I’ve been collecting Christmas slogans for the last few days:  The Costa Coffee shop: ‘Dreaming of a tiramisu Christmas… Peace and latte to all men…’  McDonald’s: ‘Salivation is nigh’.    And then someone is selling the Good King Wenceslas Pizza – it’s "deep-pan, crisp and even."

Now not all of them are as crass as that.  There are some that sound pretty Christian.  You may have come across them, and you may even have used them.  These are phrases that sound good, but when you peep under the surface there’s something not quite right about them.  Like opening your beautifully-wrapped gift to find it’s the Bob Dylan Christmas album.

1          “Jesus is the reason for the season.”  It sounds great doesn’t it?  It states the fact that the 25^th of December is the day which the Christian Church has for centuries celebrated the birth of Christ.  And it brings us back from those depressing and meaningless phrases ‘holiday presents, holiday trees, and holiday carols’.  Some people don’t like to use the word Christmas because they fear it will offend people of other religions, but the fact is that that is what is called, and using its proper name does not mean you have to celebrate Christ.  So saying ‘Jesus is the reason for the season’ sounds like a great idea.  The problem is that when it comes to how we in the US and the UK behave at Christmas Jesus really is not the reason for almost any of it.  Is Jesus really the reason for each person spending on average (according to the National Retail Federation) $750 on gifts, $41 on a tree, $32 on cards and mail, $22 on flowers, $95 on food and candy, $51 on decorations, $960 on travel?  Is Jesus really the reason why people will face devastating debts in the New Year?  Is Jesus the reason why people get mad at each other in parking lots at the mall, or fights breakout in the line at the checkout, or why(as happened to an employee at a branch of Wal-Mart last year) someone is crushed to death by a stampede of shoppers?  Is Jesus the reason why the incidence of clinical depression spikes at Christmas?  Is he the reason why family relationships are strained to breaking in many homes?  Is Jesus the reason why we have to endure Frosty the Snowman on our radios on the first day of November? 

In December 1903, after many attempts, the Wright brothers were successful in getting their "flying machine" off the ground. Thrilled, they telegraphed this message to their sister Katherine: "We have actually flown 120 feet. Will be home for Christmas." Katherine hurried to the editor of the local newspaper and showed him the amazing news.  He glanced at it and said, "That’s nice. The boys will be home for Christmas." Talk about missing the point.  Human beings had flown and he was more interested in the Wright family’s plans for the holidays.

Now if you’re thinking ‘why is Ebenezer Scrooge preaching this year, and what has he done with our priest?’ let me be clear that I’m not being a Grinch.  Should we give presents as a demonstration of our love?  Absolutely.  Should we eat and laugh and get together and celebrate?  Most definitely.  Should we have a tree and decorations?  Of course.  My point is not that we should reject the good things that God has given us, but that we should look beyond what Christmas has become in our society to the fact that Jesus is Lord all the time.  Our culture gets to 12^th Night and packs away Jesus for another year, when it can bring him out again as another excuse for an obscene amount of consumerism.  Actually it doesn’t wait until 12^th Night.  As early as tomorrow night businesses will have moved on from Christmas and will be turning their minds to exploiting another festival for whatever profit can be made.  (I noticed that even in the hospital shop they had a ‘12 days of Christmas’ sale that began on December 8^th and finished on the 23^rd.)

So instead of ‘Jesus is the reason for the season’, I’ve made up an alternative phrase: ‘See the worth of his birth’.  How much is Christ’s birth worth?  Well, it’s worth our lives.  The life that he offers to his followers is worth any amount of sacrifice we could make.  Jesus is the reason we were born.  He is the reason we can have hope in our lives.  He’s not the reason we can indulge ourselves one day a year.  He’s the reason we can face December 26^th with hope and comfort, December 27^th with courage and love, the 28^th with patience and joy, the 29^th with peace and contentment, and every day with a knowledge that our lives have a meaning and that we are loved by the creator of the world.

When he had grown and become a man Jesus told a story about how much he was worth.  A hired labourer was digging in a field one day and found some treasure.  A vast horde of treasure.  His eyes lit up and his mind starting whirring.  What could he do?   This was not his field; he was just a casual worker.  He couldn’t steal it, that wouldn’t work.  So he re-buries the treasure with the soil, so no one else can find it, goes home and he sells his house, and all his possessions.  And he takes the proceeds and buys the field.  And at a stroke he becomes rich beyond imagining.  That’s how Jesus described coming to faith him.  The life Christ offers is so lavishly rich that it’s worth giving up all we have in order to get it.

2          “Put the Christ back into Christmas.”  You might think ‘how can a Christian possibly disagree with that?’  Well this week I read about a pastor who, instead of trying to get people to put Christ back into Christmas, was encouraging people to take him out of it completely, which sounds rather odd for a Christian pastor.  The point the Rev David Hiester of Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Brigham City, Utah, was making was that the whole Christmas thing, as celebrated in the Western world, is so corrupt and materialistic that its like the Titanic – it can’t be saved by rearranging the deckchairs.  And he thinks that our Christmas can’t be saved by adding of a little bit of Jesus.  Instead we should get Jesus into a lifeboat and get him out of here.  So, saying grace before we eat does no good if all we’re doing is asking for God’s blessing upon our gluttony.  Singing carols about offering our lives to Christ is a waste of time if we them dedicate the next 24 hours to overdosing on materialism.  The Rev Hiester says “Much of what our culture would have us do has nothing to do with Christmas.  It is consumerism that has left people wanting, and it has little to do with coming to terms with who God is and what he has done for us.  Skipping Christmas was intended to stop people dead in their tracks and think.’  And I’m sure it has.

Now, he is actually taking a leaf out of the early Puritans in the northern colonies who believed that much of the traditions of Christmas were based on pagan customs and were inappropriate for the celebration of Christ’s birth.  The early residents of New York made a big thing of December 6^th – St Nicholas’ Day, as had their Dutch ancestors.  Only gradually was the religious celebration moved to December 25^th and the old Christian traditions became mixed with other traditions.

Now, let me again put this in perspective.   Skipping Christmas is a radical piece of advice and, obviously, it’s not one I’m taking myself.  I think it’s possible for us to enjoy the festivities, but direct them towards a celebration of God becoming a human baby.  A celebration of the creator of the universe stooping to our level, to share our experience of frustration, pain, and death, to stand in our shoes, walk our path and share our suffering.  But not just to leave us there.  If you’re drowning what good is it for someone to jump into the water and drown with you?  No, he came not just to suffer with us, but to rescue us, to lift us out of the water and drag us to safety.  And so, if we eat let’s do it as a celebration of Christ, let’s give gifts as a reminder of God’s gift to us of his Son, let’s be with family because we celebrate the Holy Trinity, joined in perfect unity.

But I do think that the Rev Hiester has a point, even if he’s taken it to limits that many of us would be quite uncomfortable with.  And the point is this.  What is it that makes us stressed at Christmas time?  What is it that will cause many people to fight with their families tomorrow, instead of enjoying their love?  What is it that will lead many to abuse alcohol or eat until they experience pain?  What is it that has driven some to overspend and overborrow on gifts they will give?  Well, it’s not Jesus.  No, it is the things that Jesus came to destroy that will cause all that misery and suffering.  Christ came at Christmas to rescue us from those things that make life miserable – the conflict, the loneliness, and the frenzy that ends in painfully full bellies but achingly empty souls.  Christ came to free us from ourselves.

Once there lived a king who had power over all nations and peoples.  His courts were of richest splendour; his tables were heavy with the finest of food.  Music and laughter floated from his castle.  Clouds wrapped it in a mystical majesty.  Down below in the valley of violence and hunger peasants stopped and gazed at the castle, wondering at the extravagant existence the king lived.  But they shrugged their shoulders and went back to their pitiful lives of struggle and despair, convinced of the king’s callous disinterest in their tragic lives. 

One cold winter the king’s tailor entered the royal chambers with the latest additions to his majesty’s wardrobe.  He had, as always, selected the finest materials, but this time had woven them into the most beautiful garments that eyes had ever seen.  But the king, sitting by his window, staring down into the valley, was not moved by his tailor’s work.  He seemed strangely distant.  He ordered the tailor to leave and said he would make his own clothes.  The door to his chamber was shut and locked.  Weeks passed with no sight of the king.  Each day servants brought him food and wine, but he told them through the closed door to leave it outside in the hallway.  Then he would open the door ajar, slide the tray into his chamber and a few minutes later push it back out into the hallway, with the food half eaten.  The court was nervous.  Was his majesty all right?  Was he sick?  Maybe he had lost his mind, weighed down with all the affairs of state.  His majesty’s physician was summoned, but the king would not let him into his chamber.  And then one bleak day just after the winter solstice the door to his majesty’s chamber swung open, and the king walked slowly but purposefully out into the hallway and towards the stairs.  His servants hurried to their appointed positions and bowed as he passed.  They could not help noticing the king’s appearance.  He was dressed in the simplest, cheapest and most unkingly clothes imaginable.  He had the choice of the world’s finest fabrics, but he had chosen to wear the clothes of a beggar.  As he stepped down the staircase he declared resolutely “I’m going into the valley.”

So instead of saying ‘put the Christ back into Christmas’, I say, if you’re going to put him anywhere put him in the centre of your life, every day.  Jesus is for life, not just for Christmas.  Better still, don’t ‘put’ Jesus anywhere.  Instead put yourself in close proximity to him.  Maybe the question this Christmas night is not ‘is Jesus close to you?’  Yes, he is, he promised he would be.  Perhaps the real question is ‘Are you close to him?’

So tonight is not a time for slogans and many words.  Just one word.  The Word that was made flesh and dwelt among us.  It’s a night for a person, the God made human, born as one of us, to live and die as one of us, to bring us to his home in that heavenly place so that we may share his eternal glory.  Friends let’s end the words and worship the Christ.