Let’s Quell the controversy over Christmas and its traditions.

Every Christmas season many of us are confronted with various notions about the origins of Christmas and many cherished Christmas traditions. But what can we learn from the original writers of history itself about these controversial ideas?

It’s been called “the most wonderful time of the year.”  Christmas for most of us has enjoyed a long history of traditions that make the heart of the winter season a rich time of festive celebrations.

For many of us, growing up in America in the late 20^th Century, our memories from childhood include the happy songs of Jingle Bells, Deck the Halls with boughs of holly, and “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.”  There’s nothing wrong with any of that. When I was a child, singing Christmas songs like Silent Night and Joy to the World … around the piano with my grandmother… well, nothing could be more delightful to enthusiastic, ever-optimistic young children. Although Santa, for my generation, played a fairly significant part of the wide array of Christmas traditions… there was never the slightest thought that “the night before Christmas and all through the house…” was ever anything more than an amusing way of celebrating the ‘rest of the story’ that was more fully expressed when we sang “Joy to the world, the Lord is come” and “O Come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant.”  In fact, singing Christmas carols for our neighbors on cold winter nights in December will always be a treasured memory from childhood, through adolescence, and through college days as a young adult. We never lost sight of the real meaning of Christmas. And no one, that I can remember, ever behaved like a Scrooge or a Grinch that stole the heartbeat of Christmas, which was always about the birth of Jesus, 2,000 years ago.

Many Christians today have lamented the fact that modern commercialized society has made Christmas into a highly secular time of year.