As we’ve just entered December and anticipate the Christian celebration of Christmas, we ought to discern our attitude to it with fear and trembling. For some believers in Jesus, it’s “the most wonderful time of the year”. For others, it’s one of the most dreaded or despised events in their yearly experience. For some misled and distracted Christians, it’s one of the best times to engage in heated arguments and debates in passionate crusades against what they believe to be paganism.

Doubtless, the Christian discussion about Christmas is a very controversial issue. Some of the reason for this controversy is well-founded, while many have terribly poor reasons for opposing their brethren’s enjoyment of the holiday. In the midst of all the views and voices about this season and celebration, I’d like to offer a biblically-based evaluation of celebrating Christmas, and one huge danger with the holiday that rarely gets discussed.

I’ll begin by pointing out the main benefits of the holiday, then its dangers, followed by one of the largest temptations that Christmas presents to us, along with possible corrective measures against it.

The Pro’s and Con’s of Christmas

As with most matters that aren’t specifically addressed by the Scriptures, this ancient holiday has advantages and disadvantages. The first most obvious benefit of celebrating a holiday called Christmas is that it is overtly concerned with the Christ of the Scriptures. That was its original intention – that believers in the identity of Jesus Christ would honor His virgin birth into this world of sin from the realms of glory. Thus, celebrating Christmas in the right way, with the right motives, can plainly be a very God-pleasing and Christ-exalting thing. This is why I see nothing inherently wrong with celebrating the birth of the Lord Jesus through this holiday. We ought to see it as a golden opportunity to proclaim the mighty and gracious works of God in the life, death, and resurrection of Messiah Jesus.

Although the holiday presents a good opportunity for remembering and pondering the miraculous incarnation of God the Son, and proclaiming His coming to the unbelieving world, it obviously has been largely stripped of its Christian meaning, and cloaked in the garb of God-hating ideals. Just ask how most people celebrate Christmas, and they’ll say nothing of the Lord Jesus. Most of the traditions, rituals, and events that are used to celebrate revolve around greed, the love of pleasure, and selfishness. Even if some people celebrate the holiday in outwardly moral ways, the virtues that are celebrate lift up and boast in the supposed goodness and greatness of man, not in that of Jesus Christ. The Lord of glory’s name and honor is overwhelmingly trampled in the dust, spit upon, and covered with an altar to the god of man and self.

Further, even most celebrations of Christmas that include mention of the Lord Jesus dishonor and belittle Him in failing to recognize Him as the glorious King and Savior that He is. And there’s no aspect of alleged remembrances of Him that I see so marring and corrupting His infinite greatness as the emphasis on His infancy and birth. This I see as one of the grave dangers facing Christians as we seek to lift up and praise the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Temptation of Seeing Jesus as a Baby in a Manger

Let me describe to you some of the greatest dangers included in focusing on the birth of Jesus. In general, it’s easy to become so fascinated by the story of His birth that we lose sight of the rest of the His life. This is especially true when you use nativity scenes, and reenactments of the event. I think it’s telling that this is the only event in Jesus’s life that evangelicals are largely willing to portray in life-sized ways, while the rest gets little pageantry or theatre. What about His baptism, or the feeding of the five thousand, or the raising of Lazarus? I realize there are reasonable explanations for this special treatment, but I still find it unsettling.

One of the temptations I see facing us from emphasizing the birth story is that we detract from the truth that Jesus now has sovereignty over all things, and triumphed over the world, sin, and the devil through His death and ascension. Also, sometimes we can pull the focus away from the Lord Himself, and emphasize the roles of Joseph and Mary too much.

So, how can we celebrate the birth of our Lord in a balanced, gospel-informed way? Instead of placing the emphasis on the events surrounding His birth, we ought to reflect on the significance of those events. The main meaning of His being conceived and born through a virgin is that He was the eternal, infinite God who clothed Himself in a human nature. And this was done so He could offer His life a ransom for many by serving as the satisfactory sacrifice for all our sins, and then be exalted to heaven as a Prince and Savior to grant repentance and forgiveness to sinners.

Besides simply letting the infancy narrative remind us of the full gospel, I also dislike the use of Christmas church gatherings solely as gospel-presentations, or entertaining presentations. All church leaders ought to realize that the brethren are still in need of encouraging and practical instruction in the week of Christmas, no less than any other week. So I think it crucial that a Christmas celebration doesn’t replace a regular time of Bible training, but simply supplements it.

To conclude my critique of obsessing over the birth of Jesus during Christmas, let me offer you a few more thoughts on how we could balance our celebration of Christmas with the other aspects of our Lord’s life. First, I’d like to inform you that only one of the four Gospels describe the events of Jesus’s birth (Luke), and only two of them narrate His life before adulthood (Matthew as well). So apparently the events of His birth weren’t quite as important as those that are described by all the Gospels. That said, perhaps it would be wise and useful to add to our special celebrations some holiday celebrating Jesus’s public ministry, like Catholics do in Epiphany (focusing on His baptism). And finally, I would caution you to use great care and wisdom in displaying manger scenes. For one, they often include unbiblical elements, like the magi being present; and second, they may give undue attention to the Lord’s birth, to the neglect of His death and resurrection. In all our remembrance, we must always recall that He was born to live, die, and rise to the throne of the universe. And He’s coming again to judge the world!

Lessons to Draw from God Becoming Man

To end this evaluation of the merits of Christmas, let me offer three of the greatest implications that God the Son’s incarnation (becoming flesh) conveys to us. First, it shows us the infinity of Jesus’s love for His people. What He did in adding a human nature to Himself is incomprehensibly humbling. The Creator of all things made Himself take the form of one of His creatures, and that for an everlasting time. Jesus never stopped being God, but He will also never stop being a man. Out of His love for the people He redeemed, He decided to live among them as man for all eternity, even though this required Him to limit Himself to only doing human things for a short lifetime, and then to ultimately die the most soul-crushing death ever suffered in our place. What a God!

Second, the incarnation calls us to imitate Jesus’s humility through our own self-debasement. This is exactly what Paul tells the Philippians to do in the second chapter of his letter to them. He tells them to imitate the “mind” that was in Messiah Jesus, and then explains this mind by recounting how He incarnated Himself in order to die. So we also ought to “empty” ourselves of our personal rights in order to serve those who need help, as Jesus did.

Finally, along these lines, we believers in Jesus should recognize every day that we are little “christ’s” manifesting the glorious presence of the infinite God through our lives. As God the Father put Himself on display through the life of Jesus, now Jesus reveals His character through our lives as we reflect it in increasing measure. And we do this most fully and effectively as brethren in God’s family, acting as the mutually dependent parts of Christ’s body on earth. He is now calling people to Himself through the body of Christ, to the praise of His great name. May you grow in your experience of Him, so those around you will see more of His goodness, and come to love Him, or love Him more.