by Clifford Goldstein

Growing up in America as a secular and very assimilated Jew, I never caught “the Christmas spirit.” I’m sure there is more than one reason. First, living as I did in Miami Beach—which never saw snow—I didn’t exactly exist in an ambience that created the Christmas mood.

More problematic, however, was that Christmas was the one time of year when, though thoroughly American, I felt a sense of being an outsider. I was a Jew in a “Christian” nation. I never got the warm fuzzies during the holiday; on the contrary, Christmas always made me feel uncomfortable. The whole Jesus thing was thrown up in our faces in a big way. We Jews didn’t believe in Jesus, and Christmas was all about Jesus. I was always glad when the season was over. Most Jews, I would imagine, have felt the same way.

Now I am a believer in Jesus—a Jewish believer in Jesus—and though I am a Seventh-day Adventist, I also consider myself a Messianic Jew, a Jew who believes that the Messiah, Yeshua H’Maschaih (Jesus Christ in Hebrew), has come and died for our sins as predicted. I believe He will one day return and set up the eternal Messianic Kingdom that Jews have been waiting for since the founding of the nation after the Exodus.

However, I still don’t get too worked up over Christmas, at least not the holiday itself.  The pagan roots are well known: the Romans were sun-worshipers and they noticed that about December 25, the sun started to stay longer in the sky. This date was known as the “Birth of the Sun” and thus it wasn’t too hard to shift it to the “Birth of the Son,” Jesus. Thus, Christ’s birth—the amazing incarnation of the Son of God—became conflated with Roman sun worship, along with other things like Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Forgetting all that though, it is important not to let the paganism, the commercialism, and the obvious kitsch of Christmas mask the amazing truth behind the coming of the Messiah.

Wondering About the Universe
Many thousands of years ago, the ancients wondered about the size of the universe. They saw the stars above and, using crude instruments, guessed at their distances. Some thought only a few miles, others a few hundred. A few more prescient ones thought about the idea of an infinite universe. Today, benefitting from modern astronomy, we marvel at the distances that we know surround us. They stagger our minds. The few pounds of organic material in our skull, no matter how miraculous and complicated, just can’t grasp it all.

With that in mind, these Bible verses jump out at me, telling me all I need to know about Christmas:   

“For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist” (Colossians 1:16, 17).

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made” (John 1:1, 2).

“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds” (Hebrews 1:1, 2).

All these verses are talking about Jesus; they are talking about Him in a specific role—that of Creator. Jesus is the one who created all that was made. Anything that once did not exist, but now exists—from single atoms to the vast galaxies that careen across the cosmos at fantastic speeds in mind-boggling pinwheels of fire, light, and power—they all were created by Jesus. On that point, the Bible is clear.

Wondering About the Infant
Now, with that in mind, here’s one more text: “And Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ” (Matthew 1:16).

Turn that last phrase into a question: Of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ? Born in human flesh? Of a human mother? Into a human infant’s body? Are we to believe that the power that created the universe—from every atom to every galaxy, from the law of gravity to the Crab Nebula, worlds seen and worlds unseen—shrank down and joined humanity as a helpless infant?

Yes, that is what we are to believe. And that, and that alone, is what Christmas means to me as a Messianic Jew. That’s what it should mean to all people, because Christ’s coming into humanity wasn’t just for the Jews; it wasn’t just for the Christians. His becoming a human, starting out as we all started out, was God’s way of reaching out to humanity—saying to every human being, “I love you, and I can relate to you, because I am one of you.”

Think of the simple principle: Whatever is created was created by something greater than itself. What has ever been created by something less than itself? Nothing! Da Vinci was greater than the Mona Lisa. A bicycle-maker is greater than a bicycle. Thus, whatever created the universe had to be greater than the universe. That’s just common sense. And Scripture tells us that Jesus Christ created the universe.

Here is what this season of the year means to me, as a Jew who believes in Jesus: Jesus, the One greater than all the universe, shrank down, became part of His own creation, and was born into a human body. In that body He lived a sinless life among sinners, and then offered Himself, a sacrifice for our sins.

The First Step to the Cross
We cannot separate Calvary from the manger. Without Calvary, the manger in which the Son of God was born would still have been an amazing gesture—an amazing condescension on the part of the Creator, but it would not have redeemed humanity.

The manger was the first step to the cross. A big step to be sure—one that we especially commemorate at the Christmas season.

Christmas is not about Santa, or presents, or great bargains. It’s about the first step toward the cross, and the redemption of a fallen race. For me, as a Jew who believes in Jesus, Christmas—once I get past the reindeer and the elves—is all about the sacrifice for my sins, and my hope of eternal life in the Messianic Kingdom my ancestors have been anticipating for thousands of years.