Making Christmas a Real Celebration

What was/is your experience of Christmas? This would be very different in the different parts of the world, for instance, as a child living in South Africa I could never understand why the Christmas cards always had pictures of snow. I had never even seen snow!

What I really came to appreciate is the family gatherings we had to celebrate Christmas. In my family of origin my Dad always cooked an awesome leg of mutton and my Mother made lovely deserts and decorated the dinner table. The tradition in Costa’s family was to have a barbeque at a picnic venue with a compulsory cricket competition after lunch. I loved, and love, the Christmas Church Services. The joy, the wonder, the timeless message …                                                    

“for God so loved the world that He gave His son..” (John 3:16)

Sadly, much of the real meaning, the real joy of Christmas has been hi-jacked by the commercial world. The shopkeepers probably say “What a friend we have in Jesus”…. As they count the takings of the days leading up to Christmas. Buying gifts to celebrate the greatest gift of all is good but it has over-shadowed the real meaning.

Perhaps a good question to ask is, “How can we re-capture the real joy of Christmas?”

• One essential factor is to actually, and practically, remember what we are  celebrating! And to teach our children the meaning of Christmas and why we give gifts.

• If you are a Church-goer, attend the Christmas Service as a priority. If you are not a Church-goer, celebrate in your own way, but always remember what the celebration is about. It is about God’s way of showing how much He values His creation through the life and death of His son.

• Also, perhaps we could consider how to extract ourselves from the commercialisation of Christmas. How can we teach our children that it is not just a time to be spoiled with too many gifts?

• We spend too much, we eat too much, we even drink too much….I think we can do better! We can truly remember, and celebrate the gift of the earthly presence of Jesus with the tag       “With love from God”