Have the Masses Really Forgotten the Christ in Christmas?

Jesus is back in the news again, this time making the cover of Time magazine. In “Finding God on the Web,” the magazine reported that if you look for Christ on the World Wide Web, you’ll get 146,000 hits. That’s computer talk for the number of references.

Not bad for a guy coming up on his 2,000th birthday, explaining why Time put Jesus on the cover. If not the Man of the Year, Jesus is certainly the Man of the Moment.

Yet, when it comes to this eternal figure, a potentially confusing scenario emerges.

In the same week that Time anointed Jesus, newspapers published results of a national poll that indicated that only one-third of Americans consider Christ’s birth the most important aspect of Christmas. By 44% to 33%, more people cited the opportunity for “family time” as the main reason Christmas is important to them. Even when considering only respondents who said they were Christians (88% of Americans, the pollsters say), the birth of Christ drew only 37%.

The exact phrasing of the question was: “Thinking about Dec. 25, which is Christmas Day, what, if anything at all, makes Christmas an important day to you, personally?”

Besides family time and Christ’s birthday, other responses included: Christmas means nothing, 5%; Don’t know what it means, 5%; Day off from work, 3%; Parties and gift-giving, 3%.

Thus, the confusing scenario: While Christ seems as relevant and interesting to people as ever, as suggested by the Internet popularity, his birth as the seminal moment in Christianity seems to be secondary in importance. Or, at least, in conscious thought.

It got me to wonder anew, as I’m wont to do, whether Christians really mean what they say when they profess their faith. The question tends to go perennially unanswered.

The poll results were less daunting to Charlotte Prather, a lay theologian from whom I solicited off-the-cuff observations about the poll. The director of religious education for St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Irvine, Prather said she didn’t necessarily see a conflict between the two main responses.

“I find the [poll] question a little awkward, because to ask what Christmas means to you personally is not the same as asking what it commemorates,” she said. “You could ask the question different ways and get different answers.

“Theologically speaking, we’re celebrating the event which we call the incarnation, which means God’s entry into human affairs in the form of a real person. That has implications beyond a personal event.”

Citing “family time” doesn’t denigrate Christ’s birth, she said. That night in the manger “changes our understanding of human beings and the way God relates to us. Therefore, the things we do with family on Christmas Day has a great deal to do with the event that, theologically, we named the incarnation.”

As the devil’s advocate, I asked Prather if the poll also couldn’t be interpreted to mean that people simply don’t think first and foremost of the religious implications of Christmas.

“I think,” she said, “that there certainly are a lot of people who observe Christmas in a purely nonreligious format and, perhaps beyond that, in an extraordinarily materialistic and self-indulgent sort of way. But I don’t think that’s what the 44% were talking about.

“My observation is that many people, while not living on a daily way out of an experienced personal relationship with God or a belief in Christ, nevertheless if the chips were down, in times of extraordinary stress or crisis or tragedy, they would very much affirm their faith in God, however uneducated or unpracticed that was. I don’t think there are many true atheists.”

Her understanding of faith, Prather said, is not simply a “set of proposals to which one gives intellectual assent.” Rather, faith is the basis for the way a person lives because of “a belief in God who is personal to them.”

Even factoring in a “real world” component, I asked Prather how she’d like to see modern-day Christians celebrate Christmas.

“I’m bothered by the commercialization of our whole society, the materialism,” she said. “I’m bothered by the premature, extravagant display of Christmas things . . . not because I object to wonderfully sumptuous meals or giving gifts or even shopping for them, but because what happens is that Christmas itself becomes an anticlimax. Everyone is fed up with it when it arrives, and there’s little peace and serenity involved with the preparation.”

She’d rather see a Christmas period of several weeks in which people would give gifts to those close to them and find ways to help the needy. The season would be marked by songs, stories and carols--mixed in with both stories from the Gospels and those handed down by families through the generations. To top off the season, Prather envisions home gatherings that would include opening doors to those who might otherwise be alone, such as the elderly, single friends and neighbors.

Not to presume too much, but I think that’s probably how Jesus would want it too.

Again, not to speak for him, but I have a hunch he’d probably care less about whether people remembered his birthday and more about how they remembered other people.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.