How do you celebrate Christmas? What are your family’s traditions? (I have tradition that may shock you.)
We open one gift on Christmas Eve, which is always fresh new pj’s.
The kids dive into their stockings while we drink our coffee and wake up, and we wrap everything in those stockings so it takes a LOOOONNNNNGGGGG time.
We read the Christmas story from Luke. I make homemade cinnamon rolls for Christmas breakfast and we put a candle in them and sing happy birthday to Jesus before we open gifts.
And here’s the shocker: I stopped keeping Christ in Christmas.
Scandalous, I know. I’m a pastor’s wife and a Christian after all.
Do you keep Christ in Christmas?
Do you have a manger scene in the front yard? Hum Hark the Herald Angels Sing as you bake cookies?
Do you say Merry CHRISTmas instead of happy holidays or wear a Jesus is the Reason for the Season t-shirt?
Even in doing all this, if we fail to remember WHY the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, we’ve missed the point.
Jesus didn’t come for Christmas morning. He didn’t come for manger scenes and angels singing and shepherds worshipping.
He didn’t come so we could sing happy birthday to Him every December 25th.
Immortality was condemned to die at birth.
Before Luke 2 ever happened, the heavens could not contain His splendor and glory. The Earth was His footstool. He created the human body in all of it’s wonder and intricacies. The trees and sky and seas were spoken into existence by Him.
Yet He chose to confine Himself to a human body. And a newborn baby one at that. He needed to be fed and have his diaper changed. He had to be potty trained.
The One who created everything we see had to learn what a flower was. Had to be taught the color blue.
The Word Himself had to learn to read.
He was God, yet He let it all go willingly, humiliatingly, for us.
Don’t forget the WHY.
It wasn’t just for warm fuzzies in December.
He came to reveal the heart of a loving Father. To unveil God’s desire to heal us, spirit, soul, and body. To give hope to the hopeless and comfort to the grieving and life to the lost.
Love came down to restore eternity with the Father and heaven on earth now.
The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. (I John 3:8 niv)
He humiliated Himself to release us from the death-grip of sin.
The best way to keep Christ in CHRISTmas is to NOT keep Him there. Don’t leave Him in the manger; He only slept there one night.
Don’t keep Christ in Christmas. We need to make Him the reason for the other 364 days of the year too.
The perfect way to celebrate Christmas is to live the life Jesus paid for with His blood all year long.
A life spent in intimate relationship with the Father.
A life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome sin and all of its guilt and shame and bondage.
A life so full of the presence of God that everyone we meet has a holy encounter with Living Love.
Let’s not get lost in the warm fuzzies and cliches. Let’s remember the WHY and share what the world needs most in every divine appointment He brings our way today.