Church on Christmas

I was surprised to hear that some churches will not be holding worship services on Sunday, December 25th...because it's Christmas. Huh?

Here are actual reasons given by the pastors of those churches:

• too few people will come and it will hurt our worship attendance figures.
• we won’t even take in enough to cover the cost of the heat and lights for the day.
• we don’t want to compete with “family time.”
• we’ll have our big attendance and offerings on Saturday night.
• people will get their fill of worship on Christmas Eve — we don’t need to overdo it.
• I’m not going to put a lot of effort into an extra sermon that almost no one will hear.
• it makes people angry if we hold church at inconvenient times.
• I view Christmas on a Sunday as a paid day off.  Everybody else gets it as a holiday – why shouldn’t I once a decade?

What has Christmas become? Have our values been so warped by modern culture that Christmas no longer has anything to do with the birth of Christ? Is Christmas about us and the gifts given and received or is it something bigger than that? What better place for a Christian to be than in church on Christmas morning?

I am oh, so happy to say that our church is having our usual 11am worship service on Christmas morning. Not only that, but there will be (2) Christmas Eve services (at 5pm and 11pm). I'm happy to say that my children, grandchild and possible future daughter-in-law will be in the pew with my husband and me (my children live about 8 hours away). I am happy that we can rightfully sing "Joy to the World" because we will be celebrating that the birth has actually occurred! And I will lift up those who do not have this opportunity in their own congregation and give thanks that our Pastor sees to it that we do!  In my mind, there really is no question as to whether we should worship on December 25th. After all, Christ is the greatest gift we can receive.