In 2005, conservative author John Gibson released his book, The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought. In it, Gibson described ways in which the celebration of Christmas is being pushed out of mainstream culture.
In 2008, country artist Toby Keith crooned on a television talk-show:
I can’t believe what Christmas
Has come to today
All these atheists and judges
Tryin’ to take it away
No carols in our public schools
No trees in city hall
And they wish you Season’s Greetings
At the shopping mall
Ain’t you sick of it all?
Well, there’s a War on Christmas
It’s under attack
But this year America is taking it back
And already this year, according to some media outlets, the latest battle in the war has begun. Recently, a New Jersey school sparked a debate about attempts to ban religious Christmas songs from its elementary-school winter concerts.
The so-called war on Christmas rages on.
The Bible actually talks about a war on Christmas. Just not the war we’re thinking of. Our culture and media are caught up in a debate about the practice of Christmas. Should Christmas be practiced publicly or just privately? But the Bible describes a debate about the person of Christmas. It reveals a war we should be much more concerned about.
John hints at this war in Jn. 1:5: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John will use this word “overcome” later to describe a certain woman “caught” in the act of adultery. Seized. Grasped. That’s what John is describing in 1:5. He’s describing darkness attempting to capture, seize, or grasp the light. He’s describing a conflict. A battle. A war between light and darkness. Ancient literature spoke often of the struggle between light and darkness. This was a prominent theme in the Dead Sea Scrolls. They wrote of darkness appearing to have the upper hand in the world but of light eventually winning the final battle. And it’s in the context of this battle that John writes his Christmas story.
But John’s not interested in the cultural practice of Christmas. He’s more concerned about something more fundamental: the person of Christmas. Why? Because there’s a battle for the hearts and minds of people when it comes to the person of Christmas.
John’s writing to a community of mostly Jewish Christians. They have been rejected by their Jewish friends and families because of their faith in Jesus. The local religious leaders charge that Jewish Christians have departed from two central foundations of Judaism: 1) observance of the Torah, and 2) a monotheistic view of God. That is to say, Jesus isn’t orthodox. And he isn’t divine.
The religious leaders of John’s day are minimizing Jesus. And it may be that some of John’s Christian readers are tempted to do the same.
So, what John does is magnify Jesus. He wants his readers and us to see just who it is we’re talking about when we talk about that baby in the manger. He wants us to see much more than merely a swaddled infant. That’s why John gives us something in his Christmas story that no other Gospel author does. He gives us a view of the person of Christmas before Christmas ever came about.
And here’s why that’s important: we still tend to minimize Jesus. Especially at Christmas. Yes, I know this is the time of year when we seem to think more of Jesus than we do at other times. It’s when we pull out the nativity scenes, and sing the carols, and light the advent candles. Yet even in all of that, even we Christians tend to minimize Jesus.
How? The Jesus of contemporary Christmas is largely known in evangelical circles as “the reason for the season.” That’s our primary response to the attempt to push Christmas out of the public square. We shout back to the secular culture, “Jesus is the reason for the season.” He’s the reason we practice the whole thing in the first place.
And that’s true (mostly). But it’s only part of the truth about Jesus.
When Jesus is primarily just “the reason for the season,” he’s just like that box of Christmas ornaments I keep in my attic. When the season starts, I pull him out, dust him off, and display him loudly and proudly. While the season progresses, I attend to him daily. But when the season is over, I can pack him back up and put him away someplace removed from my daily life. He goes from the middle of my life to the margin of my life relatively quickly.
John wants to prevent this. He wants to prevent any minimization of Jesus. That’s why he starts his Christmas story with these lofty words:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John begins in 1:1-2 with a carefully crafted statement that repeats the key line “in the beginning.” There’s a lot going on with that line. John’s writing to Jews deeply ingrained in the Decalogue and the Torah and notions of Wisdom, Torah, or Logos being the first creation of God’s (e.g., Prov. 8;22). First century Jewish literature wrote of God’s law “prepared from the creation of the world.” This Wisdom, Torah, or Logos was the template through which God made everything else. In particular, Wisdom and Torah were portrayed as light (Ps. 119:105,130; Prov. 6:23). In addition, Wisdom (Prov. 3:18; 13:14) and Torah (Lev. 18:5; Deut 30:6,19) were sources of life.
To those of us with few Jewish memories, such details may matter little. What matters most is where John finally takes us-Genesis 1. Everything about John’s introduction to the Christmas story echoes Gen. 1.
- In Gen. 1, creation grew out of God’s spoken word, God’s logos. Thus, John writes of Jesus as the logos or Word by which all things were made.
- In Gen. 1, life and light first emerged. Thus, John writes of Jesus as the light and life of all humanity. (This turns out to be a key issue for John. He weaves the symbolism of light (1:4,5,7,8,9; 3:19,20,21; 5:35; 8:12; 9:5; 11:9,10; 12:35,36,46) and day (9;4) into his Gospel along with the images of darkness (1:5; 3:19; 8:12; 12:35,46) and night (9:4; 11:10). In addition, the theme of life appears thirty-six times in the Gospel.)
John takes us back to Gen. 1. It’s where our oldest and most fantastic images of God are rooted. It’s the biggest picture of God available in the Bible. And once we’re there, and our heart is racing, and we fear for our very lives because we’re watching atoms smashing, planets forming, oceans growing, life emerging in a whirlwind of energy and power like we’ve never before seen, John says, “That’s Jesus.”
John, I’d suggest, wants us to do more than just think of Jesus as the reason for the season. He wants us to think of Jesus as the basis for our very being. He’s the one who hung the moon, crafted the galaxies, painted the zebra, colored the sunset, put the breath into our lungs and the beat into our hearts. Without him we would be–well, we simply wouldn’t be.
And once we embrace this Jesus, there’s no putting him back. There’s no box into which he’ll fit. There’s no attic in which he’ll stay. He will demand the middle of your life. He’ll refuse to be satisfied with the margins.
The question is not “How should we practice Christmas?” The question is “Who is the person of Christmas?” Am I willing to embrace Jesus not merely as a reason for a temporary season? Am I willing to embrace him as the very basis for my being? Will I let him truly be light and life?
