Don't Miss Opening the Best Christmas Gifts
The amount of time parents spend planning, shopping, buying, wrapping, opening, and then storing Christmas presents is astounding. If we added up all the time we spend in the holiday gift process, I hope we’d be embarrassed. Time so wasted. Time invested that reaped few dividends.
Don’t get me wrong; we need to do a great deal of planning for Christmas. In fact, without specific planning, the best gifts will remain unopened each December. Our children will miss out on receiving the greatest Christmas gifts unless parents do the unwrapping.
The first and major gift of Christmas was given by God. And it’s not an electronic game, or an iPod, or a computer. The first and most important gift is the gift of Jesus. Do your children know that? Is the Christmas story missing from your family’s Christmas experience?
Christmas is about God giving His Son to humanity . . . the Creator condescended to become the created so that our relationship with God could be restored. That’s the Christmas story. That’s the first Christmas gift. Unfortunately, parents have given up the blessing of sharing the greatest Christmas gift with their children as part of their family’s holiday experience. We’ve delegated the opening of God’s gift to church pageants and Christmas Eve services. Yet instead of seeing these worship experiences as part of the truth of Christmas, our children see them only as interruptions getting in the way of their understanding of Christmas . . . the opening of their presents.
To restore the true meaning of Christmas in our homes, we must begin by filling the season with various readings of the original Christmas story so our children can understand why we celebrate. But there’s more to teaching about Christmas. The best way to learn is to participate, not in a pageant, but in the process of what happened on Christmas.
Each participant in the original Christmas in Bethlehem went away doing something. None of them came to visit the tiny baby so they could unwrap new toys for themselves. The Magi actually brought gifts to the Christ child. The shepherds went to work telling others about the event. Everyone went away feeling compelled to give something away–time or treasures or both.
To stamp the true meaning of Christmas on the hearts of your children, start a tradition of giving. Do something for a neighbor or an elderly person at your church. Find a strip of road, get black garbage bags, and clean up the area as a family. Bless a single mom. Find someone else to give to this Christmas.
Explain to your children that Christmas is about giving, not getting. We already received everything we needed when we were offered and accepted the gift of Jesus. Start a tradition of giving something together as a family this year. Have a family meeting in early December. Discuss why you’re going to give to others, then decide what and how your family will give in the name of Jesus.
Finish your discussion with the passage in Matthew 25 where Jesus tells us that when we feed or do something for people in need we are really doing it for Him. Doing something for others is a Christmas gift that will help your children grasp the true meaning of Christmas. It will also help define who you are as a family: a family of givers or a family of getters.
You have to work hard to rescue the meaning of Christmas from our culture. Don’t miss Christ in all the distractions and celebrations. It’s easy to forget why we celebrate.
I once heard a story about a baby christening that took place at a church in New England. After the christening of the baby, family and friends returned to the house for food and celebration. As each guest came into the house they were greeted by a family member at the door. Their winter coats were taken and thrown on the bed in the master bedroom. Fifteen minutes into the festivities, someone asked to see the star of the evening, the baby. The hostess realized she hadn’t seen or heard the baby since she handed him to her husband. When asked, the husband said, “He fell asleep on the way home, so I put him on the bed in our room.” As they walked into the room they found a pile of coats . . . on top of the baby. Paramedics were just able to revive the child. They almost killed the reason for their celebration.
It’s time to revive the reason for the celebration of Christmas. Don’t miss this opportunity to help your children celebrate the greatest event the world has ever known.