What is the point of Christmas?

I am pondering this question today. What does Christmas mean when you don't go to church or have any contact with the "Christian Christmas"? What does Christmas mean in a time of austerity? Is it a time of pressure where people feel they have to buy someone else's love through the pressure of the season? The more you spend, the happier you will be...?

This year, I am not "doing church" at all, for the first time in my life, during Advent and Christmas, although I might have to find a Midnight Communion on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day will be just a normal day for us, really. What is it all about? What is it all about for people with no faith, who seem to get so stressed for just one day and after the day feel really miserable and deflated? Why do we put so much into one day?

For me, I guess Christmas is a reminder of several important things. Perhaps when we easily forget the basics of God's way, we need reminders in our calendar.

1. That God loves me just as I am (so I should beat myself up less when I am not what others expect thinking there is lots wrong with me.) The story is a reminder of exactly where God comes, into ordinary life.

2. If this is so, then we need to remember what Christianity is. It is relational, above all else. Jesus is a sign that there is nowhere God is not, and our responsibility as Christians is to be God's people in difficult places and not hide away in the comfort of cosy ritual and undemanding platitudes. Someone passed me a quote from Eugene Peterson the other day, in which he suggests we need more chaplains today than leaders. Christmas is a reminder of incarnation - that God comes alongside people, in the mess and confusion of life. People need to know they matter, much more than they need expensive presents we cannot really afford.

3. Perhaps this season reminds me that we need to value and respect other people far more than we do. I get frustrated with labels, people disregarded and devalued, a world where somehow some are better than others. The story of Christ's birth as described by the Gospel writers reminds me that God does not come to a church building or where we expect, he comes where people are too important to enter. We can see God's face in whoever we meet, and if we believed that, then life would be different.

I am not sure I have answered my questions. I remain fascinated why people get so stressed about this period of the year, even in churches! I wonder what God makes of it all?