When my little grandson’s plea, “I don’t want to go to Christmas Eve communion” failed to get the desired response, he gave it another try.

“Granma, is communion for Christians?”

I said that, yes, it is.

“Well, I can’t go then,” he said. “I’m a Methodist.”

It seems that many of us were “Methodist” this Christmas season.

All across the country and even in the Bible Belt of the Deep South, churches of different denominations cancelled Christmas Day morning worship services so that their members could spend time with their families.

“Christmas is family time,” one Montgomery minister explained on television.

Well, I guess I misunderstood.

I thought that Christmas was about the birth of Jesus, the Savior of the World. I thought that Christmas was a Christian celebration. I thought God’s house was the place that all believers would want to be on the day of the Savior’s birth.

There has been so much said about Christmas becoming so commercialized, about Christmas being turned into a secular holiday. There has been much talk about “the real reason for the season.”

That must have gotten by some churches where it was decided that opening presents and baking the turkey were more important than being in church on Christmas Day.

One minister, whose church flung its doors open wide, said that every Christmas Day should be celebrated in church no matter which day it falls upon. To my way of thinking, he was right. If Jesus is the reason for the season, then we should want to take an hour on his birthday to worship in his Father’s house – in our Father’s house.

Now, I know that this is the 21st century and that times have changed.

But I remember what my adopted grandmother “Miss” Mattie said.

One of her grandchildren was not in her “favor.” She told him he was not living according to God’s word.

He told her that she was just old-fashioned. That we were living in new times.

Her reply was that she hoped he had a new Bible to go along with his new times because according to her Bible, what he was doing was a sin.

Unless, I’ve missed it, we don’t have a new Bible for these new times.

Sure, the “old” Bible has been revised but the premise is still the same. And, the Bible, no matter which version, says that “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

So, according to the God’s word, if only two people had been in a church on Christmas Day 2011, He would have been there to celebrate the arrival of the Newborn King with them.

But there were churches in this Christian nation where the doors were closed on the day of the Christ Child’s birth. Not even two or three had gathered to celebrate “the real reason for the season.”

Jaine Treadwell is features editor of The Messenger. Contact her at jaine.treadwell@troymessenger.com.