What is the “true meaning of Christmas”? For the practicing Christian it is the celebration of the coming of Christ, the Messiah. For those who are not practicing Christians, Christmas may be about family, getting along with people, having a good time, giving gifts, or pretty much whatever positive feelings we want to make it. For the merchants, it is about making lots of money. For everyone else it is frantic shopping, partying, decorating, spending, obligations, reunions, and of course football. Christmas is an overdone, overblown, excuse to end the year with a week-long party.
Let me let you in on a secret. Christmas has always been this way. We have records, going back the Middle Ages, of complaints over the excessive celebration of Christmas. Even in ancient times they overdid it. People just like to party.
I like to party too—I’m not against it. But I like to have a reason to party. Meaning is important. Christmas has been sanitized, fantasized, stretched and pulled like taffy to make it palatable to the most number of people. We’ve added trees, snowflakes, presents, reindeer, sleighs, and of course Santa, but none of these things have anything to do with Christmas. One reason we have done this is because we really don’t want to talk about what really went on at the birth of Christ.
Here’s the truth about Christmas It was the decisive battle in a great war that has been going on since the dawn of time. It begins in Genesis 3: 14-15.
This refers of course to the events in Eden at the dawn of time. God put Adam and Eve in the garden to tend creation and to enjoy life. God gave only one commandment—“Of all the other trees you may eat. But do not eat from the tree of life, an do not touch it, lest you die.”
The Devil, taking the form of a serpent, tempted Eve into eating the forbidden fruit. Then she gave some to Adam. As a result, God evicted them from Eden.
Before they went, God had a session with Adam, Eve, and the serpent. First He asked Adam if he had eaten. Adam made an excuse. “It was my wife,” he said. Then he asked Eve if she had eaten. “The serpent made me do it,” she said. So God called he serpent forward.
"Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals. You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."
Here’s what he said. First, he would crawl on his belly forever. Second, the serpent and the woman would be enemies forever.
But God promised that one day the seed of the woman would crush he serpent’s head—that is, destroy him. God doesn’t say the seed of Adam but of Eve. People usually referred to the seed as being from a man, not a woman. This seed would only be of the woman. This seed, (descendent) would be wounded by the serpent, but he would destroy it.
We are not just talking about snakes. This is the Devil. Snake was just the form he took. This seed of a woman would destroy the Devil.
Until the coming of this seed, Satan has the upper hand. But when the seed of the woman comes, his reign would be over. Sin’s power will at last be broken.
This passage forms the basis of Revelation, chapter 12. Revelation is a a book of symbols, but when we interpret the symbols, everything becomes clear.
12:1-4 A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.
What began as a simple story of a woman and a snake now has grown to cosmic proportions. The woman s not just a simple woman. She is Eve. She is also Israel. She has the moon under her feet and twelve stars in her crown. This is the promise to Eve promised in Genesis.
The serpent has grown, too. Now he is a dragon, the symbol of all worldly and Satanic powers. The enmity mentioned in Genesis has become a cosmic war.
Things are going badly for the woman. The woman is going into labor. Everything seem lost. What good is a pregnant woman against a dragon?
But wait a moment! What child is this she’s bearing? It is the seed of the woman who was promised to crush the serpent’s heel. His appearance on earth spells the end of the serpent’s reign. In desperation, the serpent-dragon-Devil lashed out at the woman, trying desperately to stop him from coming.
5-10 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.
And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down — that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
"Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.
Thus begins the final battle of the war begun in Genesis. The Devil tries to stop the coming of the child. He throws everything he has at the woman, but none of it works. Remember the accusations when it was discovered that Mary was pregnant out of wedlock? Remember how Joseph himself almost put her away? Remember how at the very moment the child was to be born suddenly they suddenly had to take that arduous journey to Bethlehem? Remember how they almost had to sleep out in the cold? Remember how Herod tried to deceive the wise men to find the child? Remember how he struck down the innocents of Bethlehem? All of this is the snarling fury of the beast, trying desperately to keep Christmas from coming.
Satan knows that this baby is destined to destroy him. First he tries ridicule. Then he tries bureaucractic confusion, then he tries outright murder, but none o it works. Jesus comes anyway, and it is the end of his kingdom, and his life.
God intervenes to protect the woman:
13-16 When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent's reach. Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent. But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth.
John speaks poetically and symbolically, of course. God bears her up on angel wings. Satan spews venom at her, but God stops the venom. God did not allow Satan to have the upper hand over the mother of His child. Jesus came anyway.
But still, this does not stop the Devil’s fury. He just redirected it.
17 Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring — those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.
For the last two thousand years, Satan has still been railing against those who believer. It is useless, of course. Once Christmas came, there is nothing he could do. Unable to stop it, he set out to make war against believers. If he can’t stop Jesus coming, then he tries to smash those who believe it, so there will be no one to tell.
Satan is still trying to obscure Christmas from our eyes. He hides is behind a wall of pretty fantasies. He dazzles us with lights, so no one will notice what it is really about. Don’t let them know what He came to do, or what Christmas is all about. Let them continue to think whatever else they wish, as long as they don’t hear of God’s salvation. Let them think the Garden of Eden was a myth, that the Bible is a fantasy, and that it is all just a pretty story.
Lately, Satan has been following a plan that he believes will assure him victory. He has been pushing people to think it is all a myth. Philosophers for the past half century have developed a view called post-modernism, which says (rightly) that our minds think in terms of stories. But they have added (wrongly) that one story is as good as another. You can base your life around the Bible or Star Trek. It makes no difference. It doesn’t matter if it’s true.
So tell the Christmas story (the Devil says.) But tell of Santa Claus, too. Tell of Scrooge, while you’re at it, say It’s a Wonderful Life. It doesn’t matter, the Devil says. One’s as good as the other.
But a myth cannot save us. If you’re trapped under a car, does it matter whether you call 911, or yell for Superman? Jesus’ story is vital to us because it is true. God promised the Seed of the woman, and the seed of the woman came. God promised to defeat Satan and protect us, and he will. Christmas is glad tidings of great joy, only because it is real, and so is God.
Every year, we tell this story. We tell it because you must believe it. Jesus ties all history together. From Genesis to Revelation.
So as you celebrate Christmas this year, don’t let your family forget the real story behind the season. Don’t let them forget that there is only one who has ultimately defeated the Devil—and that person is the one we celebrate on Christmas Day, Jesus Christ our Lord.
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