Just Because It’s Christmas

At Christmas, things are meant to mean more. Just because it’s Christmas.

Simple, ordinary things become filled with significance. We look for the joy and the wonder in everything. We look for special moments in every moment.

That’s a lot of pressure for one day of the year to carry.

It’s a time of year with a lot of pressure for a lot of people to carry.

At Christmas we can feel the most broken. Just because it’s Christmas.

The pressure for it to be joyous and wonderful can stop us from experiencing any joy or wonder.

Christmas can mean spending hours alone, without even work or other regular routines to pass the time.

Christmas can mean spending hours in the company of people that push you right out of your comfort zone.

Christmas can mean being reminded of things and people lost, opportunities missed and relationships broken.

But Christmas can be more.

Even if your family doesn’t have Christmas traditions, even if your family is far from you this year, even if you are dreading the thought of everything to do with this season of joy, Christmas can be more.

Christmas can be a reminder, not of our hurt and brokenness, but of the one who heals.

It can be a reminder of the day when God himself stepped into the world. When the Creator of the world became a small baby, born as a person. Fully God and fully human.

Christmas is the day when God acted on his promise to send a Saviour. This is the moment when God said ‘enough!’ It is the moment he intervened, and set in motion his plan of salvation, to bring everything that is wrong with the world right again.

So it’s okay that there’s mess and pain at Christmas. When we are broken and hurting, it should remind us why we needed Jesus, the one who fixes us and puts things right. The one who mends relationships. The one who gives us meaning and purpose, and who is never far from our side.

So this Christmas, I am trying to remember the one who came into the world, as a vulnerable child. Who lived a life filled with joys and pains as you and I do, and follow the will of his Heavenly Father, all the way to a hill, to a cross, to a shameful death.

I am going to remember Jesus, amidst the craziness and the hype. I am going to remember that Jesus didn’t come for any of this, but he came for you and me.