As I prepare for Christmas with my four-year old son, I am reminded of so many Christmases as a child. And although I remember many fond memories, I am also soberly reminded of something else. Lost in all the presents, wrapped so beautifully with love, was a full understanding of the meaning of Christmas. And I do not mean to say that Christ was not celebrated. Of course, Christ was in fact celebrated. We heard of the miraculous adventure that led the magi to the Christ child. We marveled at the manger seen. And ultimately, we were fascinated by the birth of little Jesus. And in all, it sounded a lot like so many other quaint little stories.
Here is what I am getting at. Christmas is easily the biggest and most exciting time of the year for most kids. It is bigger than their birthdays, bigger than the Easter bunny, and bigger than summer break. So when we celebrate Christmas with all these gifts and exciting toys, and add a quaint little story all by itself, outside of the context of, as Paul Harvey would say, “…the rest of the story,” we rob our children of the real meaning of Christmas. At this time of year, instead of isolating the birth of Christ, we should instead acknowledge why the birth of Christ is so special. There are then in my mind two aspects of this story that are often missing from the story so often told, the foretelling of Christ in the Old Testament and the ultimate meaning of Christ in his death.
Christmas is a time of celebration, but it is also, and I would argue more importantly, a time of sober acknowledgement of the reason that Christ chose to be born into this world. He ultimately came to die for our sins. I like the way Stand to Reason has acknowledged Christmas in this regard. Please visit here (The Advent of Messiah) and consider the many prophecies collected from the Old Testament by Stand to Reason and ultimately fulfilled with the birth, life, and death of Jesus Christ. The birth of Jesus is special because it is the fulfillment of several dozen prophecies that were in place hundreds of years before that special night. The final culmination of those prophecies occurred in the events leading up to his death. It is not a quaint little story, but a verifiable truth that God incarnate visited His’ creation to become the ultimate sacrifice for our sins.
I readily acknowledge that younger children will not fully understand this, but older children and teenagers should be taught not just the birth, but instead, the fuller deeper meaning of Christmas found in the foretelling of his coming, his birth, and finally, his resurrection.
