Ah, Christmas! “The most wonderful time of the year.”

A time to gather with family and friends and, with smiles on our faces, pretend we aren’t quietly measuring who received the best present and which of our relatives really, really needs to stop drinking.

A time to hang tinsel and baubles from the tree, and time to hang up our hopes of losing that last 10 pounds this year.

Such a joyous season!

The real point here is that Christmas is what we make of it.

For Christians, however, there are some very specific things you can’t do if you want to actually honor and follow the person we say we celebrate this season.

So, I give you my “10 Things Christians Shouldn’t Do At Christmas.”

As with my other “10 Things” lists (which are linked at the end of this post), this is not intended to be a complete list, but it is a pretty good start.

10) Celebrate Consumeristmas

For many people, Christmas starts with standing in line on Thanksgiving Day.

‘Tis the season for mass consumerism.

Regardless of where you personally think Christmas began, Christmas has slowly drifted into the bog of consumer madness.

Like frogs in a pot of slowly boiling water, we never saw it coming.

For Christians, this is particularly problematic because the guy we are celebrating this time of year told us that collecting stuff here on Earth is not the way to follow him. (My apologies to Kirk Cameron whose seasonal movie wants us to believe otherwise.)

9) Forget Those Without Food

Jesus once said that when we feed the hungry we are feeding him.

Anyone want to guess what it means when we ignore the hungry?

How about forgetting about hungry children and their families as we scrape the leftover Christmas ham from our plates into the trash?

Maybe we need to change the name of the season to Gluttonousmas? Too many presents, too much food – too little consideration for those in need.

8) Forget Those Without Shelter

No room at the inn.

One of the key moments in the story Christians celebrate is the moment when Jesus was almost born in the streets of Bethlehem.

Our need to clean up the Christmas story assumes that the innkeeper told them to use the manger but the Bible says no such thing. There was no room at the inn, leaving Mary to place her newborn child in a smelly feeding trough.

For that night they were without shelter.

Throughout his life Jesus would spend his ministry with no place to lay his head.

This time of year we celebrate a homeless man.

Do our actions, do the places we spend our money, honor that?

7) Forget About Immigrant

We three kings from Orient are. . .

Besides sounding like Yoda wrote a Christmas carol, there are a number of things messed up about that line.

First: We don’t actually know how many there were.

Secondly: They were magi, not kings.

Finally: We also do not know where they were really from other than “from the East.”

What we do know is they were foreigners and their revealing of the king’s plans to kill all newborn boys in hopes of putting an end to Jesus turned Jesus’ family into immigrants in Egypt.

Our Christmas story is replete with images of people journeying to new lands. Because of it, Christmas should cause Christians to recommit to embracing immigrants.

6) Miss The Message About Resisting Abusive Power

Mary and Joseph and their family had to flee their homeland because King Herod strong-handedly used his power to squash out what he saw as a threat to his power.

I can guarantee you two things: One, in the house where Jesus grew up, the narrative of why they had to flee to Egypt and of the senseless deaths imposed on other families by the powerful was a story that was told time and time again. Two, the focus on abuse of power in Jesus’ teaching and his constant willingness to confront it was no accident.

Christmas should cause Christians to recommit to confronting those who abuse power.

5) Forget Those Without Presents

If you have two coats give one away.

In announcing the coming of Jesus, John the Baptist told us what God was asking of us. Coats were just an example – a placeholder if you will.

If you have two Christmas presents give one away.

4) Insist Your Religious Celebration Rule Them All

This time of year far too many Christians remind me of Gollum and his Precious. (A LoTR shout out in a Christian Christmas post! C’mon Peter Jackson, give me some promo love!)

One holiday to rule them all: “We nee-eeds it. They stole it from us!”

Never mind that Jesus was Jewish or that there is a list of other celebrations that occur this time of year, there’s a certain cultural privilege in the air that seems so very un-Christian to me.

You can just about bet that the folks calling out for the dominance of Christmas with shouts about what they think is a “war on Christmas” would be singing a new song if Judaism were the dominant religious culture and this time of year radio stations across the land played Chanukah songs.

Technically, they would be singing a new song – not just metaphorically.

3) Get Mad About People Saying “Happy Holidays”

To those who get upset about folks saying, “Happy Holidays,” rather than, “Merry Christmas”: you know what “holiday” is short for, right?

Holy day.

Do you really have a problem with people calling Christmas a holy day?

Nah. Of course you don’t.

2) Think That It Is Actually Jesus’ Birthday.

Um. So… dang, this is hard.

I’m really sorry to be the one telling you. Um, let’s see.

Remember how when you were growing up the Sunday school teacher told you Christmas was Jesus’ birthday?

Yeah.

Well, um… they lied.

Yeah. Sorry about that.

We don’t actually know when Jesus was born. It was probably in the spring or summer because “the shepherds watched their flocks by night” – something which typically didn’t happen much in the winter in that region. Not to mention they were returning to Joseph’s hometown for a census, which is something that would have probably been done during warmer weather.

Want to celebrate the fact that Jesus was born? Ok.

Want it to actually be on his birthday? Good luck with that.

1) Confuse The Religious Observance With the Secular Holiday.

It may be that December the 25th was picked as the date to celebrate Jesus’ birth to compete with or even to adopt the followers of the pagan celebration of Saturnalia, which included decorating with evergreens, gift giving and parties.

Hmmm, why does that seem so familiar?

I bring this up to make a simple point.

A lot of our “War on Christmas” problems would rightfully go away if we simply acknowledged that there are two celebrations of Christmas each year.

One is religious and one is not.

Most of this article actually points to the issues that happen when we conflate them.

So, let’s stop doing it.

Mark Sandlin is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

This article originally appeared on Patheos.

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