Why do we celebrate Christmas?
Did you know that Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Christ by the church, didn’t start until the fourth century?
There’s a sense in which we make more of the birth of Christ than did our first century brothers and sisters in Christ. And no one knows for sure when Christ was born. Chances are it wasn’t on December 25. But from about AD 325 until now, Christians have paused to celebrate the birth of the Son of God.
Some 2000 years later people around the world remember the story. Our calendars recognize this as a holiday. Even people who don’t believe in Jesus participate in the giving and receiving of gifts.
WHY is that?
A Deep Need for Christmas
Perhaps it points to a deep need within our culture for Christmas. To the truth that… We need a little Christmas.
Can we be honest for a moment? It’s been a year.
As 2022 began we were still hanging in the balance of what life looks like as we continued to navigate Covid and the Omicron variant. We faced the unpredictability of rising inflation, an unsteady economy, a war in Ukraine, which created even more uncertainty in every area of our lives.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk bought Twitter!
We’ve seen supply chain disruptions, people who are unemployed, other people who are now working from home full time or part time, and of course… we’ll never forget the devastating news from Uvalde in May.
We live in a world that needs a little Christmas perhaps more than ever before. We need the songs, we need the joy, we need the peace, the faith, the love, the hope… but maybe most of all what we need is CHRIST.
We need Jesus, the Light of the World, to come into the darkness of this world, to come into the darkness of our world.
The prophet Isaiah once wrote:
The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
For those living in a land of deep darkness
a light will shine.
Isaiah 9.2 (NIV/NLT)
The Christmas Story, A Gospel Story
Those first Christians living some 2000 years ago believed that LIGHT came in the person of Jesus. They believed something happened in and through Jesus that changed everything forever.
It all started with his incarnation, when Jesus stepped down from Heaven to Earth to become one of us, dwell among us, wrap himself in flesh and humble himself in a manger.
That same Jesus who was born on that starlit night when shepherds came to worship him after angels had announced the arrival of a newborn King singing Glory in the Highest would one day die on a criminal’s cross, be buried in a borrowed tomb, then rise from the grave on Sunday morning and ascend to Heaven where He is now seated at the right hand of our Father interceding for us.
This is the Gospel story. It’s a Christmas story, but more than that, it’s THE STORY that reveals the Good News of the great love of God for you and for me.
Maybe what you need is a little Christmas.
To pause and remember His story, celebrate His arrival, and allow His life to change your life.
What you really need is Hope. Peace. Love. And Grace. What you need is Jesus.
And here’s the good news, the One who came still comes. And one day He will come again.
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