What does Christmas mean to you? That’s a good question that is worthy of some time in thought these next few weeks. We’ve just come off arguably the biggest shopping day of the year. I admit, my wife and I did a little shopping on Friday. No we didn’t shop at crazy hours and we didn’t cut into family time on Thanksgiving. It was a matter of, we needed a few groceries (as a side-note, grocery stores are not that crowded the day after Thanksgiving…great day to go get some food if you need to)and while we were out, we stopped at a few places that were not very crowded. After some more family time in the afternoon, my wife and I went to a charity Christmas auction that lasts until the wee-hours of the morning. Didn’t buy much, but great time spent with her. But is the shopping what epitomizes what Christmas means to me?
Christmas is about Christ!
Christmas remains for me a holiday about tradition, about family, about remembrance and about celebration of the birth of our Savior. The shopping, the lights and colors, the commercialism is all at the bottom of priorities. If we did nothing else than gather together on Christmas to share some simple gifts that were made or bought with love and to celebrate with some good food that would be enough. Remembering the birth of Christ is what matters. Without that, there would be no holiday, there would be no celebration, and honestly no hope beyond this life.
Christmas is about giving.
Christmas for me is a time for giving and being a blessing to others. No, I don’t necessarily mean giving the best gifts, I mean giving of ourselves to those in need. My regular readers you’ll know that I’m big on trying to be a blessing to others. This can be as easy as a kind word or a simple service to someone else. During the height of the “occupy” movement of protests around the country, I wrote a lengthy blog that I refer back to from time to time. Occupy Charity at Christmas was a reflection on what it means to be a charitable and giving person (and nation for that matter).
With my goal of living a year of Thanksgiving, I’m announcing here in this post first that I’m in the planning stages of avenues for me to show my thanks to some local charities that I can in part be a blessing to my community that I live in. Also in stretching myself spiritually and living with abandon, I am working on ways to have this blog and my other writings help me in this goal to be a blessing to others. This is all still in the planning stages and the only reason I’m even mentioning it on here is so that my readers can lift this up in prayer that God guides me in the ways I can best serve his kingdom. I hope over the coming weeks, I’ll be able to announce more concrete plans and thoughts here.
What does Christmas mean to you?
Ask yourself this question. I think it is a personal question and the answer that I’ve come to above may not be the one that you arrive at. But honestly ask yourself that question and reflect the direction that God leads you.
Exceptional Christian 