Closed for Christmas

Wal-Mart?

CVS?

Publix?

Nah...it's your local megachurch.

Central Kentucky's largest church will break with tradition and close its doors on Christmas Sunday so that staff and volunteers can spend more time with their families.

Southland Christian Church near Lexington, where more than 7,000 people worship each week, is one of several evangelical megachurches across the country that are opting to cancel services on one of the holiest days on the Christian calendar.

Supporters say the change is family-friendly. Opponents call it a regrettable bow to secular culture.

The list of closed congregations on Christmas Sunday reads like a who's who of evangelical Protestantism: Willow Creek Community Church, the Chicago area's largest congregation; Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Mich.; North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Ga.; and Fellowship Church near Dallas.

The churches, which rank among the largest congregations in America, will hold multiple Christmas Eve services instead.

Megachurch officials around the country consulted with each other before deciding to take the day off.

The decision makes sense in today's hectic world, said Willow Creek spokeswoman Cally Parkinson. "It's more than being family-friendly. It's being lifestyle-friendly for people who are just very, very busy," she said.

Many evangelical churches don't hold Christmas day services, except when the holiday falls on a Sunday.

For some evangelicals, it's the day of the week -- not the day of the year -- that's sacred. To them, closing the doors of the church on the Lord's Day is unthinkable.

Others, troubled by the holiday's increasingly secular tone, lament the change.

While admiring the emphasis on family, Fuller Theological Seminary professor Robert K. Johnston worries that another Christian tradition is fading. Fuller, in Pasadena, Calif., is one of the nation's premier evangelical schools.

"What's going on here is a redefinition of Christmas as a time of family celebration rather than as a time of the community faithful celebrating the birth of the savior," said Johnston, a professor of theology and culture. "There is a risk that we will lose one more of our Christian rituals, one that's at the heart of our faith."

Context, please:

Half of my family is Protestant- rather low-church southern Methodist. When I was growing up, it never crossed any of their minds to go to church on Christmas unless, as the piece notes, it fell on a Sunday. (The fact that it does fall on a Sunday this year makes this closing kind of odd, though) In fact, I don't think their churches had Christmas services (early 60's - 70's). Growing up, for the most part, in the South, it was clear even to me that it really wasn't until the 80's or so that low-church Protestants (which would include evangelicals) started having Christmas services, and most of those were pageants and musicals.  More than a few Catholic Churches in the south were often packed at Christmas, especially Midnight Mass, not just because of twice-a-year Catholics, but because of Protestants looking for somewhere to go to church, something their spiritual instincts told them they should do.

Most fascinating, this push and pull that some American evangelicals are experiencing between their own spiritual sensibilities, American culture, and the deep river of Christian tradition.

And of course, in the comments, Zhou reminds us of the Puritan-rooted association of liturgical markings of Christmas with pagan-saturated Catholicism. But that would also apply to Christmas trees and such, which I presume are not being neglected by these folks. But still, there is that suspicion.