How To Keep Christ In Christmas

Amo, Amas, Amat

I spent two torturous years in high school taking Latin.  It was required to graduate and no other languages were offered (Catholic High Schools in the late 50’s).  I remember something about Latin being the “foundation of Western European languages” and the basis for innumerable English words.  Mastering it would be a great help to me throughout life.

I never mastered Latin, being passed by teachers mainly wishing not to prolong either their own agony or mine.  Subsequently, I  missed out on the great help it would have been to me for the last 62 years since that final class of my sophomore year.  But I did remember a few things and amo, amas, amat are three of them.  These are the first, second and third person singular, present active indicative conjunction, of the Latin verb for love, amo.  You might imagine from that description why Latin and I didn’t get along.  Somehow, this brings me around to “keeping Christ in Christmas”.

This is the time of the year when we start to see little magnetic manger scenes with “Keep Christ in Christmas” printed on them strategically placed on the backs of $50,000 SUV’s.  My local Catholic parish sells them as a fundraiser.  Truthfully, I’ve never engaged any drivers of these vehicles to ask them who might be removing Christ or if He was abandoning the day on His own volition and this was a marketing attempt to to drum up support to encourage Him to stay. It apparently started after legal challenges in the 1980’s concerning nativity scenes (creches) on public property met with mixed rulings concerning the promotion of a religion, Christianity, and most government units apparently stopped the practice to avoid litigation.  The increased use by some of a “Happy Holidays” greeting in lieu of “Merry Christmas” so as to be inclusive and avoid possibly offending an ever-increasing population of non-believers while still covering all the bases raised the ire of some Christians even more.  The “Christian” holiday was being subverted by politically correct liberals who were trying to remove Christ all together and make it a secular holiday.  As expected, no controversy goes unchallenged.  A 2005 book, conservative talk radio, and a now infamous FOX news personality elevated it to a substantial cultural war.  President Trump famously declared he was putting Christ back in Christmas and was cheered by his cohorts.  I somehow missed that moment as I seem to remember being overwhelmed by the vitriol he seemed to be continually spewing from his mouth.  But then, perception often overcomes reality.

With plenty of pandemic induced time on my hands, I’ve been expending more effort trying to get a better understanding of my own spirituality (see my previous effort on religion for an earlier attempt) and what it really means to say you are a Christian.  Any insights might help in trying to determine if I should buy a magnet and display it on the back of my car. At this point in the essay, I have to decide whether to write a few thousand more words or cut to the chase.  Let’s go with the latter.

Let me briefly state a few facts as well as a couple of inciteful (I think) observations.

1. We don’t know the date Christ was born.  His birth certificate must have been lost when the Romans sacked Jerusalem in 70AD.  The December 25th date coincides with the celebration of pagan sun gods and may have been chosen to provide an alternative for the newly Christianized Roman Empire in the 4th century.  There are several other theories but all point to the idea that the date is arbitrary.  If shepherds were really present as the evangelist Luke notes, a more probable time might be in September or October when sheep were still in the fields prior to winter.
2. Christmas is not the most important Christian feast; Easter is.  If we want to get into a theological morass, the feast of the Annunciation on March 25 when God became Incarnate (man) may be a more significant feast.
3. Only Mathew and Luke have birth narratives in their gospels.  The event didn’t rate a mention by Mark or John.
4. Paul, the great apostle, makes little of the birth of Jesus.
5. The religiously pious Puritans actually outlawed Christmas from 1659 to 1681.
6. The bible does not say Jesus was born in a stable, so our traditional nativity scenes are mostly a mythical creation.  The first nativity scene may have been made by St Francis of Assisi in 1223 in an attempt to reemphasize Christmas as “Christ’s-mass” over secular materialism.
7. The Christmas traditions we celebrate today are a combination of celebrations and customs from several European nations: decorated trees from Germany, cards from England, St Nicholas, a gift giving bishop, from what is now Turkey.
8. Probably the greatest contributions to the way Americans currently celebrate Christmas were provided by some short stories from Washington Irving, the popularity of Charles Dicken’s novel “A Christmas Carol”, and of course, Clement Moore’s poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, more commonly known by its first line, “Twas the night before Christmas…”.  All were 19th century publications and secular in nature.
9. Christmas was not established as a national holiday until 1870.
10. The “Happy Holidays” greeting now shunned by some aggrieved Christians, is actually based on “Happy Holy Days” which may be preferable to Merry Christmas since it is meant to include all of the Christmas season from the first Sunday of Advent in early December through Epiphany on January 6.
11. The word “Christmas” probably didn’t come into use until the 11th century as a better way to describe the day on which “Christ’s Mass” was celebrated.  Since the mass is a particular Roman Catholic worship service, my protestant evangelical friends will just have to rationalize it.

So, all this brings us back to amo, amas, amat.  As I read The New Testament and see how Christ lived His life and what His core message was, I can only imagine that He is shaking His head and throwing up His arms in disgust.  It’s clear that He puts much more credence on what we do than on what we say.  The Christ in The New Testament demands faith but that is of little consequence if our lives are not dramatically changed by our purported faith and our behaviors do not align with the Greatest Commandment, which all four evangelists record.  I’m paraphrasing, but He insisted that we love God with all we’ve got and love our neighbor as ourselves.  So, it’s not only what we proclaim, but how we live, our deeds and good works, how we look upon and treat others, and how we use the material gifts we are given that will weigh heavily on how we are judged (please read the book).

As we enter a season that many believe commemorates the birth of the Son of God who preached love, it seems like the words or phrases believers, non-believers, agnostics, atheists, and those just trying to be politically correct use to greet me during this season is of little consequence.  What’s more important is my own sense of what it means to set aside a day to celebrate Christ’s birth and how He effects my life.  The trees, gifts, decorations, and magnetic nativity scenes mean nothing if I have lost or maybe never really internalized the meaning and way of life demanded by the “Greatest Commandment”. That “Keep Christ In Christmas” magnet is better placed on the dashboard of my car where I can see it so I can have proper perspective than on the back where it may be a hollow message.