The last Christmas dinner I had with my father was actually on a Christmas Eve. His neighbours, being of Norwegian ancestry, celebrated Christmas on the 24th, with a dinner of roast pork and cabbage. It was their Christmas tradition. Other cultures also do their celebrating on Christmas Eve; there are some people who celebrate Christmas at midnight mass; some make a big deal out of St Nicholas Day, and some celebrate Christmas in conjunction with Epiphany – the arrival of the Magi.
My sister-in-law and her husband have a Christmas tradition: dinner for the entire clan, all 19 of us now, covering four generations. Their house is comfortable but not huge, and somehow, they shoehorn the whole lot of us – plus some other friends -- into their temporary banquet hall.
My parents’ Christmas tradition involves anything but having dinner at home. This followed the night the turkey suddenly took flight when my dad got frustrated at a sticking roasting pan and yanked it out of the oven. When they moved to Oak Bay, they found a restaurant that lay on a free Christmas dinner for anyone, so people who were alone or of limited means, could have some Christmas camaraderie and an awfully good meal. Those who could pay were invited to donate to a charity, which is what mom and dad would do. It helped them to live the Christmas spirit and fuel it at the same time.
A lot of us have our own personal traditions that complete Christmas for us. For me, I had a Nativity scene, complete with wooden stable and moss-covered roof, that I had found in London Drugs, of all places. I loved it so much that one year it stayed on my mantel until nearly Easter. Over time, it fell apart, and I’ve searched in vain for another like it. As well, Christmas doesn’t seem right until I’ve watched Alistair Sim in “Scrooge”, and listened to Dylan Thomas reading “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” and Stan Freberg’s “Green Christma$”.
Many Christmas traditions have little or nothing to do with celebrating the birth of our Saviour. The decorations on a Christmas tree may include a koala in a Santa Claus hat, Santa on a surfboard, images of cities one has visited. My “holiday playlist” includes Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride”, Bruce Springsteen doing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and Mel Tormé’s “Christmas Song” – none of which has anything to do with Jesus.
There are those who eagerly await the annual return of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” on TV, although I tend to go “full Scrooge” about that story: the tale of someone who’s bullied and ostracized because of a physical quirk but becomes the toast of the North Pole when it turns out that that same quirk has commercial value. What does that say to someone whose weight problem, oversized nose or diverging pupils don’t turn out to be “useful”? (And the idea of “cancelling Christmas” because Santa can’t make it through the fog? Puh-leez!)
I digress. Some pea-pods pontificate about “adapted” traditions: Christian observances that had non-Christian roots, like the Christmas tree, the Yule log, or decorating the house with cedar boughs. “The institutional church appropriated other cultures to attract people to Christ,” they sniff (but that’s rather the point of “go into all nations”, isn’t it? You have to speak the language, right?). Be that as it may, consider the Christmas tree: evergreen, rooted to the spot and immovable, branches reaching outward and upward, providing cover for those who draw close. The Yule log represents light, shining forth at the darkest time of the year. And have you seen how many times the Bible mentions cedar? God talks about building a “house of cedar” for Him. Could it be that those pagan symbols were simply waiting for Jesus to give them new life?
Secular or sacred, our Christmas traditions bring us a sense of comfort and joy, at a season that’s all about comfort and joy – and especially in these times, when we need all the comfort and joy we can get. They help us find a space where we can contemplate why we have Christmas in the first place, and in so doing, they help to bring each of us, individually, closer to Jesus Christ, and through Him, closer to God.
And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown!
Drew Snider is a former pastor at Gospel Mission on Vancouver's Downtown East Side, and has been a guest speaker at churches in BC. He writes about the people and events in his e-book, ‘God At Work: A Testimony of Prophecy, Provision and People Amid Poverty’. (available at online bookstores)
You can read more articles on our interfaith blog, Spiritually Speaking, HERE.. /blogs/spiritually-speaking
