My family’s yuletide festivities are like a cross between Miranda and Outnumbered, except with actual jokes rather than people falling over and small children breaking things.
So much of our Christmas is about tradition, we do things a certain way because that’s the way we’ve always done them; presents happen at a particular time, people sit in a specific place and we eat the same food. ‘It’s what we’ve always done’ feels just as Christmassy as ‘Away in a manger’.
Sometimes I worry Christmas at church is done in the same fashion. We hold the same services, with the same songs and the same sermons probably in front of the same people. Now tradition itself isn’t the problem, but sometimes being over-exposed to something can mean we miss the truth behind it. Sometimes the tradition becomes purely about the tradition; the carols remind us more of our childhood than they do of the amazing fact that God became man.
Our childhood Christmas memories, our Christmas carols, our nativity services, can become golden calves or idols; the carols that proclaim the birth of Christ end up blurring the beauty of the story. (As a side note, isn’t it about time we got rid of the line ‘But little Lord Jesus no crying he makes,’ utter nonsense.) The problem with this and so much idolatry is that it takes something good, something that can point towards God, warps it, and misses the point entirely.
The problem is, this isn’t just true of Christmas, it can be true of all our youth work. Those same festivals we do every summer, the songs that the young people love, those weird things unique to your own group that evolved for the right reasons - if we’re not careful they become the focus of the group, they become idols.
Put the golden calves back in the loft this Christmas, and remember that God became man.
Jamie Cutteridge is the Youthwork journalist
