Christmas And Love - The Connection

Christmas and Love – The Connection

Scripture: John 3:16; Mark 12:30-31; First Peter 4:8; First John 4:16-19

This morning I want to talk to you about the connection between Christmas and love. This Saturday we will celebrate Christmas. This is the time of year when people tend to be more generous, more loving and more caring. We tend to have more patience with one another because it’s Christmas time. This feeling of brotherly love, what some call “the spirit of Christmas”, is shared across religious boundaries because for many, Christmas is not a religious holiday, it’s a secular one. So my question to you this morning is, “What’s love got to do with it?” If Christmas is truly a secular holiday, why do we feel more brotherly love during this time of year? Some would argue that they don’t and they would be right as there are people who actually hate this time of year. But for a Christian, someone who has accepted Christ as their personal Savior, what does love have to do with Christmas? My answer to this question is “Everything!” John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Also, Romans 5:7-8 says, “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet perhaps for a good man some would even dare to die. 8But God commends His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Christ was born because God loved us first. Christ died for our sins, because God loved us first. I do not care how you view Christmas, it started with love and it will end with love!

A few years ago there was a controversy in reference to the use of the word “Christmas” being used to describe this particular holiday season. It was politically incorrect, and to some degree it still is, to wish someone a Merry Christmas unless you knew for sure that they were a Christian. Even though a lot of our holiday stories center around Santa Claus, for Christians, Christmas started as a celebration of the birth of Christ. Christmas, as we know it, is a rather modern innovation. Christ’s birthday was not celebrated until more than 300 years after His death and resurrection. For the early Christians, His birth was not as important as His death and resurrection. Based on biblical account of His birth, Christ was born in the spring. Celebrating Christmas on December 25 was chosen to coincide with a Roman holiday in which the sun god was worshipped. By 386 A.D. church leaders set up the celebration of “Christ Mass” so that Christians could join in the festival activities that the Romans were already participating in without bending to paganism. After the Roman Empire dissolved, Christians continued the December 25th birthday custom. Through the years other customs were added to the celebration to get us to what we celebrate today as Christmas, which does not resemble what was originally celebrated. Today, Christmas is focused more on gift giving than the One it is to celebrate – something that none in the early Church would ever have imagined. So we find ourselves in the midst of wondering can I wish someone on my job a “Merry Christmas” or must I say “Happy Holidays.” Retailers are also moving away from using “Christmas” in their advertising as to not be offensive. They are now wishing everyone a very “Happy Holiday Season”. Again I ask you, what does love have to do with this?

I think I shared this story before, but it bears repeating again in this message. Several years ago I watched a talk show where the host had an atheist, a Jewish rabbi and a Catholic priest on as his guest. The host was also Catholic. The focus of the conversation was why “religious” people believe in God and why the atheist did not. They also discussed the obvious fact that there is a division among those who believed in God but rejected a belief in Christ. Both the rabbi and the priest could not believe that the atheist could teach her children that all that they were existed within them now; that there was no higher power than them. Her response to them was that the so-called “religious” people cannot agree with one another either. The first place she went to was Christ. She said to the priest and the rabbi that one of them must be wrong since one believed in Christ and the other did not. The rabbi responded by saying that both believed in God and that was more important. He took it a step further and said that he believed that Christ was truly the Messiah for the Gentiles, but he did not think that Christ was God’s Son. Well the prevailing thought of the atheist was that if the religious people could not agree how could she agree with and/or believe either group. It was easy to see the difference between Christians and Jews, but it is much harder to explain the differences between Christians, which is a point that the atheist quickly pointed out next.