My family has the tradition of breaking out our collection of Christmas DVDs after every Thanksgiving. These range from classics such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Christmas Story, to more recent “classics” such as The Muppet Christmas Carol, Elf and Arthur Christmas. These are lots of fun and create a sense of nostalgia for all of us. But Christmas is more than a sense of nostalgia, though you wouldn’t know it from watching these movies.
Many of these movies include a part where someone reflect on what Christmas means to them. While I love these movies, I find this part problematic, especially because their answer is generally something about family. This answer is so feeble. Yet this the best the secular mind can come up with. Beyond this poor answer, there are two problems with the question itself. First of all, it doesn’t matter what Christmas means “to me”. That’s like asking what the number 5 means to me. It is a mathematical value that means the same to all people everywhere throughout time. If I said to me, 5 means “hot chocolate”, that would be utter nonsense. Christmas has a meaning which isn’t open for our own evaluation any more than the number 5 is.
The other problem is that we cannot know the true meaning of Christmas apart from it being revealed to us. What makes us think that we can just look within ourselves and come up with an accurate understanding of what Christmas means? Just like the number 5, we didn’t come up with it’s meaning on our own, it was taught to us, most likely by our parents. Christmas is much more complicated than a mere number. It has been celebrated around the world for much of the last 2,000 years. During that time the celebrations have changed as different cultures added various elements that became popular. One cannot look around at all the elements of Christmas today and figure out, let alone believe in, the true meaning of Christmas without it being revealed.
The true meaning of Christmas is as simple as it is profound: you are loved. That is the essence of Christmas. It doesn’t rely on others, who are fallible and could possibly stop loving you. It doesn’t even rely on yourself, to be worthy of love through your actions. You are loved, simply because you exist; with overwhelming, unending, no-strings-attached love. God is the one who loves you. And He does this because of who He is—it is His nature to love you. He loves you so much that He sent His Son to live among us and show us the way when we were lost and stumbling in the dark. His Son loved us so much that He suffered the penalty for every wrong we have ever done, so that we could be restored to the Father. He loves us so much that He will one day return and set all things right. And He loves us so much that He revealed all this to us instead of keeping it secret from us. That is the true meaning of Christmas, and it fulfills the deepest yearning of every human heart.
