Now You're Meddling :)
Chris Erdman at Odyssey really gets radical and starts messing with our REAL traditions. He mentions in the post that there is a "core narrative" that we are changing when we do something like cancel worship on the day that has been at the center of the core narrative for almost as long as the church has been in existance. He says that the alternative narrative we are following might be a "free market system" or the "secular calendar."

Then he adds the crashing blow, that perhaps we ought to consider cancelling Christmas Eve services instead of Christmas Day.

Talk about hitting where you live. Christmas Eve is the night that is above and beyond all nights. Even if it starts with services at noon in some churches. Christmas Eve is the night he was born.

No, wait a minute. By the time the shepherds got the message and went running to the stable he was already born and things were obviously "cleaned up." That means that if Christmas is the day of his birth, it could have happened anytime between sundown on the 24th to sundown on the 25th.

Hmmm. This is getting confusing. You mean to tell me that Christmas Eve is just what it says it is- the Eve before the Day? You mean that to celebrate his birth on Christmas Eve may be before it even happened?

Well, (removing tongue from cheek,) it is a lot more about culture and customs than we really care to admit. One place I was reading about Christmas traditions they commented that traditionally in Mexico the gifts aren't part of Christmas. The presents are for the Day of the Kings, Epiphany, January 6. After all, they said, Christmas is all about Jesus.

Christmas as this romantic, family event has more to do with Charles Dickens than with the Gospel of Luke or even Christian tradition for that matter. The "war on Christmas," as the in thing this year to show how we Christians are being persecuted is bunk. (Since when are those in power able to be "persecuted?" The real persecuted Christians around the world will cry at our attempts to equate our situation with theirs.)

The clamor over some churches deciding to not worship on Sunday since they already did it on Saturday and people should be with their families on Christmas is cutlural syncretism. It is, however, what Christians have always done- syncretism with the culture, that is.

That's how we got Christmas in December, fir trees, even candles to push back the encroaching darkness, not to mention Easter eggs and bunnies!