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    No Church at Christmas

    I heard from Don about Willow Creek’s (an american megachurch) decision to cancel church on sunday because it is a time for families. Google the news for it and you’ll come up with a number of opinions and it seems to have created some controversy.

    I thought this guy was interesting and has some good points but I’m not 100% in agreement:

    “Who are my mother and my brothers?” – The Gospels don’t preach family values. By Lauren Winner

    As a Christian, then, my real family consists of fellow followers of Jesus, whether or not they are blood kin. Which is why I will be spending Christmas, yes, with my husband and nieces and nephews and in-laws, but also, unlike the good folks at Willow Creek, in church, with all of my brothers and sisters in Christ.

    He makes a good point about Jesus redefining family but I also think that for a church to always take the high moral ground is damaging. Willow Creek is an evangelical outreach focused church – they don’t want to put people off, they want to be welcoming. They are happy to abandon tradition and ideology in favour of being more accessable.

    On the other hand, those of us who want to seek a spiritual christmas may want to go to church or maybe seek solitude or practice any number of spiritual activities on that day.

    The reality is that Christmas is stressful enough without throwing a trip to church into the mix. Sure, I can head for the high ground and foresake my non-christian relatives in order to go to church (even forsake my christian relatives who might be at a different church). I might get some happy ideological vibes from myself but I think I’d be too distracted to really engage in it.

    I support the idea of shifting the religious christmas date slightly away from the holiday for the reason that it is no longer celebrated in mainstream society as a religious event but as a family event. So I say seperate the two entirely. Have the religious christmas observance the day after boxing day.

    Related Posts:  »No Church at Christmas II »Christmas Greetings »So this is Christmas…

    Posted: December 24th, 2005 under Big Questions, Seasons.
    Comments: 5

    Comments

    Comment from James the cat
    Time: 26/12/2005, 6:39 pm

    that would be the feast of s john the evangelist. or perhaps the day after… holy innocents.
    or perhaps Jan 6, Epiphany, when the coptics celebrate it…
    or Jan 7, when the orthodox celebrate Christmas…

    Comment from Sheena
    Time: 28/12/2005, 8:58 pm

    Matt, I know I commented at tedious length on your previous post but I can’t leave this alone either. I can see where you and Willow Creek are coming from but I want to throw in a hotch-potch of points to consider: – Christmas is a religious holiday, one of the only religious holidays the secular world acknowledges. It seems wrong to me to not ackowledge Jesus on the day that the non-religious world has set aside for the purpose – Church takes only an hour, if you happen to be Anglican like I am. One hour out of a whole day, allowing maybe another short period of travel time, is hardly desertion. There are early-morning services, like the 7 am one I went to, which allow almost all the day to be spent with family – I am all for demonstrating Christian love by honouring family, but there are plenty of secular occasions to do that – Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, people’s birthdays. Even joining your family at some point during Christmas Day with carefully-chosen gifts assures them of your love for them

    – What about the people who have no family within reach? People who are travelling, studying, emigrated, away on business or emergencies, or whose families have died? For these people the Christian family is particularly important. These are the “widows and orphans” we keep being admonished to take care of, and not to have a service to remind them of God’s love and care in their loneliness on one of His most important feast days seems just wrong to me.
    – I believe that we have a duty to remind the secular world of the original and still valid reason for this holiday. One of the most unobtrusive ways to witness is to gently tell your colleagues/friends that you went to church on Christmas Day, as “How was your day? What did you do?” is a frequently-asked question after Christmas, in my circles at least.
    – The vision of empty churches on Christmas Day sends a shiver through my soul which I can’t exactly explain – something tells me that that is the kind of result of secular pressure in which Satan would exult
    – Christmas Day can be a very stressful one within families, as lots of people who don’t normally see each other and don’t necessarily get on crowd together, and in the heat, in this part of the world. It is much easier for a Christian to be a bastion of peace and goodwill in a frazzled family circle if they have spent some time with God first praising Him and remembering why they should be glad on this day

    I think I had more, but this is ample, so I’ll stop.

    Comment from James the cat
    Time: 28/12/2005, 11:54 pm

    all this ‘christmas is family time’ stuff is wrong. which is to say, i strongly disagree with. there is nothing particularly christian about the cult of the family…
    If people really cared about family, then they would resist a lot harder the erosion into the weekly family time of the weekend, and especially sunday. Instead, probusiness neo cons on the one hand talk about family values, and on the other eliminate penal rates and the 40 hour working week, promote sunday trading and other godless paganisms. Family day is not one day a year, but at least one day each week.

    Comment from djfoobarmatt
    Time: 31/12/2005, 7:20 pm

    Thanks for commenting James and Sheena and thanks for supporting my blog this year with your thoughts and comments.

    On the it’sonlyonehour front, I say that if you can do that then fantastic, the early service might be a goer, but add half an hour to either side of the service for trying to get your kids together as well as get ready yourself. You’re already in a rush to try and get the presents and food and crap into the car so the church trip just delays everything by two hours or more. Willow ck might have a hundred or more people involved in actually putting the service on so they may be considering the workers who would see a lot less of the day by the time they’ve rolled out the disco lights, had the service, stored the lights again and picked up the coke cans in the aisles.

    But with your other points, you’ve persuaded me that christmas day is a day to go to church and the family can do without you for a couple of hours or more.

    Pingback from Bogosity » Blog Archive » No Church at Christmas II
    Time: 8/1/2006, 4:11 pm

    [...] see also my previous post [...]

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