The Meaning of Christmas

It has been said that if you're looking for somewhere to hide something from someone the best place is under their nose. And that's what's happened with Christmas in some respects. Underneath the pagan Christmas, the consumerism, the materialism, Santa Claus and Christmas trees, is the nativity.

The nativity play is, thankfully, still considered an essential element in Christmas. This in itself does not mean that people are hungering and thirsting for Christ at this time of year, but it still forms part of indigenous Briton's tradition, and therefore identity, and so people want to hang on to it.

But how many people watching nativity plays this last week have understood its meaning?

Behind the story of a child in a manger is a wonderful, shocking, and incomprehensible event. God, the creator of the universe, the Supreme Being whom we cannot see or even conceive of, has taken on human form.

And behind this event, this incarnation is the decision God has taken, that he will not be a distant God, he will come into our world. He will not be the cruel and pitiless God that we might suppose him to be when we look at the injustice and suffering in our world. God becoming human means that all disease and death and misery is not the final word, and he will be a healing, restoring, loving and merciful God.

We cannot think why the creator of the Universe should be concerned with our lives but because God became one of us, one of His creatures, we know that he is.

Do we think about this when we read the story of the shepherd's and the angels, or of the Magi? How many children singing about the baby Jesus at this time of year know who or what that baby was?

Let us never forget that Mary's pregnancy was planned. Behind the events of the nativity lie a decision, taken by God, that He will be for us not against us. He will be with us not far from us. He will be merciful and forgiving and he will draw us near to him, both in this life and in the life to come.

This decision is an eternal decision. It's not something that happened in the past that we must recreate in plays and films so that it's kept alive. It's a decision that cannot die. It's an eternal decision and it's a final decision.

So this Christmas lets try to remember what lies behind the nativity. Christmas is celebrating the birth of Christ but it's more than a birthday party. It's about that decision God has taken, that he will be our God.

Read the story, go to church, watch a nativity play at school. Lets keep the nativity play alive, lets delight in it, and lets protest when people try to remove it from the Christmas experience.

But lets not forget what the nativity represents. As we celebrate Christmas lets keep in mind that we are celebrating all the events and symbols through which we come to realise that God is for us and is with us. Lets not confuse the wrapping with the gift. The nativity is is the wrapping, God in Christ and in the Holy Spirit is the gift.

Happy Christmas!