BAH! HUMBUG!

By Fred Vilbig

Maybe Ebenezer Scrooge had it right. Maybe we should listen to the Grinch … that is, before that pesky, silly Cindy Lu Who messed things up. If you look at it objectively, Christmas is one big exercise in self-absorption. “Buy me this!” “Get Me that!” And now we don’t even call it Christmas. I was recently in CostCo, and they were selling “Winter Holiday” gift baskets. No Christ in that Christmas!

The stories of Scrooge and the Grinch do seem to reach a satisfactory conclusion. Scrooge realized that being generous and charitable made him feel good about himself. The Grinch realizes that the Whos’ Christmas is about people caring for one another. Still, these strike me as an ultimately empty, self-serving accomplishment too. If our Winter Holiday is just an excuse to feel good about ourselves, then “Bah! Humbug!”

But in reality, Christmas is so much more than that.

It’s kind of hard to think about God. He is limitless. One French philosopher referred to God as “that which is completely other.” He is beyond anything we know or even could know. He is surrounded by countless angels who out of their love for Him worship Him by singing His praises. God is totally self-sufficient. He is a community of Persons infinitely in love with One Another. He doesn’t need us for anything.

Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity Who is God, had everything. However, out of love for us, He “separated” Himself from the Trinity. Paul in his letter to the Philippians says that “He emptied Himself” of His divinity. From the heights of his divinity, His glory, he emptied Himself and became man. He was born into a poor family of an oppressed people. He was born in a stable surrounded by animals. Paul says that out of a sense of humility, He took the form of a slave. He could have been born into a rich and powerful Roman family. He could have just majestically appeared among us in some glorified state, but he didn’t.

God so loved the world that He sent His only son to redeem us. But out of a respect for us and the suffering that we endure as a result of Original Sin, He became meek and humble. He wanted to appeal to the poor, the widows, the orphans, the sick, the lame, the sinners. To appeal to all of us, He became one of us. If you think about it, that is such a loving and gentle action by God that makes Him even more loveable.

So to the commercialized, self-absorbed Winter Holiday, I say, “Bah! Hunbug!” But to the celebration of Christmas where we celebrate the fact that our God emptied Himself of His divinity to become one of us and to share in our suffering and redeem us, I say, “Thanks!” What a loving God we have! And that is certainly something to celebrate!