Letter of the Day | Hurray for Christmas!
Published:Monday | December 30, 2019 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Madam:
Mr Homer Sylvester, in his letter published December 27, either searchingly or sarcastically, on speaking of Christmas, asked the question, “What are we really celebrating?” We must never be weary of answering the same questions year after year on issues to do with culture – of which religion is an integral part – for there will always be young people who need to be taught why we do what we do.
Due to the lack of adequate teaching, for instance, one of the reasons that many people have been staying away from the polling booth is that they are ignorant of the history and importance of voting. Some don’t even seem to understand what it means to be democratic or otherwise. To make matters worse, increasingly, ‘democracy’ in Jamaica has been sadly reduced to who can perform the largest number of multiple voting (of course, also known as #BuyElections). The matter at hand though, is the celebration – as it were, some might say – of Jesus’ birth.
I celebrate Jesus’ birth in December. Of course, we don’t know exactly WHEN He was born. We therefore celebrate THAT He was born. This is one of our ways of appreciating THAT He was born. We must recall that Jesus was fully human as well as fully God. Just imagine, the year comes to an end and no one ever wishes a happy birthday for us! Many of us would become absolutely dejected. Let’s extrapolate that to the most important and most influential person ever to walk the earth. He may not get dejected as we do, but it is a natural thing to do – to celebrate.
Two of the points made by cynics concerning the pagan celebration of the birth of Jesus are: 1) Jesus never commanded this celebration, and 2) Christmas has pagan origins. Both are true but, in the first instance, we Christians entertain many practices that are not necessarily scriptural or commanded by Jesus, but that are not unholy either. Examples include dressing up in ‘church clothes’ to attend divine worship, conducting christenings and saying ‘until death, us do part’ when getting married.
On the fact that Christmas may have pagan origins, the history will guide us that the heathen celebration of a S-U-N worship on December 25 was captured by radical Christians and used to observe the birth of the S-O-N of God instead. Of course, thankfully, Christians have no monopoly on that day, so one cannot easily prevent the commercialisation of that period of time called Christmas.
In addition to being a constant reminder of the birth of the Christ, Christmas is the most genuine celebration of the calendar year that is shared by both Christians and others. Over this period, attempts are made by man to remember certain friends, family and the destitute. Also, even if we are not going to receive any special visitor, Christmas is that time of the year when we realise that certain renovations need to be done to our homes, and certain furniture have done their time.
Thanks be to our God for the birth of Christ that has elicited new birth in our spiritual lives, as well as in our temporal ones. Though we try, it will never be Christmas the whole year through. Let’s continue to celebrate this, one of the most important Christian events of the calendar year.
Hurray for Christmas!
A. Dean M. Forsythe