This is a slightly edited post from a year ago. I like it because it supports the idea of my last few posts, that Christian symbols often have a meaning that transcends their religious origins.

This time of year, you may see bumper stickers or yard signs with the message, “Keep Christ in Christmas.” I’m never sure what that pronouncement means or what I or anyone else is supposed to do to fulfill it. Advocates of such a notion are probably unaware that complaints about popular “abuse” of Christmas have been around almost since it began.

The early church established the Christmas holiday in part to hijack the Roman pagan festival Saturnalia. It was a popular holiday known for much feasting and merrymaking. Unsurprisingly, the church’s attempt to reign that in was not always well received.

Establishing the nativity festival at the time of the winter solstice was genius, however. The coming of God’s light into the world’s darkness was movingly represented by imagining Jesus’ birth at the darkest time of the year. (No one, of course, knows when Jesus was actually born.) But winter’s cold and darkness have always prompted people to find ways to overcome the gloom, typically with lots of eating and drinking. Christmas sermons and proclamations throughout church history have chastised people for their debauchery during this holy season.

There is a paranoia in the “keep Christ in Christmas” message. It implies there is some nefarious force threatening to “remove” Christ from Christmas. But how that could happen or, as I said above, even what it means is unclear. For liturgically oriented churches, Christmas is a festival of the church year, regardless of what the surrounding culture makes of it. For them it is logically impossible to remove Christ from Christmas.

But for those promoting such a message, the concern isn’t with churches but with culture. Evangelicals often imagine there once was a “Christian culture” that is now under siege or disappearing. In this case, Exhibit A is the removal of nativity displays from public spaces like parks, city halls, schools, etc. Also bemoaned is the trend of greeting people with “happy holidays” rather than “merry Christmas.”

Those lamenting the loss of a “Christian Christmas” usually see this as a recent development, a consequence of post-60s liberalism and secularism. But cultural Christmas has always had an ambiguous relationship with its religious origin.

In Puritan New England, Christmas was viewed as “popish” by conservative Protestant church authorities. As a result, Boston law enforcement was used to make shop keepers stay open on Christmas day. The popularity of cultural Christmas has ebbed and flowed over the centuries, only becoming the multi-week commercial extravaganza we know after World War 2.

Christmas was in decline in Victorian England when it got a boost from the 1843 publication of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Still probably the best and most popular “secular” Christmas story, few notice that it is nearly devoid of religious content (Dickens’ subtitle calls it a “ghost story”). Jesus is noticeable by his absence. Yet, almost single-handedly, Dickens gave modern Christmas three of its most enduring characteristics: a time for gift giving, family gathering, and moral improvement.

Those themes have continued in the more recent Christmas storytelling, especially by Hollywood. A Christmas Carol itself has been reproduced in countless stage and screen versions. Popular classic movies like White Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Life, Christmas in Connecticut, Miracle on 34th Street, The Bishop’s Wife, and even the gloriously ironic We’re No Angels (which celebrates Christmas with a murder!) all tell stories of human transformation, good will, reconciliation, and charity. Yet the biblical nativity story is rarely if ever mentioned.

It’s not hard to make the case that the increasing popularity of Christmas has paralleled the decreasing interest in church and religion. The Christmas themed movies, TV shows, and pop songs that surged after the classic Hollywood period followed its pattern of spreading Christmas cheer with little if any religious content. There seems to be no end to their popularity. Today, the Hallmark Channel can seemingly show Christmas movies nonstop for months.

One surprising exception to the standard Christmas movie model is the blockbuster 1965 animated TV special, A Charlie Brown Christmas. A despondent Charlie Brown’s search for the meaning of Christmas is ultimately answered in the decoration of a broken-down tree he has naively selected. Yet in the midst of the story, he gets another answer from his introspective friend, Linus, who movingly reads aloud the Luke nativity story. But as powerful as the scene is, there is no connection made between that Christmas story and the rest of the narrative. Thus, the disconnect between modern Christmas and its religious origins seems obvious again.

Yet Peanuts’ creator, Charles Schultz, who insisted on the Christmas story reading scene over the producers’ objections, may have understood Christmas’ place in our culture better than we think. It’s not that Christmas is either religious or secular, he seems to say, but a balance of both.

Today, over a half-century later, it’s possible more people will hear Luke’s story read by Linus than by a preacher on Christmas Eve. And people certainly will spend more time watching Christmas movies and shows than in worship services. Yet many of these secular stories express themes that will be found in Christmas Eve sermons.

Christmas celebrating can get excessive (the gift giving, decorating, and parties). Yet that enthusiasm reflects some kind of awareness that Christmas contains a message and a reality we need and wish we experienced year-round. Christmas’ remarkable persistence, with or without church sanction, is a testimony to a story and a message that move people regardless of religious persuasion. Christ does not need to be kept or put back but is, as John says, a light that always shines in the darkness.

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