“Keep Christ in Christmas” is a phrase many Christians repeat this time of year. It often comes from a real concern that Christmas is being emptied of its meaning. Yet the phrase itself raises an important question. Are we talking about preserving a name and a set of symbols, or about embodying the life of the One whose birth we celebrate?
At its best, this refrain is a response to genuine secularization. Christmas is increasingly detached from its Christian roots. “Happy Holidays” replaces “Merry Christmas.” Nativity scenes disappear from public spaces. For many believers, this feels like the loss of something sacred.
But too often, the phrase drifts into something else.
Rather than calling Christians to faithfulness, it becomes fuel for cultural warfare. Anxiety replaces confidence. Offense replaces witness. Energy is spent correcting cashiers, policing language, and lamenting commercialization, all while rushing from store to store to find just the right gift, hoping others will notice our piety.
To be fair, the other side of this debate can be just as strained. Christmas trees are rebranded as “holiday trees,” without any clarity about which holiday they represent. Decorations for other holidays, like Halloween pumpkins, are not renamed. This impulse does not flatten every holiday into a generic category. It focuses its efforts on Christmas.
Some of this cultural drama has eased in recent years. Still, the phrase “Keep Christ in Christmas” persists. And that brings us back to the question at the heart of the matter.
What does it actually mean?
Does it mean that stores should use certain phrases? That government buildings should display a creche? Or might this slogan be pointing toward something deeper than those who first repeated it ever intended?
Christmas is, at its core, the celebration of the incarnation. Christ entered a dark and broken world not in power, but in humility. He did not arrive demanding to be served. He came to serve. As Jesus Himself said, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).
If this is what we celebrate, then keeping Christ in Christmas may have less to do with defending symbols and far more to do with reflecting His life.
It may mean that just as Christ entered into darkness, Christians are called to go into the dark places of this world bearing His light. It may mean that those who claim His name should serve others in His name, especially those who are forgotten, marginalized, or ignored.
It may also mean that Christmas invites us to pause and take stock of our own lives.
Have we kept Christ in Christmas in an incarnational way, or only in a symbolic one? Do our lives throughout the year reflect the grace, humility, and self-giving love we celebrate in December? Are we a people who serve, or merely a people who object?
Jesus summarized faithfulness this way:
“The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Mark 12:29–31
Seen in this light, “Keep Christ in Christmas” is not a battle cry against an increasingly secular culture. It is a call to discipleship. It is an invitation to live as Christ lived, to do as Christ commanded, and to love our neighbors, both locally and globally.
That reframes how we approach the season.
Rather than making a cashier uncomfortable by insisting on “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays,” perhaps the more Christlike response is gratitude. Retail workers carry immense pressure during this time of year. A word of kindness may bear more faithful witness than a correction.
Rather than spending energy protesting the removal of a creche that has stood “forever,” perhaps our time is better spent serving those who have no shelter at all. Feeding the hungry and clothing the cold may honor the incarnation more fully than winning an argument.
Ironically, living as Christ calls us to live may keep Christ in Christmas far more effectively than symbolic skirmishes ever could. If Christians are losing a culture war, it will not be won through the tactics of the world.
But it just might be won by walking in the way of Christ.
Joshua Strickler 
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