Changing How We Look At Christmas

I love Christmas and this time of year. This year is shaping up to be especially fun. Not only is it Ellie's first Christmas, but it's our first year in our house. This afternoon we bought our first live Christmas tree and decorated it.

But for as much as I love Christmas, I think there's something missing in the way we look at it. I'm not talking about any type of secularization of the holiday, but about the way Christians look at Christmas. I'd say that the typical Christian view of Christmas involves the nativity, the Christmas story as found in Luke and Matthew, songs like Away in the Manger, Silent Night, etc.

Now, all of those things are wonderful and true and I don't want to diminish them at all. But they're also incomplete. For as wonderful and beautiful as songs like Away in the Manger are, their message doesn't come close to capturing what Christmas is all about.

At it's center, Christ's birth was an act of war.

We need to look at the story as part of the Larger Story and to do that we need to go all the way back to Creation. When God created the world He gave authority over it to mankind through Adam and Eve. Unfortunately, as we all know, that didn't last for long. Adam and Eve sinned but their sin wasn't only about their personal fall or even the fall of the human race. In their sin, they gave away all the authority God had given to them and Satan became the prince of this earth.

But God promised that wouldn't be the end. He promised that He would win that authority back.

Christmas was the beginning of God's crusade against the kingdom of darkness the enemy had spent the last few thousand years building on Earth. Christmas was an invasion, the start of a war that's been going on ever since.

The enemy knew what was happening. We need to remember that the Christmas story doesn't end with the shepherds and wise men stopping by. Satan used Herod, his pawn, to murder every baby boy around Bethlehem. There was far more going on there than an arrogant ruler with wounded pride. It was a counterstrike by the forces of hell against the birth of Christ.

And, of course, the story doesn't end there. This battle is the context of all of Jesus's life and ministry. When He is tempted in the wilderness, Satan tempts Him with all the kingdoms of the world, all the authority Jesus came to win back, but with one condition. Satan stays on top and Jesus bows to Him. He refused but in His death, resurrection and ascension He won back once and for all the authority, power and rule Adam gave away at the beginning of the world.

Now, 2,000 years later, the war that began on Christmas between the kingdom of darkness and the Kingdom of Heaven is still going on. The story of Christmas is not over.

Again, I don't want to come across as negative on the traditional Christian view of Christmas. In fact, I don't want to criticize it at all. I simply want to point out that it is insufficient and add in what's missing. So this Christmas season, let's remember that Christ's birth is part of a larger story, a bloody clash of kingdoms. It's a story we are a part of and we are called to join in the fight, to defeat the enemy and to rescue others from the kingdom of darkness.