What is the true meaning of Christmas? It is a perennial question. It is a question heard often during the Christmas season year after year, from pulpits, TV personalities, newspaper writers, and just ordinary people bewildered by the hectic pace of the season. It seems a little strange that as popular as this season seems to be, we should continually have to ask that question. The meaning of Christmas seems to be forever in danger of being obscured by all the commotion and promotion of the season. So, the search for the true meaning of Christmas is a recurring one. And yet, too often the answers we hear are more sentimentality, comfortable traditions, or “warm fuzzies” than they are any deep reflection on the significance of the Son of God becoming human (Incarnation). As much as those things are a part of the season, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” is not the meaning of the season. It is not about the “spirit of giving” or the quest for global peace, or the importance of family, or the beauty of a snow-decorated “silent night.”

Certainly we can immediately say that Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. But exactly why is that fact so significant beyond the affirmation of a historical fact or a creedal confession? How does, or how should, the meaning of Christmas impact our lives on a daily basis as the people of God?

Christmas, at its best and purest state, is a promise of something that no holiday or experience or earthly thing can satisfy. Galatians 4:4-5 says, “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.” At the heart of the nativity narratives in both Matthew and Luke, is a simple fact: amid the struggle of a people who had longed for 500 years for God to act in the world in new ways, God came to be with them in a way that totally identified Himself with us, as human beings. Amid the most unlikely of circumstances, to the most unlikely of people, God became a human being to reconcile all peoples to himself (2 Cor. 5:18-19).

Christmas is celebrating God’s greatest gift to humanity that came in the simplest and humblest of wrappings. The gift came in the form of a baby, born not in a palace of gold but in a stable, clothed with rags and laid in a feeding trough. Yet this baby, because He is Immanuel, God with us, will forever change the world and all humanity. It is this same God who has promised to be with us, with His people, with the church and with us individually, as we live as His people in the world. Our calling is to be the light of the world, pointing them to the Savior. In light of this gift, we should live a life worthy of the calling you have received (Eph 4:1). This gift, like no others on earth, has the transforming power to make us become like Him if we yield ourselves to Him (2Co 5:17).

Christmas isn’t about those gifts that you have under your tree during this season. All of those “gifts” will be gone one day. All that will be left after this life is the human soul, and that will live forever. We put so much stock in what we have, but this is all going to pass away. Life is about what happens beyond the grave. Life is about knowing the God who made you and who gave you the greatest gift you will ever receive. Let’s celebrate God’s gift with great joy and thankfulness!

Wishing you a very Blessed Christmas,

Pastor Chris Chan

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