Christmas and this article spurred me to write today.
December 26th, back at work on Boxing Day, my supervisor had just come up to me and asked: “You’re not celebrating Christmas? You’re a Christian, aren’t you? [Yes, I am.] Why didn’t you take any days off?”
It was about 10 p.m. on Christmas Day. Mum kept wondering why hasn’t my brother called to wish her a ‘Merry Christmas’. Then she turned the question on me:
“Hey, YOU also did not wish me a ‘Merry Christmas’ today! Why ah…? If David was here, he would put his arm around me and wished me.”
While lying on the couch facing the idiot box transmitting Transformers, I replied:
“We are celebrating Christ’s birthday, not yours…”
Writing it now, it does seem quite rude. Sorry, Mum.
All throughout the day, I had exchanged ‘Merry Christmas’ greetings with almost everyone I came across at church. And a bit more greetings at my senior manager’s Christmas/house-warming party. The English like to say ‘Happy Christmas’ instead.
I also received many gifts from people at church which started weeks before. But I didn’t feel obligated to buy them anything. And I told everyone of them that I didn’t get them anything, hearing ‘nevermind’s and ‘it’s okay’s. One said it is better for them to give than to receive.
Christmas morning, a few minutes of the idiot box preached that Santa Clauses in Japan are receiving training to share some ‘true’ meaning of Christmas which does not include Christ.
Christmas eve at work, went out for lunch with a colleague. He asked how was I going to celebrate Christmas, with gifts, lights and decorated trees? I explained that that was the commercialised version that I was not into, but I was more interested in the ‘religious’ side of celebrating the birth of Jesus.
Not limited to just the birth of Jesus, but the implications of this act of love for us on God’s part: salvation, redemption, propitiation, justification, grace, glorification, etc.. It is definitely not like New Year’s Day, not like Chinese New Year, not like my birthday.
So I shouldn’t be receiving Christmas [birthday] gifts? So I shouldn’t be wished ‘Merry [birthday] Christmas’ or ‘Happy [birthday] Christmas’? Sounds very much like the ‘Grinch’?
It sure feels like it this Christmas.