The Best Thing About Christmas

Ok, now that Thanksgiving is over with, I am finally ready to acknowledge that the Christmas season has begun. However, if have been to any of the major retailers, Christmas begins at midnight on Halloween. This is especially true at Wal-Mart. On Halloween night around 10:00 pm, I had to stop in and get a few things and I could not believe what I was witnessing. While one group of employees moved the last bags of Halloween candy and costumes to the sale shelf, another group started rolling out the Christmas displays, including a nativity set that caught my eye. It was actually a well orchestrated event, but inside my head I was thinking, “Really?” Retailers are not the only places that kick off the Christmas season a little too soon. I was making some visits at Methodist Medical Center the first week in November and was shocked that even the player piano in the lobby was already programmed to play Christmas carols.

I do however have to make a confession. When I saw the transformation from Halloween to Christmas at Wal-Mart and heard the player piano at the hospital, my mind began to wonder. I know this is normal, but this time my thoughts lead me to reflect on the Christmas season a little different this year.

I began to think of our focus on the babe in the manager and all the other pieces of the first Christmas story, both the realities and the traditions, which many of us have grown up with. It was then I really think I began to comprehend that the babe in the manger is the main event.

But He is so much more than our hymns and nativity scenes express. How can we as a church sing a handful of songs and recreate the manger scene with a miniature tabletop nativity set that truly captures the best things of Christmas? For that matter, how can we as individuals and families truly capture in our traditions the best things of Christmas?
Friends, while as we approach this Christmas season, and get busy with all of the events, which go along with it, let me leave you with this. The best thing about Christmas is not those little moments we try to capture, it is simply, Christ.