It’s Called CHRISTmas for a Reason

Two sayings you have no doubt heard over the years during Advent are, “Jesus is the reason for the season” and “You can’t spell ‘C-h-r-i-s-t-m-a-s’ without Christ.” Unfortunately, this true message of Christmas – that a miracle took place 2,000 years ago when our Savior was born – are getting more and more difficult for kids to hear this time of year because the culture has removed religious significance from the event. Unless their parents make an extra effort to get across this fundamental point and/or unless the youngsters attend Mass weekly, kids will only be “preached to” by legacy media and secular society, thus learning more in December about Santa and Rudolph than about Jesus and the Nativity.

The Media Research Center has shown in studying the network news stories (of ABC, CBS, and NBC) that in all of their Christmas-related coverage, only 1% of their stories mentioned God or Jesus. In one recent year, the major three TV networks ran 527 stories about Christmas in their nightly news broadcasts yet only seven had any connection with Christianity. Instead, the Christmas stories they produced on were about the impact this this holiday was going to have secularly, such as regarding store sales, vacation traveling, and the weather.

Knowing that their sons and daughters will not be picking up Christ-based knowledge of the Christmas and Advent seasons from the culture, Catholic parents need to be counter-cultural by working attentively at keeping their family’s focus on the historical arrival of Jesus and the future anticipation of Him coming again.   While it is fine and natural for kids to have visions of toys, trees, and nutcrackers dancing in their heads this time of year, parents would do well to make sure there are moments spent on contemplating and celebrating the real reason for the holiday/holyday, the miracle of Jesus’s birth. Some suggested actions parents can take include:

• You and your young ones kneeling in front of your church’s Nativity scene before or after each Mass these weeks of Advent and the succeeding Sundays of Christmas-time, praying in thanksgiving for God becoming a man in the form of Jesus via the Incarnation.
• Listening as a family to famous Christmas hymns and pointing out the significant lines. For example, the expressive lyrics to “We Three Kings” have these meaningful words that most kids might have never understood and most adults might have never meditated on: “Born a babe on Bethlehem’s plain; Gold we bring to crown Him again; King forever, ceasing never, Over us all to reign.”
• Gathering your children around your computer and showing them this famous portion of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” that explains what Christmas is all about.
• Making it a point to naturally and enthusiastically say, “Merry Christmas!” in return to all the store clerks and people you meet in the coming weeks who are so intent on being politically-correct that they will only greet you with a “Happy Holidays!” Let your counter-cultural actions help spread the Good News to them while witnessing for your children how proud you are to be a Christ-follower.

Finally, moms and dads act counter-culturally when they make weekly Mass attendance a priority for their family, and don’t settle for only going to church on Christmas, Easter, and a few other Sundays of the year when it’s “convenient.” Whereas I’m confident everyone reading this will be attending Mass on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, how many will attend the Sunday after Christmas, the Holy Day of the Solemnity of Mary (New Year’s Day), and the Sunday after that? The more difficult action for busy families in today’s hectic world is to go to Mass on a weekly basis, as Catholics are called on to do, and to not give priority to sports events, family projects, and sleeping-in.

The majority of self-identified Catholics do not attend Mass on a weekly basis, with many mothers and fathers saying they’re just too tired to battle with their children in making them attend. As tedious and difficult as it is to say “no” to your daughter when she asks if she can wear the latest fashion of a low-cut shirt or to say “no” to your son who wants to buy that popular video game that is rated “M” (Mature), good parents will still stick to their guns and not give in out of exhaustion or lethargy. This same level of earnestness must be given to keeping your kids going to Mass as a family every weekend – not just on Christmas and every-now-and-then thereafter.

Just like Saint Paul said to the early disciples about the difficulties of being a Christian, no one said parenting was going to be easy either. Stick to doing what you know is right, even if it means being counter-cultural and against what society in general and the media are telling you is standard. For this Advent and Christmas season, this entails keeping CHRIST in CHRISTmas. And then for the entire upcoming 2025 year, this should entail making Sunday Mass attendance the most important thing your family does together each week.