~ Jesus His Birth is Celebrated Still

December is a great time of year. People are different during December, it is a time when though the shops become mad houses, the people seem more giving and open. The weather may become a problem on either side of the Equator but people just seem “nicer” if that is the word.
As a follower of Jesus I kind of wonder just how influential He is at this time of the year. I do not ask this cynically, it is a serious thought. I know that we celebrate His birthday on the 25th. Many people choose to do Xmas instead of the traditional Christmas but that is incidental: just something to stir up the Christians. Most people who do this use it as a shortcut. They do this without realizing the X in Roman times, apart from being the number Ten, was also one of the secret symbols that were used to identify other believers.
I do believe that there are more people for Christmas than against it, that the movement to take Christ out of Christmas is lead by a minority of nonbelievers. Those of the Political Correctness brigade who have tried to popularize the Holiday Season concept would claim to be being universalist in their sentiment. With the season lasting from Thanksgiving, including the Hebrew Hanukkah, Christmas and going through New Years.
The thing that stands out to me is that when you go into almost any shop at this time of year you are greeted with Christmas carols, even if some are not always about Christ. Most people accept this “Muzak” to place it into an elevator category. But more important to me is the numbers of people who turn out to event like Carols by Candle Light.
So the question becomes whom do we hold responsible for the changes that seem to come over people during this time and I can only see one Headliner with the presence to achieve this. The baby Jesus, the Son of God, foretold throughout the ages by the prophets who spoke for His Father, and His Father who solved the separation between men and Himself by providing us a Saviour who is Christ with us.
Our God is to be praised for the way that He created a unique period for His entry into the affairs of man, a time of peace from war and a time when few knew anything special had happened. But today we know even those outside the Community of Faith know it, or at least feel it.
Christmas is no spur of the moment thing the prophets foretold about the king born in a manger, about His life and of His death. The Angels who spoke to Mary and Joseph also testified to the planning that went into the event, the child was to be called “Immanuel” Hebrew for the Greek “Christ” which translates “God with us” and He was to be named Jesus in Hebrew that means “Saviour”. The baby lying in an animal trough had already been named “God with us Saviour.”
The miracle of Christmas is that this “non-event” in terms of human history over two thousand years age still draws a crowd. God staged it so that even the character of the event as the Angels sang praises about it still transcend to this day. Easter is dramatic, the complete antithesis of Christmas. If anything was going to last in the mind of man it should be Easter, and yet Christ’s birth in ignominy still stirs the heart of mankind; even if some do not know why.