A close look at the body language of many people who are preparing to celebrate this Christmas will not reveal that they know exactly what the reason for the season is. The preparations seem not to have Christ as the focus, but our own desires and wants.
Is it really about the birthday of the holy Jesus who was conceived without sin that we are preparing for? Is it about the Messiah who came to save the world from sin? If evil is increasing in preparation for the birth of Christ then one will be forced to think that this celebration is not about the Messiah.
The reality is that many Christians have been engrossed in the euphoria of the celebration and have lost focus from the objective of the celebration and the significance of the celebration. It is now about a show of wealth as practiced in the part of Nigeria where I come from. The celebrant is no longer in the picture of the celebration and the atmosphere of the celebration is no longer about God but about man.
I thought that these were unique problems with Nigeria’s Christians until I recently got an email from a septuagenarian friend of mine who lives in Manchester, Maryland in the US. He lamented bitterly how the meaning of Christmas has been lost. According to him “Christmas here has become nothing more than a day to exchange gifts and spoil children. Yeshua is barely thought about on this day. On Christmas Day our house would be full of relatives and my wife would make a splendid dinner. It was surprising how many would ask whose birthday it was. It saddened me a great deal to see how far Christ our King was from not only their mind it was hearts also.”
My friend’s email was thought-provoking to me.
We need to make Christ the centerpiece of this celebration so that our gathering will display His holiness. Christmas season should be a period of sober reflection on how we have appropriated and harnessed the gift of the child that was born and the son that was given to us by God (Isaiah 9:6). It is not about Santa Claus; it is about the love of God that made Him send His only begotten son to us to save us from sin. Christmas should be a time of thanksgiving to God and an expression of Joy for our savior. Nothing short of this will suffice.
Oscar Amaechina is the president of Afri-Mission and Evangelism Network, Abuja, Nigeria. His calling is to take the gospel to where no one has neither preached nor heard about Jesus. He is the author of the book Mystery Of The Cross Revealed.
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