What is it with celebrating Christmas nowadays? It seems that it's all about staff parties, dinners, gifts, nice wrapping papers, cards, house decorating, turkey stuffing, mince pies and other such things. Is there something wrong? No, not at all.
The only problem is that most of us ‘Christians', are no longer celebrating a Christian Christmas since while focusing on the above-mentioned, we leave the very essence - the birth of Jesus Christ i.e. our Salvation - out.
"What came through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it"
- (John 1, 4-5)
So why do many Christians find it hard to celebrate the true purpose of Christmas? Is it possible that we find it so difficult to integrate the ‘fun part' with the religious part? Is it possible that midnight mass is felt to be such a burden for those who can go but opt to give it a miss and go to a party instead? Can't we make a decision to celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas eve, and go out on New Year's eve instead?
And what about the decorations at home? How many ‘Christians' actually have the advent wreath instead of a nice centre-piece on the dinner table? Do we know the meaning of the advent wreath, or of advent itself? And how many know the prayers that are supposed to be said every time a candle in the wreath is lit?
The way we celebrate Christmas at home has a large effect on the way kids look at it and the way that they will eventually celebrate it when they grow up. So if we pump in the tale of Santa Claus bringing presents home instead of il-Bambin, we're already setting out our kids on the materialistic side of Christmas. Since with all advertisements and all pictures of Santa Claus it's quite difficult to go against the trend, a suggestion could be to get the kids thinking that Santa Claus is baby Jesus' messenger... Old Santa delivers the presents that Jesus gives him.
In short, minor changes are needed to the way we celebrate this Holy season and we could be celebrating a Christian Christmas instead of an atheist one.
