Tradition

It's Christmas Eve. It's funny how different Christmas feels compared to when I was a kid. Christmas used to be the highlight of my entire year, and I would could down the days till Christmas beginning in November. And then, the day after, I would think, "Dang, now I have to wait an entire year for Christmas! I can't do it!" Nowadays, the holiday just sort of sneaks up on me until one morning I wake up at the break of noon and realize it's here. This year, I don't even have a blizzard or power outage to signal that it is indeed Christmas. If it weren't for everyone putting Christmasy statuses on their facebook profiles, I would probably miss the whole thing.

What do you first think of when you hear the word "tradition"? Many people associate traditions with Christmas. (Or, they might associate it with that song from Fiddler on the Roof, which is not a very good Christmas movie at all.) In fact, Christmas seems incomplete for some families without their traditions. They eat certain foods, watch certain movies, wear the same sweaters, etc. I was thinking tonight about whether or not my family has many traditions, and I came to the conclusion that we really don't. We eat dinner. I think that's about it. And every year I try to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas, but I think that's just me. Not everyone in my family appreciates it as much. If you want to hear about some Christmas traditions, you can read this.

Tradition is not only important for celebrating Christmas, but it is also important in the Christian life. The concept of tradition shows up quite a bit in the Bible. In some instances, tradition is viewed as a negative thing. Jesus condemns the religious leaders for holding to manmade traditions at the cost of obeying God (Mk. 7). In these passages, tradition is set up against God's word, and the reader is warned against placing "the way we do things" on the same level as divine command. In other instances, however, tradition is valued as the teachings that were handed down in the church. That's what tradition means--something that is handed down. In this sense, Paul tells his readers to "stand firm and hold to the teachings (tradition) we passed on to you" (2 Thess. 2:15).

That's what our faith is. It's a tradition. It's something that has been handed down for centuries. It's not something that sprang out of someone's imagination. It's root is in the historical events surrounding Jesus, and eyewitnesses passed it on to others, who in turn passed it on, all the way down to us today. The church today finds its origins in this tradition. And that is a comforting thing, I think. Traditions unite a family. They are markers of identity. That is why families value their holiday traditions so highly--those traditions remind the family of who they are. In the same way, the Christian tradition brings unity to the church. The gospel is the story that binds us. Along with this, we have other traditions and church practices that unite us. We celebrate Jesus' birth through Christmas. We take the Lord's Supper to remember Jesus' sacrifice. We baptize to join in Jesus' death and resurrection. All over the world, Christians engage in this tradition of the Christian life. It brings us together, so that I can know that I am following Christ, not by myself, but alongside Catholics in Ecuador, non-instrumentalists in Nashville, house churches in China, and Pentecostals in Africa. We are the church, formed and directed by the tradition handed down to us.

I hope you all have the merriest Christmas imaginable and that Santa gives you anything you could want. I also hope you catch someone under the mistletoe. Now there's a tradition that needs to be taken full advantage of.