How Christian Schools Can Save the True Meaning of Christmas

It’s a regular Wednesday afternoon in mid-December, and I walk to the teacher’s lounge to pick up copies of books. Upon entering the teacher’s lounge, lo and behold, I am greeted by a table decorated with a red tablecloth and a small Christmas tree and several overflowing plates of homemade bread, butter, and cookies.

This is the lot of a Christian school teacher come Christmas: many sweet gifts of appreciation piled atop one another. Perhaps teachers at secular schools are similarly showered with tasty blessings at the holidays, perhaps not. Certainly, however, public school teachers are not showered with manifold opportunities to enjoy the sweetness of Christmas’ meaning.

On the other hand, the Christian school invites such opportunities. Whereas a secular school setting precludes all substantive celebration of the Christmas holiday (along with any other Christian holiday or feast day), the Christian school allows Advent and Christmas into the classroom.

The secular school by necessity reduces Christmas to the brightly-colored, consumer-centered trappings given by our culture to the ancient holiday. For a secular school has no framework with which to comprehend and celebrate the Advent – Latin for “coming” – of Christ. Even though secular schools may give leeway to students or teachers who celebrate Christmas by abstractly discussing the origins of the holiday and closing school for the week of Christmas, secular schools by their nature cannot, in truth, celebrate Christmas.

In the season of Advent and Christmas, the Christian school, as such, has a rich opportunity to embody the wonder of Christmas in the educational setting, to invite families into the true drama of Christmas, and to stand against the dominant secularism of our world – which is modeled well by the public school system.

At the same time, however, this season presents a great temptation to the Christian school, just as it does to every Christian family and community. We are tempted, in this season, to allow our celebration of Christ’s coming to turn towards ourselves and our desires. We are tempted to allow our celebration of Christmas to grow worldly – that is, to be entered on consumption, which invites not worship and fellowship and joy, but the passing childish happiness of a new toy. We are tempted to allow decorations – blinking with red and green light – to overwhelm our devotion, which must be fixed upon the true Light who came into the world. We are tempted to allow innocent folk stories and songs – Rudolph and Frosty and the rest – to overwhelm our worship of He who alone deserves it.

Of course, these temptations to worldliness do not necessitate an attitude of stinginess toward decoration or Christmas songs. Christmas is certainly not a time for those who follow Christ to be stingy. Yet it is a time for us to practice especial discernment, to take additional care, to be particularly diligent in seeking to put Christ at the center of all things.

Thus, every Christian, and every Christian community (whether a large Christian school or college or a small Christian family) must take care to celebrate Advent and Christmas rightly. What are the particular ways that a Christian school can do this? Or, in other words, what gifts does the framework of a Christian school provide during the season of Advent?

First, the framework of a Christian school provides opportunity for truly worshipful music, as I have alluded to already.

While the secular school reduces Christmas hymns to the playful but vapid songs we all have heard too many times already on the radio, the halls of a Christian school may resound with well-loved, Christ-honoring Christmas hymns. Those at a Christian school may also re-discover hymns and carols forgotten by the modern church.

At the Christian school I attended growing up, we sang hymns each morning to start the day, and in December, each classroom rang with classic Christmas hymns. This ordinary practice of worship – especially valuable and beautiful around the Christmas season – engrains in the minds and hearts of students and teachers alike a habit of singing praise, as well as a familiarity with the time-tested songs of the church. A habit of singing praise is not a common custom. Rather, it is an invaluable habit in a world that so often sings praise only of the self and its successes.

Beyond ordinary times of song, Christian schools have an opportunity to make musical events a central part of school culture. My childhood school’s music classes and choirs and ensembles and orchestra all began to prepare for the Christmas concert in the fall. For our school community, the Christmas concert was one of the highlights of the whole year. Such preparation and anticipation for the school’s Christmas performance unfolds, likewise, at the Christian school at which I now teach. The long season of work and waiting before the final product is ready is a season that trains our hearts in patience and fortitude, and the final product, when it does at last come, is even more joyful for all involved.

In addition to providing room for song, the framework of a Christian school – especially a classical Christian school – provides opportunity for contemplation and rest at Christmas.

We likely do not realize the extent of our need for contemplation and rest. But the Christmas season tempts us not only with the empty pleasures of consumerism but also with the purposeless hurry of our busy culture. In my own childhood, and now as an adult, a constant refrain I heard from peers and friends from every area of life was “it’s just a busy season for us,” or “we just have to get through the holidays.” Somehow a season that ought to be filled with joy and fellowship can often become filled with stress due to parties, planning, finances, family tensions, and so forth.

Christian communities can offer peace and joy as alternatives to the hurry and anxiety of our world. Instead of filling December with assignments – or even over-loading the month with events – a Christian school can cultivate an atmosphere of simple celebration through classroom gift exchanges or Christmas readings. At atmosphere of simple celebration accords well with the ancient understanding of education: as Josef Pieper recognizes in his classic work Leisure, “the Greek word for leisure (scholé) is the origin of Latin scola, English school. The name for the institutions of education and learning mean ‘leisure.’” A good teacher will give scholé its proper place in the school environment.

Finally, Christian schools can, amid a season of consumption, act as beacons of charity.

The onset of winter is often also the onset of difficulty for the needy and lonely. Through service days or food drives, Christian students and teachers can together work towards incarnating Christ’s love as they remember his incarnation. As Travis Copeland recently wrote at the CiRCE Institute, “The practice of charity, specifically almsgiving to the poor and needy during Advent, reaches far back into Church tradition. Christians in Advent, anticipating the lowly entrance of God incarnate, give to honor their neighbor and seek the low and humble place for themselves.” Copeland suggests several simple ideas for acts of charity, such as sharing meals, cookies, or coats. At a time when we Christians honor the greatest gift of all – our salvation through the Christ child – ought we not especially give to others?

By celebrating Advent and Christmas in otherworldly ways, Christian communities – especially schools – can train the hearts of those involved in joyous, virtuous expectation for Christ’s arrival through the means of worshipful music, genuine scholé, and Christ-centered charity.

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