Christians celebrate the fact of the birth of Christ, not the history of Christmas

Well, all of that is fine, but the point is that Christians are not so hung up on Christmas history as Mr. McClinton. Christians celebrate the FACT of the birth of Jesus Christ.

Far from being helpful to those members of society who do not have a clear grasp of the history of Christmas, Brian’s article wants to tell us that mankind can make this world a better place by his own “ability to redeem himself”, as is his opinion of the experience of Ebenezer Scrooge (it’s only a story remember).

History, right up to this very moment in time, has proven that man is as far from redeeming himself as he ever has been. The state of the world speaks that loud and clear!

His humanist mask slips when he asks the question “does Christmas really make us more aware of the earth’s appalling poverty and man’s inhumanity to man and other animals?” Two points need to be made here , First , ‘earth’s appalling poverty’ is very largely the result of man’s corruption in government and greed for money.

The world’s poorest nations are chiefly ruled by corrupt governments. Second, ‘man’s inhumanity to man, and other animals’ reveals his, and Humanism’s belief, that man is only a higher level of animal. But enough of humanism. Let’s think about what Christmas means.

The birth of Jesus Christ was God the Father’s gift to this sinful world. He came to declare the Father’s love for the world, which sin had so disfigured (and still does).

At His birth our Lord Jesus was wrapped in ‘swaddling bands’. These were the strips of cloth a body would normally have been bound with for burial. This pictures the fact that He was born, to die, just as He did on a cross at Calvary. The death of Jesus Christ is confirmed in ancient Jewish and Roman records. He came to die in the place of sinful humanity. He was God and man clothed in the flesh of one body.

Humanism is the belief that (a) God absolutely does not exist, (b) as a consequence, there is no afterlife, (c) there is no Heaven and no hell. What a depressing philosophy!

Every humanist, every atheist has to just go on believing you are merely a collection of atoms brought together to somehow bring about a life, a life with no purpose, no future, no point really. You die, you’re gone , to where?

I, and millions like me, will celebrate the FACT that God “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). We will go on celebrating the fact that “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8) and that “He was buried, and that He rose again the third day, according to the scriptures”(1 Corinthians 15:4).

The born-again Christian has a most wonderful prospect in view. For, just as He has come once, our Lord Jesus Christ has said, “I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also”.

Heaven is in view, who needs a distorted history lesson about Christmas?

Gordon McNeill, Portadown