Each year Christmas night finds members of my family feeling some melancholy. After weeks of anticipation, the Christmas celebrations have flashed by us and are suddenly gone. And we’re left standing, watching the Christmas taillights and music fade into the night.

But it’s possible that this moment of melancholy may be the best teaching moment of the whole season. Because as long as the beautiful gifts remain unopened around the tree and the events are still ahead of us, they can appear to be the hope we are waiting for. But when the tree is empty and events are past, we realize we are longing for a lasting hope.

So last night, as Pam and I tucked our kids into bed, we talked about a few things with them:

• Gifts and events can’t fill the soul. God gives us such things to enjoy. They are expressions of his generosity as well as ours, but gifts and celebrations themselves are not designed to satisfy. They’re designed to point us to the Giver. Gifts are like sunbeams. We are not meant to love sunbeams but the Sun.
• Putting our hope in gifts will leave us empty. Many people live their lives looking for the right sunbeam to make them happy. But if we depend on anything in the world to satisfy our soul’s deepest desire, it will eventually leave us with that post-Christmas soul-ache. We will ask, “Is that all?” because we know deep down that’s not all there is. We are designed to treasure a Person, not his things.
• It is more blessed to give than receive. What kind of happiness this Christmas felt richer, getting the presents that you wanted or making someone else happy with something that you gave to them? Receiving is a blessing, but Jesus is right—giving is a greater blessing. A greedy soul lives in a small, lonely world. A generous soul lives in a wide world of love.

It’s just like God to let the glitter and flash of the celebrations (even in his honor) to pass and then to come to us in the quiet, even melancholic void they leave. Because often that’s when we are most likely to understand the hope he intends for us to have at Christmas.

-Ben

These reactions have led to the catchphrase, “put the Christ back in Christmas.” This is a dual attempt to put Christmas back as the Holiday being celebrated this Season and refocus our hearts and minds on “the reason for the season” – the man of Jesus whose birth we celebrate on Christmas. Our response to this should be, “great! Which Christ?”

It’s not enough to just blindly “put the Christ back in Christmas” by fighting against the sins of greed and idolatry that the commercialism produces in us. Reading the Christmas stories, singing more “Christian” Christmas carols, and going to church on Christmas Eve are all good, but they don’t save people.

It’s the Christ that we’re “putting back into Christmas” that saves people.

That’s why he came. Yes, he set a good example for us. But he wasn’t just here as an example for us to follow. For instance, I don’t recommend you going around trying to forgive sins, claiming to be God, and inciting riots leading to your death on a cross. It’s those things that Jesus did that we can’t do that we celebrate most at Christmas. Jesus wasn’t just a perfect man, a good teacher, and an inspirational revolutionary. He changed the world by dying the death we should have died so we can live the life he deserved to live.

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.  – 1 Timothy 1:15

Save them from what?  Hell.  Save them for what?  Eternal life with Him.  The best gift of Christmas is God.

God is the Gospel.

For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.  – 2 Corinthians 4:5-7

That’s what we really need – “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.”  We are blinded by Satan, unable to see the glory of God and treasure Him as we ought.  But God broke into this world and removed the blinders from our eyes so that we could behold His glory and treasure Him, rightly, above all things.  

Sadly, Christmas has come to symbolize all the things we treasure above God.

God broke into this world on Christmas to free us from this idolatry and to proclaim amnesty – pardon – to us.  We deserve death, but he offered life to all who would turn to Him and trust Him and treasure Him.

God broke into this world on Christmas to free me from this idolatry and to proclaim amnesty to me.  But I see in my heart, that though I believe, there is still unbelief.  There is still much of me that longs for the things of this world, the comforts, the toys, the status, the success.  There is still much pride in me – pride that loves the praise of men and loves to ridicule men.

But I see in the Bible  (2 Peter 1:8) that God is working to sanctify me – to slowly change me to be more like Him and to desire Him more.  Or I guess that can be better phrased, be more like Him by desiring Him more.   I’m not perfect – no Christian is going to be perfect in this lifetime – but God is slowly causing me to enjoy more and more of Him.

This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and Angels sing;
Haste, haste, to bring Him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

-Ben