Christmas and Agape Love

Today, I celebrated Christmas with my family, and it made me reflect on the entirety of the past Christmas season. There seemed to be a constant theme present—materialism. I was bombarded by consumerism on all sides. YouTube, television, Prime, each confronted me with products promised to fulfill my needs and the needs of those I love. I was promised inner peace if I was willing to shell out some cash to the capitalist machine. Not that capitalism can easily fall into the categories of good and evil, but it certainly does not bring inner peace or contentment.

Seeing a running theme of materialism made me wonder if people had forgotten the true meaning of Christmas. Listening to the hundreds of explanations vomited up by the media for what Christmas meant, I despaired I was right. Hallmark provided the most iconic and the most vague answers. Christmas is about dreams coming true or it’s about finding true love, or it’s about living life to the fullest, or some other cliched and corny answer. People have forgotten what Christmas means and it makes me sad, for the true meaning of Christmas is deep and rich and satisfying.

Well then, what does Christmas mean? It means Agape which is one of the words in Greek for love. This is no ordinary wishy-washy subjective kind of love. It is the highest and purest love—it is God-love. The nature of God-love is self-sacrifice and is best expressed in the incarnation or God becoming first an infant and then a full-grown human being to save us. He sacrificed his glory for shame, his power for weakness, and his fame for obscurity when he took the form of a baby born to poor Galilean parents mocked by society. Imagine the one who provides for all being provided for by a mother.

Ultimately, he made the greatest sacrifice, his life in exchange for broken, selfish, and lost human beings. On Christmas, we celebrate his self-sacrificial love by reflecting on what he sacrificed by becoming human which points us to his ultimate sacrifice. After, reflection comes imitation. Christmas is when we should sacrifice ourselves and give back to the world. So, next season don’t just give gifts seek out a way to sacrifice for another.

Thankfully, I am in the presence of Agape daily. Every day is Christmas for me. Since I have Duchenne, my parents care for all my physical and financial needs. We live in a world where the disabled can be placed in homes for strangers to take care of, but my parents see doing this as absurd and choose to sacrifice time, dignity (I’m not always the easiest person to care for}, and personal lives to provide for me. Bluntly said, I would be dead without them. They are the hands and feet of God to care for and embrace me. This love I don’t deserve but I am thinking that may be the point of the entire thing.