One of the things I look forward to the most about Christmas is the Christmas Carols. The Christmas season just isn’t complete without renditions of “Silent Night”, “God Rest ye Merry Gentlemen”, and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”.
But not all Christmas songs focus on Jesus’ birth. Although Christmas carols traditionally focussed on the celebration of Jesus’ birth, in more recent times, many of the tunes that have become popularly associated with Christmas appear to ignore the Christ child completely!
I don’t know about you, but with the popular secularization of Christmas in North America, I find it hard enough to keep Christ the center of Christmas without every grocery store piping “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” into my mind!
This got me thinking this year: Are there, perhaps, spiritual lessons we can learn from the not-so-Jesus-oriented Christmas songs that have worked their way into our traditions?
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the answer is an emphatic “yes”! There are many important spiritual lessons that secular Christmas songs can teach us, and if we remember these lessons, the next time we are surrounded by refrains of “Jingle Bells”, perhaps it will help us to keep Christ the center of our Christmas!
Secular Christmas songs will be the theme of this mini-series, Lessons From Christmas Carols, that will be appearing in the upcoming editions of the Nugget. For today, let’s take a look at perhaps the most popular Christmas song ever:
I’m Dreaming of a White ChristmasAAAFrom Christmas Carols” mini-series, please click here.)