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What kind of Christmas card?

Kenneth L. Gibble

I can never quite decide if the tradition of sending Christmas greetings is mostly a blessing or a headache. If you send even one Christmas card, you have to decide what kind of card to send. Maybe you do as I have sometimes done – buy a box of secular cards to send to your nonreligious friends and a box of religious cards to send to friends who share your faith.

On my visit to the local Hallmark store, I decided to examine the nonreligious cards first, noting that their display took up twice as many shelves as the religious cards. The secular cards had winter scenes, wreaths, evergreen trees. They contained messages like “With best wishes for the holidays and the coming year”, “Greetings of the season” and “May the warmth of the holiday season fill your home with happiness” – all very nice, warm sentiments guaranteed not to offend anyone, be the recipient Gentile or Jew, Hindu or Buddhist.

What about the cards in the religious section? As I expected, the artwork and graphics were all in extremely good taste – cherubs playing musical instruments with the words, “Sometimes, if we listen, we can almost hear the angels”; the wise men bearing their gifts; that little town of Bethlehem; angels singing anthems; and an occasional mother holding a child. The sentiments expressed in words did have at least a slightly more religious flavour than the cards in the nonreligious section. A few of them actually mentioned “God”, as in “God bless you in this joyous season.” Buyers who preferred religious cards could choose from among 50 different offerings. Among those 50, I found one that had the word “Jesus” and two that had the word “Christ”. There was only one Bible verse quoted among the 50 cards, and it was from the Old Testament. To be fair, there were a few cards that used the word “Saviour” and a few that contained the phrase “His birth”. Apparently Hallmark has decided that good taste at Christmastime means downplaying all that Jesus stuff. Hallmark, after all, has been in the business long enough to know what sells.

A few years ago, William Raspberry wrote a column about receiving a Christmas card from a friend that read: “I sincerely wish that you may enjoy the holiday and/or celebration of your religious, ethnic or socio-political choice over the coming weeks whenever it/they may fall and whatever it/they may be named.” Raspberry said at first he thought the card was funny, but when he reflected on it, he wasn’t so sure. Asked Raspberry, “Is it not just possible that anti-religious bias masquerading as religious neutrality is costing more than we have been willing to acknowledge?” That is a very good question – especially for those of us for whom Christmas is not merely a season of generic good cheer, not merely a holiday, but a holy day.

There is nothing generic about the Bible’s account of the first Christmas. Luke tells about a particular event that begins with a particular woman named Mary who is pregnant and not married – at the time, a horrible disgrace. When Mary arrives at the home of Elizabeth, she breaks into song. Mary’s song spells out what God is doing in the world: the powerful brought low, the lowly lifted up, the hungry fed, the rich sent away empty. This is religious faith translated into a vision of social justice – so that later, when Luke gives us the details of the son born to Mary, we understand what this birth means. It means that God has chosen to come to the world, not as a prince born to a royal family living in a grand palace, but as a child born to an unmarried peasant woman who must bear her child in a cattle shed. Salvation arrives in the most unlikely ways and places. That’s what Christmas means – God coming to us in a way we never could have predicted, in a way that confounds every human expectation, in a way that threatens the status quo.

There are those who, with the eyes of faith, can see what God was up to in that Bethlehem stable. To them – to us – it is good news of great joy. It is why the angels sang that night. It is why we celebrate Christmas with the music of gladness.

Why should we stifle our joy by wishing our neighbours “Happy Holidays”? Let us say “Merry Christmas” to those we meet, and say it with genuine smiles on our faces. What if Jesus had worried that people might find His message not quite appropriate, not tasteful enough? Would He have watered down His message? If so, those spiritually needy people in Jesus’ day would have heard a falsely soothing message or a message so inoffensively generic that they would have forgotten it within minutes.

You do not honour someone else’s religious convictions by hiding your own.

What kind of Christmas card to send? You may have to search a bit for one that says what you want to say. Maybe you can find the kind that are blank inside and write your own greeting. Whatever greeting you send, try to get something in there about the birth of Jesus, the One we call Lord, Saviour, Prince of Peace. Throw out all those innocuous cards with cute snowmen, reindeer and silver bells. There are plenty of people to send them, people for whom Christmas is little more than a round of parties and a stack of gifts that will have to be exchanged later. Have your message express the good news of great joy that Jesus’ coming represents.

Kenneth L. Gibble is a freelance writer from Chambersburg, Pa.

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Last modified December 11, 2000.

© 2000 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
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