Keep Christ in Christmas

Beyond Starbucks cups and bumper stickers

There’s a person in my neighborhood with a bumper sticker that says, “KEEP CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS.” Have you ever seen one of those? It’s a cartoon manger scene with those words emblazoned in all-caps across the bottom.

I swear every “Keep Christ in Christmas” car decal I’ve come across is either all-caps or ends with an exclamation point. I assume this is meant to indicate that the driver of the vehicle bearing the bumper sticker is very serious about keeping Christ in Christmas.

I’m a Christian pastor, so I’m all for focusing on Jesus during Christmastime, but I’m not sure bumper stickers are the best way to do it. Actually, I’m 100% sure that bumper stickers are not the best way to do it.

Another terrible way to keep the focus on Jesus this time of year is by getting worked up about people saying “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.” As Rachel Held Evans so perfectly wrote:

God did not wrap himself up in flesh, humbling himself to the point of birth in a stable and death on a cross, eating, laughing, weeping, and suffering as one of us, so that I can complain to management when a barista at Starbucks wishes me “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

So what does it look like to keep Christ in Christmas? I have an idea.