like the Advent calendars and
things like that.
But I mean realistically,
you can give religious and faith language for 23 days
out of December.
And that sets you up on the 24th and 25th with a shared language and meaning.
And you know, I think that that provides agency and opportunity as people of faith to engage this
season on our own terms and then to account for the great weight that we have in the celebration of Christmas itself.
That’s really a fascinating idea, Michael.
It’s true in Lent,
but it is especially true in Advent.
The culture has really no equivalent to Advent,
to preparation.
When Christmas begins in October,
the day after Halloween when the Christmas candy goes in the
stores and the Christmas decorations go up and the music starts,
that is an all or nothing.
I mean, that’s jumping into the deep end of the pool.
It’s just getting there very early,
whereas Advent gives us that opportunity like the zero entry pool where we move in slowly and carefully and thoughtfully.
And Advent is uniquely owned by the church.
There really is no cultural
voice that says, “Slow down,
be thoughtful,
prepare for Christmas.” The cultural version of that is
sort of more Christmas, more Christmas,
you know, “Let’s jump ahead.” And so a season like Advent,
a season like Lent,
gives us the opportunity to pause and I think gives us a perspective from
which to evaluate some of the faith-based and some of the cultural-based elements of the season and to say,
“Not only which are most appropriate,
but when are they most appropriate?” And those are questions.
Those are questions.
I don’t want to sound arrogant here,
nor do I want to be flippant,
but the questions that we need to ask in the church are not inherently present in cultural Christmas.
Christmas is not a careful season in the world.
It’s not thoughtful.
It’s not questioned.
It’s not careful.
And I think if we can use the church’s version,
which has tended to
try and be those things,
hasn’t always done it,
but has attempted to be those things,
that it gives us a better place from which to evaluate what does help us,
what doesn’t help us,
what can we accommodate in the faith Christmas?
Are there things that really don’t belong that probably
shouldn’t be a part of our celebration as Christian people?
And what helps us ultimately
use this entire season and the celebration of Christmas to point toward the one who gave it
to us, the one who it honors in the first place,
which is our Savior Christ?
Yeah, Clint, I think that this is the really subtle turn that if we get caught up in
defensiveness, we’re going to miss.
Because when we start trying to stake out really the boundaries to say,
hey, culture,
this is Christian Christmas,
and we’re not going to let you encroach.
The danger of picking that ground is that we become more fixated on an idea than we become fixated on the
subject who is a person that is celebrated,
right?
And this is not just true of Christmas.
It’s true of, you know, really our entire lives.
But I think Clint has made the case,
I think, strongly in this series,
at least I’m compelled by it,
that this is a sort of black hole kind of cultural moment in
that lots of stuff gets sucked in by sheer force of gravity in this time.
And so I think it makes
the Christmas season not substantially worse,
but far more difficult to navigate with with some
discernment.
And so because of that,
you know, I really think that we should pause that we should
take conversations like this one as an invitation to ask ourselves, you know,
is that the thing that matters?
Or should we really be more focused on being curators of the sacred story that we’ve inherited?
And if we are willing to start with that story, friends,
you know,
I think some of the icons
are going to become a little difficult to hold on to.
I think if you think about shepherds,
think about wise men,
you think about stables,
you think about pregnancy and not having room
in a busy season,
this all set up by the context of there being,
you know, a tax reasons to have
to go and give account to the Roman Empire.
All when you consider all of this,
our story is not very glitzy.
It’s not particularly New York Broadway level show.
It doesn’t have the kind of
ritz and, and beautiful sort of sweeping emotional tenors that we have become accustomed to in our
Christmas celebrations.
I’m not trying to say that those things are inherently against,
like we’ve said that a thousand times,
so excuse the repetition.
But the point here is rather to say,
if we are really holding our story,
it’s going to be earthy.
It’s going to reflect difficulty.
It’s going to own a much more comprehensive experience of the world.
And it’s going to say
that Jesus Christ is present in it.
Now,
all of those other things that help us to celebrate that
story should be welcomed with open arms.
But I do think some of the lights and some of the very
plasticky ornament things that we put in our house and some of the very nostalgic scenes,
I think these will pale in comparison to the full breadth of the real Christian story.
And so if we hold on to that story,
it may itself expose some of those icons in a way that we don’t even need to hold
the line, right?
We don’t need to necessarily say this is the boundary culture.
No, if we’re true story keepers, if we let our sacred story live inside us,
then I think those other things will naturally,
they’ll be interpreted by the story itself.
And that’s really the best we can ask.
So bear with me a minute.
And some of you may have heard this before,
but when I was in Texas,
I had a friend who was a youth pastor in Dallas.
And in Dallas, there used to be,
I don’t know if
they still do it,
there was a living nativity, a living Bethlehem.
They tried to recreate,
it was an area of town,
outside of town, and they fenced it off.
And there were donkeys,
there were camels, there were shops, there were entertainers, there was an inn.
And then Nestled kind of in the back was the manger with the living people enacting the scene of Christmas night.
And there was a young girl in my friend’s youth group,
I think, you know, probably 13, 14 year old girl who had gone to this.
And she was telling her youth director about it and how amazing it was.
The camels were incredible.
There were jugglers in suits, there were people,
you know, this whole thing that they had all this food that was just incredible.
And my friend asked,
well, what was the manger like?
What was the nativity like?
And the girl said,
yeah,
well,
that was way in the back.
And we’d been there for a long time,
and we had something else.
And my friend said, wait,
you didn’t see Jesus?
And the girl kind of said, well, no,
we never made it to the manger.
And, you know,
okay, that’s a 13 year old girl in a place with
lots of stimulation, lots of things to see.
And she knows the nativity story,
right?
But on the other hand, that’s really become a parable for me of the Christmas season.
There’s all this stuff,
there’s all this wonderful stuff that we can get distracted by.
And it is possible,
ironically enough,
to celebrate Christmas without Jesus.
And yet, that should never be true for people of faith.
We can’t visit the village of Christmas and get so distracted by all of the
other fun stuff that we never make it to the manger.
And that story has really captured,
for me, some of the tension I think I see in Christmas,
the way we do it in 21st century America,
it really is possible to have Christmas without Christ.
And we can’t allow that in the church.
And in our homes,
if we’re people of faith,
we cannot be distracted.
We can enjoy,
we can celebrate,
we can be careful and cautious and thoughtful about what we do.
But what we can’t
do is allow all of that stuff to lead us to miss the very thing at the center,
because that’s what gives it its meaning and what gives us our life of faith.
You know, Clint, I find that story
compelling.
You know, I’ve had an opportunity to hear it before it actually,
though it was my
experience, I think it’s become a touch point for me.
And, you know, I’ll be honest,
I think that this is far more helpful, this conversation,
when you’re really willing to live into it,
then it is troubling.
I think when you first enter and maybe in that first, you know,
one or two conversations, maybe even you experience this conversation to be challenging,
maybe it questions some assumptions that you’ve naturally made.
But friends, if you’re willing to wait in with us and
to ask some of these questions and to really see what’s there,
you know,
let me point out this
season is almost universally complained about for being so busy,
like families just feeling torn
apart.
They’re never at home.
They’re going to concerts, going to parties,
purchasing presents, trying to get them wrapped,
try to make sure that your family logistics are worked out with this side
of the family, that side of the family.
I know many people for whom this season is not one of
joyous celebration, but one of burden and struggle as they’re trying to just sort of keep plodding
along with work and life and relationships in a very, very busy season.
If you’re one of those people,
I really honestly believe that this is an opportunity for you to reframe what it is that
we’re doing, right?
Now, it’s not to say that it’s going to remove things from your schedule that’s
going to get rid of that kid’s concert or it’s going to make it so you don’t need to go to that
Christmas party with your work people.
I think what it does do is it helps you prioritize what
exactly you should be giving your time attention and worry towards, right?
And it gives you an opportunity to ask,
how are we doing telling the Christmas story in our celebration?
Maybe you’re doing great.
Celebrate it.
Keep doing it.
Maybe there’s some areas where you can bump it up a
little bit or you can do something different.
That can be for you the place to go all in,
right?
The rest of this stuff,
yeah, we’ll get presents.
It’ll be fine.
They’ll get worked out.
Let’s just try to do that as best as we can.
This is the thing that we’re going to focus on as a
family.
This is the story that we’re going to tell.
If we can do that, Clint,
I feel like we do a much
better job of prioritizing values in a season where those values appear to be equal.
It appears to be equal for my daughter that we get the right plate for Santa’s cookies as it is for her to make
sure that we talk about the story of Jesus.
My role as parent and my role as a Christian more largely
is to get those priorities organized correctly and emphasizing that conversation may have a way of
helping us do it.
So we started this with the idea of icons,
Michael, and I would make the case,
though, there may be some that disagree,
but I don’t think many.
I would argue that on this side of the Reformation,
we have come to accept that an icon can be a helpful thing,
that a representation, that a symbol, can be helpful as an article of faith.
However,
when the icon overshadows the
thing it is supposed to reference,
when the icon becomes more important than the actual thing that
it’s supposed to point to,
then it’s problematic because at that point, really,
it’s no longer doing its job.
It’s no longer functioning as it’s intended.
And I think if we as people of faith
can enter this season and navigate this season,
not so much in the yes or no black or white,
can we do Santa?
Can we have an elf?
Could we put up a tree?
Should we have lights?
Rather,
how can we allow those things to point past themselves?
How can we incorporate them in our own Christmases in such a way that they are icons,
ultimately serving
to keep us mindful and keep our attention on the one who the whole thing is supposed to be about?
And I think that makes it,
in some ways, a more difficult conversation,
but I think a far richer one.
So let’s get really specific here.
Let me try to illustrate this.
So when we make the icons
of Christmas full houses,
great food,
good drink,
all of the decorations,
presents under the tree,
when this becomes our icon of Christmas,
it becomes for us a stumbling block the moment
we realize that not all of that is going to happen,
right?
And some of us have had
real circumstances in life where the kids don’t come home or the health turns in the direction
that we wouldn’t have liked.
And there isn’t goodies or the goodies we used to be able to have,
we can’t have anymore.
And suddenly,
the presents under the tree can’t be done this year because
finances aren’t what they normally are.
However, it is those things that we took as icons of the
season become disrupted.
And we believe,
we honestly believe that Christmas has now been
transformed in a negative way.
Well, if you live in the cultural Christmas,
where it’s all about
these movie picturesque scenes of getting people together,
the trees, the lights, the food, the drink, the celebration, when that is Christmas,
of course,
when that icon doesn’t happen, we’re disappointed.
What if instead we replaced that icon with a manger,
right?
With an animal trough,
if that becomes your image of what Christmas is,
then when things don’t go your way,
it makes sense.
When you’re not surrounded by a gaggle of cooing and happy people,
that makes sense.
That didn’t happen in the scripture story.
Who are the people called?
The shepherds.
That’s hardly the baby welcoming department,
right?
This is the real story that
we have, friends.
We don’t need to make it applicable.
We don’t need to make Christmas relevant.
We actually just need to go back to the story.
And when we find that story,
we discover that God takes on flesh, God Emmanuel,
God takes on flesh.
And in the Christmas moment,
we as humanity encounter a living God.
And then in that moment, we’re connected
to the wise men,
to the shepherds, to this broad range of humanity.
This sort of Christmas for all
narrative, it is in the Christmas story,
but it’s not in the Christmas story in the way that our
secular icons point to it.
And so the simple point I want to make here is that if you feel left out
of Christmas or if you no longer feel like these icons point you to the celebration of the risen Christ,
then friends,
the great good news that I have for you today is you don’t need to go looking for icons.
They exist already.
We have them.
We have the story.
Now it’s simple.
It lacks a lot
of that sort of glitz and glamour of the cultural narratives.
But we don’t really need to go fishing.
We just need to reclaim.
And I think if we’re willing to do that in our own celebrations of
Christmas, I think it broadens and deepens the celebration,
and I think it makes it far more
accessible in a lot of ways than we have taken for granted.
Yeah. And some of that is just a measure
of influence, Michael.
I think if we spend more time with the trappings of Christmas than we do Christmas itself,
if we spend more time with the cultural story than we do the Christian story,
then we’re likely to miss some things.
We’re likely to be distracted.
We’re likely to leave
out some of the core elements of the faith part of the holiday.
And we’ve missed an opportunity at that point.
So we hope throughout this series you’ve maybe heard something that was thought
provoking or maybe led you to ask some questions,
to think some new ways.
We certainly hope that
it’s been helpful as we all seek to wrestle with this massive thing that we call Christmas and our
slice of it that seeks to be faithful to the original intent and to the purpose of it in a
world that is not altogether interested in that at times.
And so we hope there’s been something
in here that’s been helpful to you.
We’d love to know what that is.
We’d love to answer questions
if you have them.
We’d love to continue the conversation.
So if something comes up,
reach out to us through the website or the church office and we’d be grateful to try and continue those conversations.
Yeah, and we’re aware that we have several people who’ve come
into the conversation for the first time actually here because of this series.
So if you’re new here,
we want to just say welcome.
We’re glad that you’re here.
We’re going to kick off our next series in the new year.
We’ll talk a little bit about what that will be in the future,
but we’d love for you
to subscribe or to follow or to get connected wherever you’re listening by video or by audio podcast.
And we hope that you’ll continue to be reflective about your faith with us.
We don’t have any answers here,
but we do seek to ask good questions and we hope that you’re encouraged by that.
Friends,
we wish you a very merry and deep celebration of Christmas,
the coming of God in
human flesh.
May that be a deeply meaningful experience for you and yours,
and we look forward to seeing you next time.
Blessings, all.