Getting Ready for Christmas

As I write this, it is exactly ten days until Christmas.  And I hear a lot of people talk about how they’re not ready for Christmas.  I sometimes say it myself, as I don’t have the Christmas Eve service prepared yet.

On the one hand, it seems kind of odd that, so often, we’re not ready for Christmas, as if Christmas kind of snuck up on us when we weren’t looking.  After all, Christmas comes on December 25^th every year.  It has for about seventeen hundred years.  It’s not like we didn’t know when it was going to be this year.  And yet, somehow, we never seem to be quite ready for it to come, as if we thought maybe this year it would be December 28^th or 29^th or something.

But on the other hand, there truly is a sense in which it’s important that we get ready for Christmas.  Think of what we’re celebrating.  I mean, the trees and the gifts and the food and all that stuff is fun, and I’m not opposed to any of it, but think about what we’re really celebrating.  We’re celebrating the greatest gift there ever was—the gift of salvation.  We’re celebrating the birth of the Savior.  We’re celebrating God himself—because that’s who Jesus was, God the Son—leaving the splendor and majesty of heaven and coming to earth in the form of a human being.  A human being, subject to all the temptations and suffering of life that you and I are subject to.  Coming to earth, to live among us, to teach us, to heal us, to show us how we should live.  And then, ultimately, to die for us, taking the punishment that should have gone to us so that our sins could be forgiven and we could go on to eternal life.

We need to take some time to prepare ourselves to celebrate that.  We need to take some time to truly appreciate it.  We need to really think about what Christmas is actually all about.  If we don’t, we may still have a good time, but that’s all Christmas will be for us—a good time.  Some days to spend some time with family, share some gifts, and eat well.  Again, there’s nothing wrong with any of that, but all of those things are things that will pass.  A pleasant feeling, a good time, but then we move on.

Celebrating what Christmas is really about is not just a pleasant feeling.  It’s not something we just move on from.  Truly celebrating the birth of the Savior, thinking about who he was and who he is, what he did and what he still does, that’s life-changing.  It can change both our earthly life and our eternal life.  Because that’s what Jesus came to do—change both our earthly life and our eternal life.

So have some fun at Christmas, but also remember what it is we’re celebrating.  Embrace the life-changing spirit of Christmas this year.