Why Christmas Eve?

Why Christmas Eve? Unless I have been sadly out of touch, we think of Jesus as being born on Christmas Day. Yes, I know, the date is probably not exactly correct. But, why mess with extended tradition. So, I ask again, why Christmas Eve?

Do you have a celebration of your birthday the night before you were actually born? Most of us do not. Birthday parties, if possible, are celebrated on the day of the person’s birth. However, most Protestant churches, even most churches I know of, have no Christmas Day celebration unless Christmas does indeed fall on a Sunday. Yet, many of the churches I am aware of, maybe even a majority, have some sort of Christmas Eve service.


Is it that we simply don’t want to get out on Christmas Day? Do we keep Christmas Day to ourselves for feasting and gift opening? It is true that many Christmas Day services are among the lowest attended services of the year. So, what is the point of the Christmas Eve service, I mean other than a “that’s-the-way-we’ve-always-done-it-service?”


I think I have some insight, if not the real reason, at least a possible explanation that might make us feel a little better now that I’ve accused us all of bailing on Jesus’ birthday party. We live in a post Christmas Day age. We know that Christ has been born. The shepherds had no clue Christ was coming that night until they were told. The innkeeper didn’t know who it was that had been born in the stable that day. The majority of the town probably didn’t know and didn’t care. Oh, they may have felt sorry for the poor girl who had to have her baby there among the animals, the manure, and the dirt, but that was the end of it.
We, however, live after the birth. We observe advent. We go through those four mournful Sundays when we sing those sad and longing hymns, the ones that make us want to jump ahead to the upbeat Christmas hymns full of joy and angels and shepherds and peace on earth, good will towards men. Maybe our Christmas Eve service is, in a way, like a New Year’s Eve service, but on a MUCH grander scale and with much more eternal significance.


It is Christmas Eve that marks the dividing line. It is Christmas Eve that ushers out the old and escorts in the new. It is Christmas Eve that is the last day in darkness before the bright hope of Jesus Christ, Immanuel (God with us), enters the world. Christmas Eve is the day we remember all those Old Testament heroes and their time of longing. It is a time when we give thanks for being born on this side of the first Christmas. It is the recognition that we have, in plain view, what they longed to see.

Tonight we remember the darkness of ages past. We celebrate the coming of the new day, like the watchman standing on the wall gazing towards the east and seeing the first rays of the sunrise break the horizon and signal the new day that has dawned for us all!
Pastor Craig