Christmas time is upon us! If you know me at all, you know that I absolutely love Christmas and everything that comes with it! As soon as Thanksgiving dinner is over, the Christmas music starts playing and the Christmas movies and specials start rolling. In fact, as of this writing, I am already 34 Christmas specials in and still going strong. I think it’s safe to say that if I weren’t typing this right now, I’d be watching one at this very moment!
Every year, however, as much as I love Christmas, I always seem to meet somebody new who tells me how much they don’t like Christmas. This always baffles me. How can you not like Christmas!? There’s the usual array of reasons that the person gives me, but it all comes down to some form of “Christmas isn’t really about Jesus anymore and all of the traditions that people participate in (even the not particularly greedy ones) only get in the way and distract from Christ.” Well, Bah Humbug to you!
Here’s the response that I like to give, however: The only person that is letting the distractions get in the way of their Christmas is you!
Yes, it’s true that many of the Christmas traditions that we all like to participate in do not originate from the Bible, but that doesn’t mean that we cannot celebrate them in a way that still points to Christ! There’s a great (although very cheesy…so be warned!) movie from Kirk Cameron about this topic called “Saving Christmas.” In the movie, he details how you can use the traditions and celebrations of Christmas to point right back to Christ. Hey! Even Santa Claus tried to do that!
This Christmas, don’t let yourself or anyone else become the person that drags Christmas down because they don’t think it’s Jesus-y enough…Make it Jesus-y! That part isn’t the day’s responsibility…it’s ours!
So as the season starts….deck the halls, pour some egg nog, eat a cookie, tune into Rudolph, rock around the Christmas tree…whatever puts you in the right spirit…just remember that everything you do should point right back to Christ. And it does! You just have to look for it!