Church on Christmas Day

What would it take for you to reimagine what you do on Christmas Day?

Before we can get to Christmas Day, we of course have to walk through Christmas Eve. I have twenty-two years’ worth of Christmas Eve memories. Good food, running around with family, nearly exploding with excitement, and counting down the hours until I could go to sleep and wake up to presents. There’s the smell of cinnamon, peppermint in my teeth, and a loud house full of conversation and laughter. And most years, there would also be an evening Christmas Eve service—a dark sanctuary, flickering candles, and a solemn rendition of “Silent Night.” My hands might have gotten a bit burned from the hot wax dripping down, and my brothers and I would try to blow each other’s candles out before either of our parents would glare at us.

A Christmas Eve service was part of the whole Christmas rhythm, the last thing to do before I could go to sleep and knock out the last couple hours before it was finally time to open presents. That was normal. My tradition on Christmas day was to do as little as possible, relax, and hang out with my family.

But last year, at the age of twenty-one, something happened that caused me to reimagine what I do on Christmas Day. I attended my very first Christmas Day service, and immediately wondered why I had never been to one before. The only reason Spring Church had a Christmas Day service at all was because Christmas fell on a Sunday for the first time in our small church’s short existence. And our friends experiencing homelessness, in the weeks leading up to Christmas Day on a Sunday, assumed we weren’t going to meet and assumed that they were going to be alone that day. Thankfully, we had the sort of friendship where we could hear each other and ask the important question that had, until then, gone unnoticed: why do we not have a service on Christmas Day? Thanks to uncommon friendship, we were able to do something different. The church ate together, read Scripture, and sang classic Christmas carols on the night of Jesus’ birth, filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit and the brilliant warmth of the love we had for one another. And there’s something important to recognize here: Jesus shows up where there’s room. Because we made room for our friends without homes, Jesus showed up in that space.

On the drive back home, my brothers and I actually agreed on something for once: this was easily the highlight of Christmas.

Talking with uncommon friends who experience a lot of grief on Christmas because of familial separation helped us understand how differently people can experience a holiday. We loved singing songs, sharing memories, and comforting each other—whether it was because of loss, unmet hopes, or the overwhelming reality of not being alone. It reminded my brothers and I in a very poignant way that we are a part of a larger family under Christ, and we aren’t alone.

But why had I never been to a Christmas Day service before? And why could none of my friends remember attending one?

After asking around, the most common response, I’ve found, is that “Christmas is a day for family. It’s a family day, and we’re meant to spend it together.” The implied end of that sentence is, “...not at church.” And hey, if you’d asked me two years ago, I would’ve given the same response. But celebrating Christmas with uncommon friends at church completely shifted my understanding of Christmas.

I’m not meaning to shame anyone who doesn’t go to church on Christmas Day. I’ve spent, like, 95% of my life without going to one, and I’m pretty sure Jesus has something to say about casting stones and stuff like that. But what I am interested in is how the cultural ideas of “the meaning of Christmas” have snuck into us, whether we intended it or not, so that we’re valuing Christmas as a day for family, love, rest (good things) or whatever feels good (hedonism, less good). While I certainly interpret Christmas as being a day where I spend time with my family, open presents, go on a walk, and be grateful for what I have, that’s not the whole story. Because while loving your family and being with those close to you are good things, not everyone gets to do that. People suffering from homelessness, loss, addiction, or broken relationships often can’t be with family or friends. If someone is left on their own on Christmas Day, it can certainly feel especially painful to be alone on a day that’s “for family.” If the whole meaning is about being together, what does it mean when you’re alone? What does it mean when there’s no room in the inn and you’re left out in the barn? On Christmas Day, it might mean you’re closer to where Jesus is.

Thankfully, Christmas isn’t just about being a “family day.” It’s the day where Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus—the living embodiment of God’s love for us. So it certainly is a day about love, and gathering in a worship service on this day does double duty:

it’s one of the most important Christian holidays that celebrates the miracle of God’s love and power, and it’s also a gathering where everyone—an entire congregation of diverse people—eat, worship, and love together, regardless of family situation.

Now that I’ve experienced this change and reimagined my Christmas Day, I’m sad that many Christians I’ve talked to haven’t considered going to church on a major Christian holiday. And I don’t say that from some unassailable position—I say it as someone who’s attending her second-ever Christmas Day service, wondering how I’ve spent so many years not questioning why I’m spending a huge holiday of my religion apart from the people of my church.

It seems so obvious in hindsight: Christmas is about Jesus. Christmas is about the miracle of His birth. It’s about love and family, too, but it’s really about God’s display of power and love in the helplessness of a little baby.

Should Christians go to church on Christmas? Ask that question out loud—it should feel a little uncomfortable to try and explain how Christmas is only a day for family, and no one else. While there certainly might be travel or other barriers involved, I think that resisting the idea that we don’t go to church on Christmas Day is an important step to take in the direction toward realizing what Christmas is really about. Because once we start becoming friends with people who are different from us, the vague cultural ideas of love and togetherness on Christmas come falling apart, and gathering together in church becomes a lot more important, and a lot more real.

So what does it take to reimagine what you do on Christmas Day? For me, it was uncommon friendship with people without family or a home who turned me to church and fellowship.

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