Four years ago, when my daughter was a freshman in college, she helped set one of her instructors straight about Christmas. The teacher, a skilled writer who also knew how to improve the writing of her students, had asserted that Christmas was the most important day of the Christian year. My daughter and some of her classmates tactfully informed the instructor otherwise: they remembered that the Church regards Easter as the more important of the two feasts.

The students, of course, were right. In Christian tradition, Easter, as the feast of the Resurrection, has always loomed largest in the Church year and the most basic of the church’s teachings about Jesus. Without the rising of Jesus from the tomb, Christianity loses its meaning.

However, a case can be made for the instructor’s point of view. That is because the Church has trumped itself. It has collaborated in allowing Christmas to become much more popular than Easter. At least in Western nations, December 25 is a time of exuberant celebration far outdoing the paschal observance in the spring of each year. Only a relatively few people get excited about the approach of Easter, whereas Christmas produces a frenzy of preparation among large populations.

Christmas displays the genius of Christianity as a faith tradition. Ultimately the brilliance of the Bethlehem event comes from everyone loving an infant. Hardly anyone of us can resist the charm and promise of a newborn baby. You do not need a complex theology to feel attraction to the scene of the Nativity: all you need do is look at a Christmas crib with its cast of characters: the infant, his parents, the shepherds, the angels, and, ultimately, the three kings.

But the child Jesus retains the central position. His arrival is the reason for all of these characters, and all who share the Christian faith with them. In that faith, he is not merely a helpless child but also a divine person who has become a human being. And, most important to faith, in doing so Jesus has enabled human beings to take on some of God’s own life.

In making these statements about Christmas, I am aware, of course, of two important facts that must qualify what has been said. First, other faith traditions have compelling events and colorful experiences that stir millions of people who are not Christian. Stories about Moses, Mohammed, the Buddha, and others excite them to admiration and provide inspiration. One of the important religious developments of our time is the growing interest many Christians have taken in spiritual traditions not their own.

And, secondly, the commercialization of Christmas remains deeply troubling to many Christians. That American culture invests so much economic hope in this festival strikes many of us as a perversion of a spiritual event. Ironically, Christmas provokes such a mad rush of shopping that its very purpose, to bring peace of soul and universal love, is too often frustrated.

To appreciate the spiritual value of Christmas requires some break with feverish rounds of activity. If we cannot find time for at least some moments of contemplation, it is doubtful that the meaning of this season will penetrate to our hearts.

That message of “peace on earth, goodwill to women and men” certainly comes to a world in need of it this year. What a contrast that message makes with the hatred contained in Osama Bin Laden’s videotape revealed to the world last week! In that scene he spewed forth feelings of delight in evil that shocked even people hardened to the abundant atrocities of our time.

One can perhaps hope that this Christmas will be different. The signs are all around us that values are changing. A Wall Street stockbroker named Jamie is going to retire at age 45 because he wants to do other things with his life. At a party last week he told of looking out the window of his office and seeing the towers come down. Now he wants work that will give him access to values that are not merely economic.

Thomas, a young German computer specialist who lived next door to me, decided this fall to move back home. The events of September gave him a new appreciation of home, family, and friends.

These and other signs of change have spiritual meaning that can find support in what Christmas celebrates. They come together to support our continuing hope for better times to come.

Richard Griffin