Put Christ into Christmas

Dear Reader,

Time marches on relentlessly! It’s hard to believe that this is already the third Christmas edition of The Southern Cross as a magazine. That, of course, follows 99 years of Christmas editions as a newspaper — and this month we are reviewing one of them in our popular “From the Vaults” column. As every year, in this issue we are showcasing Christmas greetings from Catholic bodies and businesses from across South Africa. What a wonderful example this is of the Catholic Church as a community in our region!

It is important that at this time of the year especially, Catholics should get The Southern Cross and other Catholic media into their hands. More than at any other time, in December we are distracted from what matters in our faith — in particular the coming of the Lord — by the aggressive commercialism and secular celebrations surrounding Christmas. We hope that amid all the secular hustle-and-bustle of December, this present issue will help us to put Christ into Christmas, at least in our lives, and to keep our focus on Advent and the feast of the Nativity.

Of course, the idea of putting Christ back into Christmas presumes that there was a time in some recent past when he still was inside Christmas. The slogan itself goes back to at least the 1940s. The advance of secularisation in our globalised world has marginalised the Christian basis of the festival further, but the rampant commercialism was part of the season as far back as the 1880s, at least in Britain and the US.

Before that, the feast was not much holier. In fact, when the Puritans banned Christmas in Britain and some US colonies in the 17th century, it was prompted in large part by the lack of piety in the people’s celebrations — and, of course, by a hefty dose of anti-Catholicism.

The sentiment of putting Christ back into Christmas, because he is “the reason for the season”, is commendable. It is indeed important to sound the reminder that Christmas is about the Incarnation, not about Santa Claus and the accumulation of possessions. And that needs to start with us: Are we putting Christ into Christmas in our own lives?

Putting Christ into Christmas must firstly be a personal challenge, before we get caught up in heated debates about suitable wordings of Christmas greetings or participate in the polemics about the supposed “War on Christmas”. When Christmas is a cause for righteous or ideological anger, then we signally fail to put Christ into Christmas.

If there is a “War on Christmas”, then it resides not in awkward greetings, alternative designations, or the absence of Nativity scenes in shopping malls. We, however, can locate the war on Christmas in the spending mania that is accompanied by a general indifference, or even hostility, towards people on the peripheries, especially the poor.

The real war on Christmas is found in the hypocrisy of people who piously sing carols about there being no room at the inn while shouting about keeping migrants out; people who sing about silent and holy nights while at the same time helping — by action or inaction — to fan the flames of intolerance, division and war elsewhere.

Christ is taken out of Christmas when we lack mercy and love.

We hope that this issue of The Southern Cross provides an antidote to the frenzy of the secular Christmas season. All of us at your monthly Catholic magazine wish you a blessed and reflective season of Advent, a joyful and peaceful Christmas, and a good slide into the New Year!

God bless,
Günther Simmermacher
(Editor)