Keep Christ in Christmas?

“Keep Christ in Christmas.”

People have said it for years—an encouragement to not let who Jesus is get lost in all the other cultural stuff built up around our Christmas traditions. At times it’s become an odd rallying cry as people sense a War on Christmas by retailers who tell them employees to say “happy holidays.”

This time of year we see manger scene after manger scene; and we seem to love that picture, frozen in time. Angels, shepherds, maybe some Magi. Mary and Joseph, and the baby Jesus in a manger. We love that silent night, when all is calm and all is bright.

But here’s the thing: we don’t need to keep Christ in Christmas. Why? Because the real Christ wouldn’t stay in Christmas. Jesus left that manger. For he was coming to a world where all is not calm, and all is not bright. Christ would not stay in Christmas.

He had to leave. As a toddler, he and his family fled to safety in Egypt, as a refugee from Herod, the false king in Israel. But not only that, he had to leave—for if he was going to be who he came to be, he could not stay.

He had to leave, for if he was going to be who he was, Emmanuel—God WITH us—he could not stay. He would not stay in the manger because we do not stay in nurseries. Babies don’t keep. We grow, we face life. Our bodies change, our lives take turns we don’t expect. Jesus faced that.

He began a public ministry of announcing the arrival of God’s kingdom—this upside down kingdom that would value what God values and love what God loves, utterly unlike all the other kingdoms of this world. But he did not set up shop in one place and ask people to come to him. He travelled—going not to the halls of power but to small town synagogues, to the slums of Jerusalem, to the outer courts of the temple where the poor and the foreigners were, to the fishing villages around the sea of Galilee.

He sought out the downtrodden. He sought out the hurting and the cast off. He left that manger because he had people to find. Because he had us to find. It’s why he faced the ridicule and rejection of the religious leaders and the political leaders. It’s why he faced the shame of his crucifixion—because he was taking onto his shoulders all the holds us bound, to set us free.

He would not stay in the manger, he would not stay Christ in Christmas, because he came to be the Christ of Good Friday, becoming sin for us so that we can be the righteousness of God. Facing condemnation and triumphing over judgment by his mercy.

He would not stay Christ in Christmas because he was set to be the Christ of Easter—raised in victory and vindication as one of us. Resurrected, the tomb of his death becoming the womb of a new creation that echoes to us—because he wouldn’t stay in that manger and he wouldn’t stay in that tomb either.

So let us not dare to try and keep Christ in Christmas, for he will not stay there. He will shake everything that can be shaken, he will reject power, he will cast his lot with the lost and forsaken, with us, so that we can be brought back home to God.

He will enter our ugliness to bring his beauty. He will shine his light into our darkness to lead us out. Do not try and keep Christ in Christmas, but allow him to ravish your heart and lead you, like him, to the poor, the downtrodden, the forgotten to give them the good news of him: that Jesus tells to us of a love that we did not earn but can only receive like a gift—selected by him and fitted exactly to our need. A gift that is not limited to one day or one giving, but the gift of mercies that are new every morning.

Keep Christ in Christmas? No. Don’t do it. Hear the voice of his Spirit calling to you tonight, and let every heart here prepare him room, and all heaven and nature sing—joy to the world of our Lord Jesus Christ who has come. Jesus who died, Jesus who is risen, and Jesus who is coming again to make all things new.