Christmas celebrations always bewilder me. You go to a community carols ceremony and the host commends the hundreds of people there for their belief in Santa Claus and Christmas. Very few people join in the singing, and when the minister of a local church gets up for a very brief talk, it appears everybody is politely waiting until the commercial is over. Or else not listening at all.
What are most people celebrating at Christmas? It doesn't seem to me that it is connected at all with the birth of Christ.
But without Jesus, Christmas seems pointless and empty to me. I know I'm not a little kid looking forward to presents, but even then, there was a strange empty feeling after opening your presents, and not only because the neighbours had just come over, played with them and broken them for you.
This year, however, I do have some thing to celebrate, because fifty years ago, on Christmas Day 1957 the message about God sending his Son into the world to be born as a baby and grow up as a boy and man and then die for my sins was explained to me by my mother, and by God's grace it became real to me that very night.
I would love to see Christmas have that special meaning for other people too this year.
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