Why Christmas Must Be Controversial Part I

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth” – Jesus Christ (Matthew 10:34)

Those who have the strongest feelings about Christmas, either for, or against it, are the ones most aware of the formidable ramifications of the Christmas message.  The suggestion that Christmas is merely a trivial or harmless holiday can only be maintained if its central point is either, blunted, suppressed, or demonstrated to be false.  But logic will never allow Christmas, in its full-bodied expression, to be considered an inconsequential holiday. 

H.G. Wells affirmed this reality from one angle in his book series, “The Outline of History” (v.I, (Garden City Books, 1920), p.425,6).  Though the famous science fiction writer was a strong opponent of Christianity, he nevertheless understood that the personality of Jesus of Nazareth cannot be trivialized or treated with indifference:

“[Jesus] was too great for his disciples.  And in view of what he said, is it any wonder that all who were rich and prosperous felt a horror of strange things, a swimming of their world at his teaching?  Perhaps the priests and rulers and rich men understood him better than his followers.  He was dragging out all the little private reservations they had made into the light of a universal religious life.  He was like a terrible moral huntsman, digging mankind out of the snug burrows in which they had lived hitherto.  In the white blaze of his kingdom there was to be no property, no privilege, no pride, and no precedence, no motive and reward but love.  Is it any wonder that men were dazzled and blinded, and cried out against him?  Even his disciples cried out when he would not spare them that light.  It is any wonder that the priests realized that between this man and themselves there was no choice but that he or their priest craft should perish?  Is it any wonder that the Roman soldiers, confronted and amazed by something soaring over their comprehension and threatening all their disciplines, should take refuge in wild laughter, and crown him with thorns, and robe him in purple and make a mock Caesar of him?  For to take him seriously was to enter into a strange and alarming life, to abandon habits, to control instincts and impulses, to essay an incredible happiness . . . Is it any wonder that to this day this Galilean is too much for our small hearts?”

To be continued...