What is it that makes Christmas special?
When you think of Christmas, what is it that gets you most excited for the holiday? What parts do you enjoy the most? And be completely honest.
Is it all the Christmas decorations, movies and music you’ve just been itching to get out as soon as the weather dropped below sweltering? Is it all the events, the plays, the concerts, the parties? The gathering of family and friends? The getting and giving of gifts or the comforting and magical feelings of the season?
As a Christian, or anyone raised in church, we might say “celebrating the birth of our Savior”. But how many of us, if we are one hundred percent honest with ourselves, can truly say that is what we look forward to the most? I’m willing to wager that many of us will find that, as much as we want it to be our main focus, there is something else that gets us more excited.
But how do we fix that? Is it even possible? Is it necessary?
I think, at the heart, we are all looking for the magic of Christmas. No matter what your answer was to the above question, I think we can bring it back to wanting some kind of magic experience each year. One that we will remember fondly for years to come. But how do we get that?
The Ordinary Becomes the Extraordinary
Why is it that the older we get the more we want to simplify the Christmas season? Is it because we just get too tired in our old age and have no energy for the fast-paced lifestyle anymore? Or do we begin to understand what is most important during this time and try to hold on to what will last, and not all the little things that will eventually disappear from mind?
It can get exhausting trying to simplify Christmas in a society that tries to make it all about the events or the material possessions. Even from those who understand the true meaning of Christmas and attempt to make it more about the giving than the receiving, it can still sometimes seem commercialized or overwhelming. We can get so caught up in the doing. . .even the doing for good. . .that we forget the REASON we do it, or, at the very least, let it get overshadowed.
Three years ago, we saw the Christmas Star appear in the sky during one of the darkest years we have seen in a long time. I wrote about that back then, and I talked about the miracles and hope that the Christmas season brings. . .and the reason WHY. This year I want to focus on the simplicity of the season.
Simple doesn’t mean any less beautiful, or any less magical. . .in fact, I believe simplicity makes it even more beautiful. For in the simpleness of the stable we see the greatest story ever told. In the simpleness of a teenage mother and a humble father, we see the hand of God able to work in the lives of anyone who is willing. In the simplicity of the shepherds we see the hope. . .God calling to the most lowly and outcast of us all.
There is nothing about the first Christmas that we can look at and think was so extraordinary or extravagant. Except that the God of heaven, the King of the world, chose to come down to US and be born, not in the magnificence of a palace, but in the simplicity of a cold stable with no welcome outside of a few animals and some outcast shepherds.
“The greatest of Kings, born in the most humble of places.”
It’s so simple, yet we tend to over complicate things and try to make the story grander or make the celebration bigger. None of these things are bad, honestly. We should celebrate the birth of Christ, and He does deserve a grand affair. . .but are we doing these things for Him, or for us and those around us to just get a great experience? Are we doing things FOR Him, or are we spending time WITH Him? We can do both, but we need to keep them in the right order and not let Christ become the after thought.
I believe that in our attempts to make things bigger and better and to add flare to make it more attractive or to get people to see the magic, we take away the true magic that is in the story already. We get so caught up in the dramatization that we have accidentally forgotten the most basic element: the heart.
Not everyone will agree with this perspective, and not everyone will need to go back to the most basic and simplest of things. Some may even have taken this journey and can truthfully say that their joy for the season is in that child in a manger. But I think it would benefit all of us to take a step back, go back to the basics every now and then, and examine things from a new perspective. And sometimes God makes us. Sometimes He makes us sit still, takes away all the lights and noise that is distracting us so we can just see Him.
The old cliche saying is true: “I must decrease so that He may increase.” Though it isn’t so cliche.
Through the hardest few years of life, that is when I saw Him. Now I can honestly say I have joy when Christmas rolls around and, from the heart, I look forward to celebrating His birth and the reason He came.
When you just sit still and all the distractions of the world and the season disappear. . .it is just you and God. . .that’s when the magic happens. All of a sudden, it is the simple things that hold more power and mean the most. All of a sudden God shows you a part of the story that you missed before and that will forever change your life and your perspective. That’s the magic of Christmas. . .the simple becomes the extraordinary.
“But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are. . .”
1 Corinthians 1:27-28
chelseabarlow.com 