Christmas is a time when everything is heightened.  All things are universally amped up.  If everything is coming up roses for you, then Christmas makes things come up poinsettias.  However, if you’re blue, Christmas can  make you very blue.  If you have family problems, they are heightened at Christmas.  If you’re struggling with finances, you’ll struggle even more at Christmas.  If you’re lonely – chances are you’ll feel lonelier during the holidays.  If you’ve recently lost a loved one, you’ll be facing the first Christmas without them.  It is easy for those in mourning to feel forgotten by their church during the month of December.

I’m reminded of the line from Away in a Manger – “The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes”.  However,  the Gospel accounts don’t say anything about whether the baby Jesus cried.  Yet we’ve bought into the idea that crying, mourning or any expression of sorrow is incongruous with Christmas.  However, if we strip off the fairy-tale varnish from the Christmas story we find that there is much sorrow – Israel oppressed by the Romans, a scandalous pregnancy, an arduous journey to Bethlehem.  And what do we encounter after the blessed event itself?  The flight to Egypt to  escape the slaughter of innocents (Matt 2:13-18).  Merry Christmas indeed.

The good news is that the Christmas story is about the arrival of God’s light that penetrates the deepest darkness.  As worship leaders we must not ignore the darkness, but rather acknowledge it, and proclaim that the Light has come.  I believe that the third verse of It Came Upon a Midnight Clear perfectly expresses this concept:

O ye beneath life’s crushing load,

Whose forms are bending low,

Who toil along the climbing way

With painful steps and slow;

Look now, for glad and golden hours

Come swiftly on the wing;

Oh rest beside the weary road

And hear the angels sing.

In most of the Christmas pageants that I’ve been associated with the drama on stage couldn’t hold a candle to the drama behind the scenes.  I remember dress rehearsals with stress levels were more incandescent than a million strings of Christmas lights.   If you wanted to show someone the fruit of the Spirit (Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control) would you invite them to your Christmas Pageant rehearsals?

These are some of the pitfalls that I think we need to avoid during our Christmas productions:

• Failing to view the “pageant” primarily as an act of worship.  When the pageant becomes more about us than it does about celebrating Christ, we are driven by pride – which means we’ve completely missed the point.
• Outdoing Last Year! – We feel an intense pressure to out-do last year!  But it is unsustainable!  Often we reach a production level that pushes our people to the brink of burn-out (or beyond).  It is unsustainable to continually ratchet up our productions without sacrificing some volunteers on the altar of Bigger and Better
• “Community Theatre” syndrome – If we forget that we’re doing ministry then our Christmas Pageants are reduced to community theatre – and we are susceptible to all of community theatre’s foibles and petty vanities.  As the church we are called to so much more than just entertainment!

The good news is that it is possible to produce fitting celebrations of Christmas that honour God in their content and in the way they are produced.  I believe that if we approach our Christmas celebrations primarily as acts of worship,  in both spirit and in truth, then we’ll succeed celebrating Christ’s advent while enjoying His presence.

In the churches where I’ve  served and attended it seems that we’ve lost our sense of longing for Christ’s advent.  I really appreciate the rhythm of the liturgical calendar that sets aside four weeks of advent.  It may come as a surprise to those of us who are “low church” that liturgical churches do not sing Christmas carols until Christmas eve .   Advent is supposed to be a time of reflection on our need for Christ and our desperate need for Him to come to us.  It is also a time to anticipate second advent.  I know that I need to spend time longing for Christ’s arrival – to be born anew in my own heart, and for His eventual return in which he sets the world aright.  This longing for Christ is an essential antidote to my own tendency toward smug self-sufficiency, and all of the folly that flows such an erroneous point of view.

I find that my longing is short circuited by jumping right to celebrations of Christ’s birth, and I am poorer because of it.  I’m not advocating that all of our churches return to a strict observation of the church calendar.  There are many good reasons to spend all of December celebrating Christ’s birth, not the least of which is the opportunity it provides for churches to reach out to their communities through concerts, dramatic presentations and other artistic celebrations.  I am advocating that each one of us take time this advent season to reflect upon our profound need for Christ to come and be born in our own hearts, and to express our longing for His presence in our lives and in our world.

I’m beginning a series of posts today in which I’ll confess to some of my hang-ups with the Christmas season.  I’ll be sharing a number of observations as an erstwhile worship pastor.

My first confession is that I don’t like Christmas Carols.  OK.. that may sound harsh, so let me explain .  For at least two months every year we are inundated with Christmas carols – in the mall, on the radio, TV, everywhere we go we hear the same paltry repertoire of Christmas songs repeated over and over again.  Only the most robust melodies could resist becoming threadbare after so much overuse. Unfortunately most Christmas Carols don’t fare very well.

However, my superficial preferences on the aesthetics of Christmas carol music aren’t all that important.  The biggest problem with Christmas carols is that they come with baggage.  When many of us sing a Christmas carol our minds instantly conjure  memories of a television commercial or the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, rather than dwelling upon the meaning of what we’re singing.  It is a real effort to push beyond the nostalgic associations we have with most carols and to truly worship through them.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating that we ban Christmas carols.  They are a very meaningful part of our celebration of Christ’s first coming.  The challenge for us as worshipers is to avoid using them as an exercise in nostalgia, but instead to make every effort to view them with fresh eyes and fresh ears.  As worship planners and worship leaders we must make every effort to keep them fresh and put them into settings that draw our attention to Christ.