Is It A Christmas Or A Holiday Tree?

I recently read with interest an exchange between some friends on Facebook about stores no longer having Christmas trees. Now you will notice that I did not say they were no longer going to have trees. That practice they are going to continue. There will be highly decorated trees in the stores but they will now be known as "Holiday" trees. That discussion between my friends ended with the question, "Where did we go wrong?"

It is that question that I wish to address. We went wrong when we Christians began to stress the exchanging of gifts over the reason for the celebration. In our defense, giving and receiving gifts has always been a part of the modern celebration of the birth of Christ. However, it was never the focus of the holiday.

We could blame the transition on what in the 1960's we referred to then as the "Madison Avenue" retailing (marketing) of Christmas. That was when American retailers began to realize the enormous potential for sales that this gift giving custom presented. But that really would not be fair to these people, many of whom were themselves Christians.

No, I suspect where we really went wrong was when we started allowed the secular world to seize our celebration. Perhaps seize is too strong because in reality we pretty much handed it over to them. In some strange way we thought that letting non-believers celebrate Christmas it somehow brought them closer to faith. The birth of Christ and the Biblical Christmas story had no meaning for them but the gift giving was another story. That they could understand . . . that they could do not because the loved Jesus but because they loved each other.

Now do not let me loose you here. There is absolutely nothing wrong with people exchanging gifts with one another. After all the birth of Christ was the beginning of the greatest gift of all . . . the beginning of our salvation. And it was indeed because of the love God has for us that he gave us that wonderful gift. Hence the pattern is set for exchanging gifts as an expression of one's love.

Besides all that, didn't the wise men from the East bring gifts? They most certainly did and they were expensive gifts. However, these gifts were not for each other, or the Shepherds, or Herod, or Mary & Joseph. No, they were for the child born that night . . . the same child for whom the season is named . . . Jesus Christ!

However, over time the reasons for giving and receiving of gifts was so enlarged by slick marketing that in most cases the gifts we now exchange have little if anything at all to do with the gift God has given or even our own love for others. We do it because it is expected.

I remember that when I was a child our extended family would gather on Christmas eve to share a time of fellowship, food and yes, some gift giving. However, at some point during that great family gathering we would assemble as a group by families and someone would open a Bible and read the biblical account of the birth of Christ. This was followed by a prayer that always began with an expression of thanks to God for the gift he had given in Jesus Christ His son. This was done to remind us, lest we forget, that the heart of Christmas is the birth of Jesus. From the youngest to the oldest among us when asked, "What is Christmas?" would answer, "It is the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus."

Yes my friends, where we went wrong was when exchanging gifts became the focus of the occasion. The evidence of this transition from celebration of Jesus' birth to exchanging gifts is demonstrated by the fact that we start our shopping on "Black Friday" (the Friday after Thanksgiving) and don't stop until the stores close on Christmas Eve.

This transition is so complete that our society now deems the use of the name Christ in conjunction with Christmas as politically incorrect. I heard a fellow on a cooking show on talk about preparing a stuffed pork chop that was seasoned with rosemary and other spices. However he said, "If you don't like pork you can use chicken and if you don't have any fresh rosemary you can substitute . . . " Somewhere in that his meal ceased to be a pork chop and became a chicken. I am afraid that is what has happened to Christmas.

Little by little over the years we have "substituted" away our Christmas celebration and now it has become just another holiday. I know that "happy holidays" is not a bad greeting; I also know that gift giving is not incongruous with Christmas; I know that having a "holiday tree" isn't a bad thing but I also know that it isn't really Christmas.