“Is there anyone who can tell me what Christmas is all about?” So exclaims Charlie Brown in Charles Schulz’s beloved holiday special. A Charlie Brown Christmas, originally released in 1965, has become classic we return to year after year because the question at the heart of the movie still resonates with us today. What is Christmas all about?
As Charlie Brown intuits, consumption is too small a reason for the season. We recognize this as well. Concerns about the commercialization of Christmas are now so frequent they’re become almost cliche. Many families have already taken a stand against commercialization, limiting the numbers of gifts that go under the tree and re-directing more of their money and attention to charity and community service.
More prescient in A Charlie Brown Christmas is the subtle critique of another claim on Christmas. Early in the special, Charlie Brown seeks assistance from his “frenemy” Lucy. He’s depressed, and Lucy offers “psychiatric help” for the bargain price of five cents.
After hilariously rolling through a list of possible phobias which might be causing Charlie Brown’s distress, she eventually diagnoses him with a lack of involvement. The reason Charlie Brown feels as if there’s no real meaning to Christmas is that he hasn’t fashioned one for himself yet.
Though commercial therapy was relatively new when A Charlie Brown Christmas was released, it rightfully foreshadows our own therapeutic age—not being in therapy is just as stigmatized today as seeking psychological care was in the sixties!
For Lucy, and the modern men and women she represents, the meaning of Christmas is whatever we make it. On her invitation, Charlie Brown throws himself into directing the school Christmas play. He soon realizes, however, that the children aren’t concerned with getting the biblical narrative right. Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, and the angels are simply the raw material for telling their own story—one that apparently includes Beethoven, penguins, and a Christmas queen.
That same meaning-making approach to Christmas persists today. Consider Marks & Spencer’s recent “Love Thismas” commercial. In the advertisement, prominent celebrities are shown preparing their homes for Christmas celebrations. Many of the traditional elements are present—ornaments on trees, the construction of gingerbread houses, and family gatherings. Except, there are other things that the spokespeople are obviously tired of doing. The commercial ends with the celebrities gleefully destroying Christmas cards and elves on shelves, often at another’s expense. Do you hate playing silly board games with your nephew? Then just chuck it into a fish tank!
The message is clear: This Christmas, make the holiday meaningful for you. Do the things you want to do. The reason for the season is you.
Ironically, Lucy’s meaning-making advice is more indulgent than commercialization. The reality is that we can’t fashion a private meaning to Christmas that ends in anything but complete narcissism. The meaning of Christmas, if it should be meaningful at all, must be something we receive.
The Marks & Spencer’s commercial upends the point of Christmas. Far from being about self-indulgence, Christmas celebrates the greatest act of selflessness in cosmic history (Philippians 2:5-11). The holy Son of God took on human flesh and came to dwell among us. Jesus was born to die so that he might save his people from their sins. This is the meaning of Christmas which Linus so humbly and beautifully articulates at the end of the film.
The meaning of Christmas is objective—something we either receive or reject. Regardless, the incarnation is reality and bears upon our lives. As Daniel Doriani has said so well, “God entered human history, declaring that he is the God with whom we have to do. Immanuel is more than a title: it is a declaration that God has entered our realm and that we must reckon with him.”1
That is the meaning of Christmas. Jesus has entered the record of human history so that he might transform our little Charlie-Brown-tree-like hearts into magnificent Tannenbaums to our salvation and for his glory. This is what Christmas is all about.
Image credit: Flickr
Daniel M. Doriani, Philip Graham Ryken, and Richard D. Phillips, The Incarnation in the Gospels (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2022), 34.
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