As a parent of 3 young children Christmas Eve is all about ‘getting ready’ for Christmas day. Our children love it and enter into the excitement of going to sleep with an empty stocking and a bare space at the foot of the Christmas tree in the hope that they’ll wake up to a stocking full of treats like chocolates, socks, bubbles, and… a tangerine! (every year they have the same puzzled look when it comes to the tangerine).
They wake up early and come into our room patiently waiting until we’ve given them ‘permission’ to eat their weight in chocolate before breakfast, which we obligingly do!
Then it’s downstairs to discover a pile of wrapped presents at the bottom of the tree and pleading with us to open at least some before breakfast. Again we obligingly consent.
It’s tricky being a Christian parent at Christmas time. It should be one of the main focal points of the year of our faith and why we believe what we believe, but I can’t help but think that we’ve absorbed the surrounding culture into the meaning of Christmas, and that the spirit of Christmas has become more like the spirit of the age, rather than God’s Spirit.
We have our nativity scene on display in the house and always respond positively to the Christmas cards that have a Christmas theme, and not just a winter theme, but if you walked into our house on Christmas Eve you’d struggle to see the difference between our house and the house of someone who approaches Christmas in an entirely secular way.
Is Christmas really that much different for Christians as it is for those who are indifferent to Jesus and why he came into the world?
As I reflect on the original Christmas story there is much about it which would have been quite ordinary and unremarkable. If you lived in Bethlehem at the time and walked past the house you wouldn’t have noticed anything remarkably different about that family scene or any other.
In other words, it would have been very easy to miss the point of Christmas 2,000 years ago even if you’d seen baby Jesus and Mary as you walked past, just as it is easy to miss the point today.
From reading the stories it seems to me that the difference in meaning lies in those who were looking for Jesus. The shepherds ‘searched’ and the magi ‘followed the star of the new king’. They were both looking for Jesus whether they knew precisely whom they were looking for or not. And so Christmas ‘happened’ for them and in both cases the outcome was the real joy of Christmas.
In that first Christmas there were big celebrations and amazing presents, so we’re not missing the mark if we make a big deal out of our Christmas celebrations, but unless we are searching for Jesus at Christmas then we’ll never get the point of it, whatever we do or don’t do with stockings, presents and trees.
This advent may you know that Jesus has come so He might be found.
May you discover the true meaning and purpose of Christmas FOR YOU as you search for Jesus in your own experience of it.
May the true Christmas Spirit be the coming of God’s Spirit into your home and heart.