Lately, my Christmases have been odd. Not “Christmas Carol”-being-visited-by-ghosts-“odd,” but oddly twisted in such a way that it’s just not like when I was a kid. Last Christmas I was driving home after visiting my parents, when a little less than half way home my transmission went out. So last December 25th I spent Christmas night sleeping in the cab of my truck at a gas station in Globe, Arizona. Then, this year I flew out to my girlfriend’s graduation (of her Masters Degree) and then flew back on the 23rd. Well, when I got my bag from baggage claim it had been opened. When I looked in it I found out that TSA went through it, and not only that…but a bag that contained a Christmas gift was MISSING! The 24th I had to do the Christmas Eve service at my church, and that night I had a Christmas dinner (at Denny’s…God bless Denny’s) with my parents who came to town for the service. My Christmas day was sleeping in, reading a book, reading the Bible, watching the Disney Parade on TV, catching a movie, talking to my girlfriend, and preparing for Church the next day. All in all, my past two Christmases have been anything BUT traditional.
The question: “What is Christmas?” is a question that I always get introspective with every year. Today, I heard someone on TV say, “It’s a time of being with family, which is what Christmas is all about.” Now, with all the wide-world of statements of what Christmas is about (or isn’t about) I tend to take a solid stance that it is about Jesus Christ. I’m not going to debate about the real date of the birth of Christ, or about what the date of December the 25th was originally about. I say, if I have a choice (which I do) I’m going to celebrate Jesus every chance I get. I believe that, even in the spiritual sense, Christmas is about family. The message of Christmas is that God reconciled us to Himself. He didn’t have to do it the way He did it, but I think He wanted to be with us, even more than we could comprehend. When we were separated from God, His idea was not just saving us pitifuls, it wasn’t a get-out-of-jail-free pass, His idea was…family. He doesn’t want us to be His slaves, He wants us to be His children. So this Christmas, through the craziness, (for me) Christmas is about being with family. I can be with my Heavenly Father because He made a way for me to be with Him.
“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.” ~1John 3:1-3