The True Meaning of Christmas - BAH! HUMBUG!

The Christmas season is here.  You can tell because you spend money you don't have on things other people don't need.  You can drive around at night without your headlights on.  And of course, you're much busier than usual.  These are all signs that it's the Christmas season, 21st century style.

In observance of the season, it might be possible to cram in a church service, social service or Christmas show.  Maybe even all three.  Who needs sleep anyway, IT'S CHRISTMAS!  Each of these with varying degrees of success, will likely beckon you away from the frenzy at some point with whispers about "the true meaning of Christmas."  Its' good to console yourself with that thought as you're fighting for a parking spot outside the church you're trying to get into. 

Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" will be on TV at multiple times for your viewing convenience.  My favorite version of this Christmas classic is, of course, "Scrooged." The story is about the intrinsic superiority of generosity over selfishness and greed.  There's a Christmas goose in it.  There's a mom too but as far as I know, no apple pie.

I'm not sure we needed convincing that avarice, greed and consuming self interest are not good as being...well...good, but Dickens and a few thousand other people over the intervening years since he wrote the novella have made an awful lot of filthy lucre telling us that's true so there must be something to it.
What is wildly ironic about this feel good spending/eating/doing frenzy is that it happens during Advent. I haven't observed the church calendar for most of my life but I've been paying it a little more attention to it over the last few years. Advent is a season of quiet.

Advent is the first season of the new church year.  It's purpose is to prepare us to receive the Christ child.  It was surprising to me to learn that Advent for about 2000 years, has been considered the second most penitential season on the church calendar after Lent.  And it's considered a pretty close second.  Virtually any discipline you'd pursue for Lent (fasting, silence, etc.) is considered fit for the Advent season.

The point of this deprivation is to make us a little less focused on ourselves and a little more focused on the one who created us and redeemed us.  Advent's been good for that up until the last 150 years or so.

All of this points to the fact that there is no "true meaning" to Christmas.  Christmas is not about meaning at all. It is about the incarnation of Christ, both on earth and in our lives.  He is good, generous, loving and kind, so Christmas has those attributes.  However, to celebrate those attributes without Christ is a bit like standing a good ways from the fire and expecting the smoke to keep you warm. 

There is I think there is a still deeper truth in Advent.  It's a truth buried deep in us.  We were wired for this season.  We were made for a time of slowing down and remembering the shepherds, the wise men and the star.  Something down very deep in us cries out for the still small voice we first heard in the moment we were spoken. 

And that's why, when Linus steps out into "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and recites Luke 2: 8-14 about the birth of Christ, there is a celebration of silence.  It's what we wanted all along.

Christmas is almost here, all 12 days of it.  The joy to come is easy to see from the place of quiet.