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| The true meaning of Christmas |
Every year at this time of the year someone approaches me in a store or calls me on the phone to announce “I just read a real important article. The writer says we shouldn’t be celebrating Christmas on December 25. He  discovered Jesus really wasn’t born on December 25.” I just shake my head. I know of no credible Christian theologian — living or dead — who has said Jesus was born on Dec. 25. While we can show the date Jesus was crucified and the date He rose from the dead, no one knows the exact date of Jesus’ birth. We do not celebrate Jesus’ birth on the anniversary of His birth — as we used to with Washington and Lincoln or do with King. Christmas does not commemorate a specific day in history. Christmas is more than that — far more than that. Christmas is really a celebration of the meaning of Jesus’ birth in that Bethlehem cave stable — God loving all humanity enough to enter human flesh and vulnerability on our behalf and for our eternal Salvation. Along with Jesus’ death and resurrection, His birth is to Christian believers the most wondrous event in all of human history. I guess God did not want our search for the exact date to overshadow the true meaning of the event.
Walking the highways and bi-ways of the Holy Land on most any morning, you can follow your nose to the bethlehems. The word, “bethlehem,” means “house of bread” or “house of wheat” and is the name given to the community bake ovens where the wheat becomes bread. Early in the morning, you will find the women taking turns pulling the dried grass and sheep dung from atop the village bethlehems and using it to build a fire inside. Several hours later, when the fire is just right, all the women come with the dough to bake the delicious loaves of bread which will feed their families in the hours ahead. Actually and symbolically, bread is the basic food ingredient of life. Remember how in our Lord’s Prayer we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” and are actually asking God for everything necessary to sustain the lives God has given us. Since before the day when David kept watch over his father’s flocks in the Ephraim region of Judea, there has been a tiny village located a short 5 miles from Jerusalem. The village in Biblical times was never much larger than our own Sandusky Mall. In fact, it has always served a purpose similar in many ways to Sandusky Mall … though with greater emphasis on food products — sort of a large farmers’ market. It was where you went to buy the groceries — wheat, bread, vegetables, fruit and livestock — on the hoof or ready for meal preparation. That shopping center village, like a number of similar villages throughout the Holy Land, was given the same name as the bake ovens — Bethlehem. In that village of Bethlehem located in the Ephrathah region of Judea … in that supermarket region supplying the food and beverage needs of those living and traveling in the region — a child was born. In a cave — perhaps 35 feet by 10 feet in size — where animals were sheltered and cared for — a child was born. In a limestone manger where the most dependant of animals came to receive food and water provided by responsible shepherds — a newborn child was laid. Through the Ephrathah Region’s “House of Bread” … God’s word, God’s Son, God Himself entered the world in which we live in the flesh and with the vulnerability in which we live to proclaim God’s love for us all, to suffer and die on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins and alienation from God for us, to give God's eternal life to us all, and to provide us with the divine nourishment essential to our lives now and eternally. Through Bethlehem … the House of Bread … the true eternal Bread of Life came to us all. That is what Christians joyfully come together to celebrate on that day called Christmas. May you all have a truly blessed holiday season!
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