What would it be like if there was no Christmas? Not ever.
My wife Sally asked me this the other day and it set me to thinking.
For this to be true there would have to be no Jesus. Christmas is after all a celebratory memorial to the birth and promise of Christ, the Messiah.
If there was no Christmas and no Jesus, there would be no Bible, at least as we know it. Certainly, there would be no New Testament and likely, no Old Testament as we know it. The New Testament assertion is easy to see. But what about the Old Testament? It would be vastly different. There are over 500 prophecies about Jesus in the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi.
Without the work of Jesus and the call to repentance, there would be no second chance, no getting out of the trials, and the pain and suffering that come with life. No one could be born again.
Without Jesus, there would be no clear view of the hope of heaven and eternal life. There would be no justice. The world would see vastly more materialism – if that is possible – and altruism would be a strange outlier.
It is unlikely that suffering could rise to a noble status, or that giving was virtuous. Hope would be a rare find.
People would likely be much more self-centered, hedonistic, and narcissistic. That world would seem base to many as differentiated from our current mindset. Pleasure and all it means, would be the primary end of man.
In short, morality, knowledge and order would be vastly different, and probably intolerable, but we would hardly know why. What are called the permanent things would not exist or be shadowy and off-planet.
Without Jesus we would not have churches. It is hard to imagine the American experiment without the concerted influence of preaching, prayer and thought. There would have been no Reformation, no Luther or Calvin.
One wonders if the creation would be appreciated, photographed, painted, curated, and enjoyed as much.
If the understanding of God was thus limited, we would have to draw much more from nature or what exist.
Without the teachings of Jesus, Judaism would have been a tiny revelatory part of the religious perspective, instead of the world-shaping, civilization-shaping force it has and continues to be. Certainly, there are other religions, and anthropologist tell us that men are everywhere in all times religious. Without the teachings of Jesus things like sacrificial living, humility, perseverance, faith, and such would seem bohemian.
It is likely that our use of knowledge would be vastly different. Science, for instance, would have had a hard time ever beginning. The early pioneers of science were men who believed that because there was a God and he had designed the universe it was knowable, could be studied, and results could be repeated. (The essence of the Scientific Method.)
It is likely that what we understand of the Rights of Men would also be different. Humans would not have the dignity, Imago Dei, that we assume in our basic principles. Without this, things like private property and the revolutions against kings would never have taken place. Without these, countries that enshrine human uniqueness, and independence would not have emerged.
In the arts, where would we expect to find the voices of Tolstoy or Dickens, or music from Bach, Haydn or Handel, or the architecture of cathedrals, or Michaelangelo and the Sistine Chapel, or the minds of Augustin, Schweitzer, or Bonhoeffer, Lewis, Chesterton, and probably Tolkien?
I am sure you have your own thoughts on this. But it is clear to me that when the shepherds heard of the birth of Jesus and the angels sang, it was a great day in the history of the cosmos. It was goodwill for all mankind.
I thank God for Christmas.
Doug Daugherty