This has been a week of special Christmas programs for us. On Sunday morning our church shared with our sister church at Brightwater in a combined choirs Christmas music program and on Sunday evening the children of the church presented the Christmas story in Scripture, song and pageant.
I really enjoyed seeing the children portraying angels announcing the birth of the Christ child to shepherds near Bethehem, glorifying God in the highest, conveying blessing, peace and Heaven’s good will to all people;
the band of shepherds coming to see the newborn child whose bed was a manger; the wise men from the eastern country, who came to worship the newborn king. When I was a young boy, participating in our church Christmas programs, I began noticing what the story was saying about that visit of the wise men:
“And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts: gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.” (Matthew 2:11)
The thing I noticed was that these visitors from the eastern country came, not looking for more treasures for themselves, but to offer gifts to the Christ child. It was with that that I began realizing that Christmas is not just about getting presents, as delightful as presents may be, but about giving in reverence and esteem for Jesus, the Christ of God; honoring the Savior who came, not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.
Across the years, the people of our church have had a December tradition of making donations to the Children’s Home, helping orphaned children, or children who otherwise are without home and support. It is also very interesting that the Pea Ridge people each year participate in the Angel Tree project, a program dedicated to brightening Christmas celebrations by gathering gifts for children who otherwise might have little or nothing under the tree. That project seems to me to be a present day outreach to children that is truly in the spirit of good old St. Nicholas. It was from St. Nick’s interest in children at Christmastime, and his outreach to them, that the church began including the Santa figure in Christmas celebrations.
Sometimes I hear disparagements of today’s Christmases which cite “too much Santa Claus and not enoughJesus.” The point is to put the Christ back into Christmas, and the point is well taken.
But my counterpoint is that not only do we need to renew our sense of the Christ whose festival Christmas is, but we also need to restore the original sense of St. Nicholas, who like Jesus, loved children, and sought to share the joy of giving and celebrating with them. The original Santa was not an ad man trying to urge us to buy more stuff from the stores, or celebrating all those wonderful bargains, or trying to suggest to us that having a great Christmas is getting lots of great gifts and stuff. No, the original Santa loved Jesus, and was inspired by Jesus in his loving outreach to children. The original St. Nick was a holy man, not a hawker of goods.
I also hear disparagements of the “Xmas” abbreviation for Christmas. I too prefer to spell out Christmas, but all the lamentation about Xmas as leaving out Christ is a misunderstanding, a lack of being informed about the language of the New Testament. The word Christmas is itself an abbreviation for “the Christ mass,” a 12-day festival of the church running from Dec. 25 to Jan. 6. In the original Bible Greek, the word for Christ, expressed in English letters, is Christos. More to the point, in the original New Testament Greek, the character represented by our English letters “Ch” looks like an X, but it sounds like the “CH” in Christ. Xmas does not represent the English letter X, but the Greek character CHI.
The CHI is the first letter of the Greek word XRISTOS, Christ. The Greek CHI and RHO, which look like our X and P, are sometimes superimposed on one another as a symbol of Christ. It is an ancient, time-honored, Biblebased symbol of Christ. It does not leave Christ out.
We would do more substantially to put Christ back in Christmas if we re-emphasize celebrating by giving in Christ’s name, in reverence and caring, rather than getting more stuff for ourselves.
Being a blessing to others, in reverence for Jesus, is like a gift to Jesus, the Christ. (See Matt. 25:37-40)◊◊◊
Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Church, Pages 2 on 12/21/2011