The Wonder of Christmas is Christ

The Christmas season is upon us. The time that we, as Christians, set aside to celebrate the advent of our Savior, as the angels proclaimed to the shepherds in Luke 2:11: “For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

The frivolity of the season that so often characterizes the celebration of this Holy day has the potential of robbing us of the wonder that should be our posture as we approach Christmas. As author Phillip Yancy observes in his book “The Jesus I never knew,”: “A human being becoming a fish is nothing compared to God becoming a baby. And yet according to the gospels that is what happened at Bethlehem. The God, who created matter, took shape within it, as an artist might become a spot on a painting or a playwright a character within his own play. God wrote a story…on the pages of real history. The Word became flesh.”

Indeed it is a wondrous story that we take for granted as we rush to purchase gifts, hang lights, decorate trees and sip cider. The idea that God became man is a difficult one for us to grasp, but this is exactly what happened. Christianity is not a fable or fairytale, nor is it mythology in the tradition of the Greeks or Romans. Christ was not some mixture of God and man; He is fully God and fully man. This is the greatest gift of Christmas. Amazingly every year, many people celebrate Christmas without celebrating the Christ. The wonder of the season is on display for us if we would take the time to rehearse it with our families.

Consider that the good news of the Messiah’s arrival was heralded to both the rich and poor. Both the Magi of the East and the shepherds in the field were participants in the first Christmas. The Magi by all accounts were very wealthy men, the shepherds very poor, but both were invited to worship Jesus.

It is also important to remember that when it came time for God to enter the world in the form of a baby, the vehicle that was chosen, was a chaste young lady, a virgin by the name of Mary. As C.S. Lewis points out, “The whole thing narrows and narrows, until at last it comes down to a little point, small as the point of a spear-a Jewish girl at her prayers” In this modern culture when morals have been impugned and discounted it is important to remember that character still counts. The greatest gifts that we can give to our families are not wrapped with colorful paper but rather they are the legacies of honesty, purity, and love.

Finally, in order for the wonder of the season to be recaptured, we must understand and help our families to understand, that the greatest gift of the season is the good news that God became man, and as that man He died in our place, and conquered death by rising again, and has extended forgiveness of sin to all of us, to all who trust in His name. This is the great gift of Christmas, a wondrous story that we would all do well to remember and communicate to our family and friends.

For many of us the story is all too familiar, and therein is the danger. As Saint Francis de Salle points out, nothing is so debilitating as the continual handling of the outside of holy things, too many of us at Christmas handle the symbols of the season, the gifts, the tinsel, the lights, but we miss the substance of the season, God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. This is the wonder of Christmas that we must not miss.