Meaning of Christmas

What I would like you to do to begin is to picture the ideal Christmas...

What would be there?

Would there be friends?

Would there be your family?

Would there be a huge feast?

I can kinda picture a beautiful Czech meal on Christmas evening, and then a silent ride to Church and back on a wooden/metal sleigh drawn by a few horses through the deep snow in the woods... I can almost hear the swishing of the sleigh as it pushes it was through the snow... and the only other sound in the woods is a simple ringing of bells... I can picture sitting down with Daniela and my family and opening gifts on Christmas morning...

If we were going to look at all of the elements that make up a perfect Christmas, perhaps we would include what?

Family

Friends

Good food

Great fellowship

Candle-lighting service

Gifts

All of these elements are wonderful, but what happens when something messes up? What happens when the goose is burnt, the gifts break, some of the family cannot come to visit, others in the family are angry and won't come, some friends are missed... the list can go on and on....

We become frustrated

We become angry

We might even yell or throw something

Or we might just weep...

Maybe we might even find ourselves thinking as I heard one of my students and a coworker voicing recently... "I hate Christmas"...

When I heard some of my students saying this, I asked them why....

They explained of the problems that there were in the family

They talked about the tension

They complained about the difficulties

And, I had a chance to remind them...

Of the most important element of Christmas

Jesus....

Recently, I was participating in a secret santa, where each person picks another name out of the hat, and then buys gifts for that person... Well, Ironically, I figured out on the first day why had my name...

But I am not convinced that he knew how to do this game...

Everyday I checked my mailbox, but there wasn't anything...

Every morning, I thought to myself, man, wouldn't it be great if there was something this morning, but there wasn't...

Finally, the day of the party came...

I had bought a pretty cool gift for the secret santa that I had, and I was looking forward to whatever my secret santa had gotten for me...

Well guess what... he couldn't come... nor did he remember to drop off a gift...

At first I was a little sad... after all, I was really looking forward to that gift... but then God started speaking to me...

He told me that the celebration of Christmas is not about gifts, but about Jesus. He reminded me that it was a blessing to give, not to receive. He helped me to refocus.

I'd had to refocus because my expectations had been on the wrong thing...

What is Christmas...

Is it a celebration of family... No, it is a celebration of God becoming man...