Sometimes, as the Christmas season approaches, I find myself growing a bit more curmudgeonly about the secularization, commercialization, and cultural noise that tend to drown out the season’s true meaning.
When I mumble and grumble about it, my wife tells me I’m being “Scroogy” about Christmas, so I want to start by saying I genuinely do enjoy Christmas and most (but not all) of what comes with it. So, this isn’t going to be a “let’s cancel Santa” rant (though I’d like there to be less of the modern Santa and more of the true Saint Nicholas).
There’s something more ironic, and also tragic, about how the culture celebrates Christmas than the crass commercialism we’re all too familiar with. It’s how the secular world celebrates and extols light, love, joy, peace, and generosity at Christmas (sometimes all lumped together as “the Christmas spirit”), yet they’re lauding ideas of Christmas rather than its essence; they’re missing its origin and cause—its concrete reality.
These aren’t just nice ideas floating in the winter air. They have a source, a person who entered history at a specific time and place. The real meaning of Christmas isn’t hiding beneath all the cultural noise—it’s staring them right in the face whenever they speak of love, joy, and peace: it’s Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God.
What are they really celebrating?
Most people know that “Christmas” literally means “Christ Mass,” a celebration of Christ’s birth. It was set on December 25 in the 4th century, providing a Christian alternative to existing pagan winter festivals.
What we call “Christmas” today has expanded far beyond that single day of celebration and worship. It’s become a multi-week “season”—Advent leading up to it and, in some traditions, the Twelve Days following it1—and a broader cultural phenomenon of shopping, decorating, parties, and music that now seems to start in October (yes, before Halloween!).
For most of the population, it’s now a mostly secularized holiday, complete with family traditions and gatherings that may have little to do with worshipping the Son of God. Thus, celebrating Christmas has morphed into “celebrating the holiday season.”
It seems that the secular culture would rather not say they’re celebrating “Christmas.” And, technically speaking, they aren’t. But that begs the question: what are they celebrating, exactly, beyond “the season,” that is?
If you probe a little, they will probably say they’re celebrating light, love, joy, peace, family, charity, goodwill, etc. Beautiful things, for sure—all of them.
Even then, while these things are often mentioned (and there is a lot of charity during the season), the main expressions of the seasonal celebration seem to be partying and gift-exchanging. They’re fun (and good for our economy), but I’m not sure how those alone promote all those ideals.
And why do these things suddenly become more important in wintertime? Why do they get so sentimental when it gets cold? And more importantly, where do light, love, peace, and charity actually come from? Who came up with them? Who says they’re so important?
The world’s version of Jesus
The secular world has an answer to those questions in its own version of Jesus: Jesus was a good man who taught us to love one another. He walked through the world with empathy, sharing food with the hungry and time with the sick. He showed us what it means to be kind and generous. And that love—that spirit of goodness—lives inside every one of us. And Christmas—which celebrates Jesus’ birth—is a good time to focus on the good things he both taught and lived, and to look inwardly to find and express that goodness in each of us.
It’s a nice sentiment. It’s also fundamentally wrong (or at the very least, woefully incomplete), in terms of providing a satisfactory answer, if for no other reason that none of us has to look very long and hard into our hearts to discover that we are not as good, and kind, and peaceable as the season would make us out to be.
Notice what’s missing from this version? The literal, historical incarnation and all that it means.
The Bible’s answer
The Bible provides the best answer of all:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. / He was with God in the beginning. / Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made (Jn. 1:1-3, ESV).
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth (Jn. 1:14, ESV).
The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His nature, upholding all things by His powerful word. After He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high (Heb. 1:3, ESV).
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have gazed upon and touched with our own hands—this is the Word of life. / And this is the life that was revealed; we have seen it and testified to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us (I Jn. 1:1-2, ESV).
These verses powerfully establish that Christmas commemorates and celebrates something far more profound than a good teacher’s birth—they proclaim that the eternal God Himself—the second Person of the Trinity—entered human history in concrete, tangible form.
John 1:1-3 affirms that Jesus existed from eternity as God, the Creator of all things. At the same time, verse 14 declares the staggering reality that this infinite God “became flesh and dwelt among us”—not as an abstract idea or force for good, but as a person who could be seen, heard, and touched. He condescended to come to earth as one of us to become our Savior—an expression of His great love.
Hebrews 1:3 emphasizes that the incarnate Son is “the exact representation” of God’s nature and came with the specific mission to provide “purification for sins,” thereby inseparably connecting Christmas to the cross and His work of salvation. And 1 John 1:1-2 reinforces the concrete, historical nature of the incarnation—the apostles didn’t encounter a vague spirit of love, but a real person they gazed upon and touched with their own hands, and then wrote their accounts in the gospels.
Together, these passages reveal that Christmas is the celebration of God making Himself known, entering our world not merely to teach us about abstractions like light and love, and peace and joy, but to be the Light and Love Himself (“I am the light of the world,” Jn. 8:12) and ultimately to accomplish our salvation through His life, death, and resurrection.
Christmas is about the gospel. His miraculous birth, righteous life, sacrificial atoning death on a cross, resurrection, and ascension were all a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. The gospel itself has the power to change our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
The beautiful irony
The thing that I find most ironic about the secular celebration of Christmas is that the world is unknowingly celebrating Christ even as they try to avoid Him, at least celebrating “Him” as the incarnate Son of God.
They celebrate light, but Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (Jn 8:12, ESV). Every Christmas light strung on every house is a dim reflection of the true Light who came into the world.
They celebrate love, but “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8, ESV), and the incarnation is the ultimate expression of that love. Every gift exchanged, every act of kindness, every warm embrace is a shadow of the Love who became flesh and dwelt among us.
They celebrate peace, but He is our only source of peace (Eph. 2:14), the Prince of Peace (Is. 9:6). That vague longing for peace on earth they sing about in carols? It’s only found in and through the person of Jesus Christ.
They celebrate joy, but the angels announced “good news of great joy” (Lk. 2:10, ESV) at His birth. True joy—not fleeting happiness dependent on circumstances, but deep, abiding joy—is found in Christ alone.
They celebrate charity and generosity, but these flow from the ultimate act of generosity: God giving Himself to lost sinners who had no claim on Him and could offer nothing in return.
Christ is the concrete expression of everything the culture claims to value during this season. He is all the things the world says it values: light, love, peace, and joy, incarnated and personified in Christ, the ultimate gift of a good and merciful God.
And we must also remember that the true meaning of Christmas cannot be separated from the significance of Easter. It’s the whole of Jesus’ life—His birth, life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension—that shows us “…what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 Jn. 1:3, ESV). This love is the sacrifice of the Lamb of God who was born to die for us.
I’m reminded of the first few lines of the old hymn, “Here is Love (Vast as an Ocean”:
Here is love, vast as the ocean
Lovingkindness as the flood
When the Prince of Life, our ransom
Shed for us His precious blood
Who His love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing His praise?
He can never be forgotten
Throughout heaven's eternal days
What this means for Christians
The culture is free to call it whatever they want, but here’s what they can’t do: they can’t erase the historical reality of Christ’s incarnation, nor can they separate the blessings of Christmas from their source. The secular celebration borrows capital from the Christian gospel, living off the reality of Christmas while refusing to acknowledge its truths.
As Christians, we can still own and celebrate the true Christmas, even as we enjoy its traditional cultural aspects. We understand the connection that the culture ignores.
And we’re also free to enjoy the more sentimental aspects: the lights, the music, the family gatherings, and the traditions—we’re celebrating realities that point to Christ.
But we also have the privilege of being witnesses, showing people that the light they love is a person, that the love they long for has a name, that the peace they seek walked among us and now sits at the right hand of His Father in heaven.
I especially love being in church with my Christian brothers and sisters at Christmastime, as we worship and celebrate the coming of the incarnate King who is Light, Love, Peace, Joy, and the greatest Gift ever given. We’re not celebrating abstractions—we’re celebrating a person, and anticipating His future return as the eternal King who rules over all.
The real meaning of Christmas is staring the world in the face. They see the effects but miss the Source. As Christians, we have the privilege of seeing clearly, knowing the person behind all these blessings, and telling others about Him when we have the opportunity.
Merry Christmas! May your celebration be both meaningful and genuinely joyful, and may you have opportunities to point others to the concrete reality of God’s love in Jesus Christ!
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- The original twelve days of Christmas were a series of religious feast days observed in medieval and Tudor England as part of the Roman Catholic Church. Starting on Christmas Day, there were 12 days of religious celebrations, feasting, and entertainment that lasted until 5 January. ↩︎