An email has just popped into my Inbox, sent from a retail business chain, and here is what it says:

Christmas is always a frantic time of year – work commitments, parties, presents, cooking, shopping, sending cards and arranging holidays. Christmas can become a chore.

But Christmas can also give you and your loved ones a precious gift every year – the gift of celebration.

At Christmas time we can stop and celebrate Christmases past, present and to come with family and friends and take some time to re-connect. At Christmas we can reflect on all those things and people around us that we can be thankful for, and ready ourselves for the year ahead.

So amidst the activity and chaos of the season, may we encourage you to celebrate the joy and treasure of living life and creating memories with those we love.

We wish you and your loved ones a joyous blessed and memorable Christmas.

But wait… what is this about? Are we talking Christmas, or is this about being thankful, or just having a family occasion? Yes, it certainly mentions Christmas, but in true postmodern style that leaves out content to focus on process, how utterly obtuse can you get to merely celebrate living life and the creation of memories? One doesn’t actually need Christmas for doing just that.

Well, what did I expect? Christianity is wrongly considered these days not to be for those who can think rationally, who value scientific discovery, and who know better than to imagine even for one silly moment that a virgin can possibly give birth to a baby, or that the baby can be God Incarnate. Whatever next! Therefore it must be right to denigrate Christianity and milk whatever can possibly be milked out of this culturally inherited occasion, sensitively avoiding any risk of giving offence to adherents of other religious and secular traditions. Any offence given to Christians by the appropriation of their celebration of the birth of Christ, and its hijacking in the name of commercialism and woolly sentiment, is nothing more than deserved. Christians are merely fools to believe the stuff they do.

On top of all that, it is easy to hate Christmas when all the perceived extra duties and expectations threaten to become overwhelming, when more shopping and partying is required, or when the aggravations of unresolved conflicts threaten to erupt over this time of supposed Peace and Goodwill. What joy is there in celebrating… er, mere celebration itself?

For Christians the celebration goes well beyond “celebrating the joy and treasure of living life and creating memories with those we love” to focus on the amazing grace of God and the love He has shown in redeeming us, restoring us to a relationship with Him that is more precious than life itself. It is foolishness to natural man, meaningful only to those in this restored relationship with Him. It is no surprise that the world has appropriated Christmas for its own less worthy purposes, and no surprise that many will consider Christians irrational and foolish for believing what Christians know to be the Truth. The world may celebrate “celebration” but without the truth content of Christmas, that celebration remains bereft of the real Joy and Peace given only by the grace of our Sovereign God.