Making the Most of Christmas Day

Christmas Morning Has Dawned

(And it's beautiful!)

I woke up this morning to a quiet house with wrapped gifts under the tree, ornaments hung on the branches, stockings waiting, and the realization that He has come. Not Santa. Jesus.

From such humble beginnings as a stable manger lined with yellow straw, Christmas has shapeshifted into the fake pine tree and picturesque ceramic nativity currently adorning my house. I sit not in a rough-hewn wood and stone shelter, but in a warm house boasting the latest electric gadgets and decorated in red and gold ribbon echoing the opulent colors of the ancient Tabernacle. I am rich because Jesus, God the Son, made himself poor.

The Heart of the Giver

A couple friends of mine and I were talking this week, and they were expressing what so many people around me have said this season: the older they get, the more tired they become of all the busyness and money-spending that comes with this holiday. It seems many of us have been caught in the trap that says Christmas is the season of getting, not giving. It isn't true.

Christmas always was the season of giving and still is—so long as we remember the point of the first Christmas:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever should believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16 KJV)

God is a giver by heart and purpose because He is love and because He is creative. The creative act itself requires giving of one's time, one's energy, and one's imagination in order to craft something new.

Scientific research tells us that the universe began with a Big Bang, but before that explosion nothing existed at all. The laws of nature tell us that something cannot come out of nothing. So since nothing natural existed before the Big Bang, we can only logically assume that something supernatural must have existed before the natural occurred—and so out of that supernatural essence (God), something natural (our universe) was born.

The Greatest Gift

On Christmas morning, something natural was born out of the supernatural essence of God the Father: a virgin-born God the Son. Think about that for a moment—God chose to enter our world not in power and glory, but as a vulnerable baby.

This son grew up before his heavenly father like a tender shoot, a reed out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, and nothing in Jesus's appearance was such that we would desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering. Like one from whom people hide their faces, He was despised.

Does this not speak so clearly of how so many Jewish elders treated the humble Rabbi from Nazareth who could make lame men walk, blind men see, and dead men live again?

Even so, Jesus lived as the example of perfection, then took our pain and bore our suffering. Yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by Him and afflicted.

But as Jesus explained to his disciples who asked, "Who sinned? This man or his parents that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither sinned, but he was born blind so that God's glory could be shown this day." And then Jesus spit on the ground, made clay, rubbed it into the man's eyes, and the man could see. (See John 9 for the full story)

Why the Sacrifice Was Necessary

Jesus was born so that he could be crushed for our iniquities and take the punishment for our sins because God understood the great truth that all of our striving to keep the moral law endemic to humankind is impossible. A sacrifice of blood was required as an atonement for our mistakes and misdeeds.

This sacrifice system occurred for years under the Law of Moses with animals being sacrificed instead of humans, but it was a temporary system—one that required constant repentance and constant sacrifice without lasting results.

And so Jesus was born so that he could be led like a lamb to the slaughter. He was taken away. He was cut off from the land and from the living. For the transgressions of God's people, He was punished. He was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer. And though the Lord made his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.

After he suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied. And by his knowledge, this righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. And so he will be granted by God again a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong because he poured out his life unto death and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. (Isaiah 53, paraphrased)

This is 400 years of prophetic silence bleeding into Christmas. This is Passover leading to Easter. This is God's redemption.

Fighting the Commercialism

Christmas is a season of giving because God gave first. Christmas is a season of renewal because God was birthed. For those concerned that Christmas has become a holiday of commercialized greed, the easiest way to fight this trend is to remember the first Christmas—to remember the supernatural birth and to be humbled by the gift of love given on that night when God became Emmanuel, God with us.

Your Challenge Today

So all of our advent challenges boil down to celebrating this day as the beautiful gift that it is.

As you open the gifts given to you and you watch others open the gifts that you gave them, remember the first gift—the gift of existence—and then remember the second gift—the gift of redemption—that God has given to each of us.

How to Make the Holiday Truly Holy

• Remember what you wrote down on your Gratefulness List when I wrote about Hope? Share it with someone you love today.
• Remember that Joy Ritual I asked you to create? Do it today.
• How about that REST Ritual? Take that quiet moment and fill it with forgiveness toward another.
• Finally, receive God's love for you today. If there is anything keeping you from Him, ask forgiveness for it and know that He loves you enough to forgive you.

May the hope, the peace, the joy, and the love of this holy day and this holy season be with you all the year long.

Blessings,

Alycia Christine