Should we really say “Merry Christmas”?

It’s been years now since the heated controversies began about various retail outlets changing their official greeting from “Merry Christmas” to “Happy Holidays.”

Forget that controversy – there’s a better reason to ask if we should really say Merry Christmas. It has more to do with the sometimes hard realities of Christmas.

We are well into the Advent season now, and it’s probably a good time to tell the truth about the first Christmas:

The first Christmas arrived in a season of suffering and silence.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get this very mixed-up notion that Christmas should be a season of continual merriment and joy. Then it really bothers me when I am confronted by the ravages of a world wrecked by sin and sorrow:

• Destruction: unsuspecting victims murdered en masse, wars and rumors of wars
• Disease: balded children fighting leukemia; balded moms fighting breast cancer…
• Division: hatred and hostility dividing people groups, marriages ripped by cruelty, sweet friendships soured by gossip
• Darkness: severe depression eclipsing the light of any hope…

Here’s what I forget: people long-ago also suffered the shalom wrecked by the fall – destruction, disease, division, darkness – it was all there, and yet God had been silent for 400 years.

The first “Merry Christmas”: GOOD TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY!

It was into this sorrowful, silent season the angel Gabriel burst with the original Christmas card:

Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you! Luke 1:28

THE LORD IS WITH US!!! That’s the game-changer. That’s the REAL REASON we can say a whole-hearted “MERRY CHRISTMAS”!

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone” (Isaiah 9:2).

Into a sorrowful, silent season, the angel arrived with the first good tidings of great joy! Share on XAccording to this gospel, those who have just a mustard seed of faith in Christ as Savior are living a new life, whether it appears that way or not. We still struggle with sin, but we do not mourn as those without hope.

We live with the memory and daily evidence of Christ-redeeming and restoring —

We wait for the Lord to come again and make it all right:

“They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.” Isaiah 11:9

“In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world!” Jn. 16:33

And so we can rejoice on the days when Christmas doesn’t feel merry. This is not a strange path we walk.

And we will not walk this path forever.

And so, in the name of the one who has humbled himself to enter this world as a babe in the manger, in the name of the One who will come again as Redeeming King to heal finally and forever, I wish you a …

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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