Thinking Out LoudDays before the start of Advent, a Muslim friend asked me why Christians celebrate Christmas when its roots are so tangled up with pagan traditions.
Initially, I was thrown – he had a point. Historians debate the details, but it is widely suggested that the Roman festival of Saturnalia coincided with Christmas in both calendar and custom.
Fast-forward to our contemporary celebrations, clad in plastic and steeped in consumerism, and you could argue that the pagan entanglements of the season only persist. Our Christmas celebrations are as far a cry from Christ’s nativity as the pot-bellied Santa Claus is from St Nicholas – the fourth-century bishop from whom he inherits his name.
This blending of the sacred and secular is often met with resistance in both camps. But, where we insist on separating such categories, the Christmas story seems to disregard the distinctions altogether. Here is God himself subject to the fleshiness and filth of birth in a stable, to the demands of a Roman Imperial census, and to the adoration of foreign kings and lowly shepherds alike.
The Christmas story is, in fact, most profound where it is most profane. It boldly declares that, in taking on the untidiness of time and flesh, bureaucracy and custom, God demonstrates his will to be with us. The divine did not demand that we shed our humanity or the particularities of our time, place, and culture; rather, it offered itself within them. Wherever it has travelled, Christianity has donned the customs of its host culture – but so did Christ.
This aspect of the Christmas message is echoed in one of the names assigned to Jesus: “Emmanuel”, meaning “God with us”. Such a story suggests that God is entirely undeterred by the chaos of our culture – however pagan, profane, or plastic it might be.
This Thinking Out Loud was first published on Facebook.