Advent, Christmas, and Weakness

Many Christians these days get angry when people say “happy holidays” this time of year instead of “merry Christmas.” I’ve seen a few blogs, facebooks, and other forms of social media dedicated to being “politically incorrect” in their conviction to keep Christ in Christmas by saying “merry Christmas.” It’s hard to know how to react things like this. On the one hand, we Christians should be eager to confess Christ. But on the other hand, we are called to respect and love all people; even those who disagree with our religious views. But both of these arguments miss the point.

For we Christians, in the midst of our fighting about semantics, we have missed the true meaning of Advent and indeed, of Christmas. Advent is about weakness. Christmas is about the all powerful creator incarnated in the form of a weak, entirely dependent baby. As I discussed a few days ago, Christmas is about God’s self-emptying on our behalf.

It is rather disturbing to think of God as weak. We pray to him for power, miracles, healing, salvation, and many other things that require infinite strength. And it is good that we do this. But the Christmas season celebrates God’s subjecting himself to weakness on behalf of humanity.

Why are we uncomfortable with weakness? Why does uncertainty bother us the way that it does? And to ask the biggest question of them all, why does it bother Christianity to practice weakness during the Christmas season? Our cultural climate is one of extreme social Darwinism - the survival of the fittest. We build massive buildings, form powerful armies, and accumulate excessive amounts of wealth all to show that we are the dominant society. Historically, when our position on the world scale is in danger of losing power, we have been told that “our very way of life is at stake.”

This attitude has worked its way into the church. Churches hold growth seminars, spend untold amounts of money on stages and sound systems that would rival full-time rock bands, and practice Christianity is a way that shows power, strength, and confidence. The church is equally as Darwinist as the world as it relates to social structures. In recent years, Christianity and politics has been inseparable in American society. Christianity has adopted a place of power. Christianity has been climbing the social ladder, trying to show that it is fit enough to survive. Out of this comes the fight for Christmas. We insist on saying “merry Christmas” because it shows our unique slant on this time of year. We fight to “keep Christ in Christmas” because by doing so we ourselves climb another rung on the social ladder while those who are not Christians stay behind.

The ironic thing about all of this is that the harder we fight to “keep Christ in Christmas,” the more we remove him. If our main concern about keeping Christ in the celebration of Christmas has become to use one set of terminology over another, we have completely missed the point. Christmas is about the weakness of God. Christmas is about the creator lying in a cattle feeding trough, embodying perfect love in weakness for a people who only understood power.

Unless we speak of weakness in love, we take Christ out of Christmas regardless of what terminology we use. Jesus’ birth and his life bore witness to a “weak” love of identifying with outcasts, the homeless, the unloved, and the despised. Unless we do the same, we have taken Christ out of Christmas regardless of whether we say “merry Christmas” or “happy holidays.”