The ReasonS for the Season

This morning I read Tim Yenters blog about the Christmas debates, and wanted to write a little about the same thing myself.

(For my response to Tim's thoughts as well as Tim's thoughts go to inessentials.com/blog)

I think I spent half of my Christmas stressed out trying to get enough things and the right things for my family and friends for Christmas. I shopped on the internet, on the strip malls, and in the glorious Home Depot. After a while you begin to wonder, in this what Jesus had in mind?

I believe the current debates about whether to say Happy Holidays or Christmas demonstrate the wrongheadedness of Christians in the public square. We want to be wealthy. We want to be powerful. So we yell and scream and demand our rights. Meanwhile the baby Jesus comes to a third world country, under an oppressive regime, he is born in a barn, and he is placed in a feed trough.

Maybe Christians should take more time living Christmas in the public square than they do demanding people to say the word Christmas in the public square. Maybe if we spent less time shopping for clothes, DVDs, and jewlery for our loved ones and spent a little more time visiting shut-ins, or reaching out to children without parents, or buying the wino down the street dinner and a beer we might have people seeing Jesus in the Christian community. Maybe then, when we celebrate Christmas people might not be so shy greet us in a more traditional manner, because they will have seen Jesus at work on earth year around.