About a month ago I headed off to the shops as I usually do once a week, except this time there was something different about the shop when I got there. For some reason a shop that I regularly frequent seemed foreign to me. At first I couldn’t understand why, it wasn’t until my wife said “Wow, they’ve started putting up Christmas decorations early this year” that I realized that the reason I didn’t recognize the shop was because the whole shop had been transformed into a Christmas winter wonderland.
It just seems that every year Christmas preparations start earlier and earlier, soon we might get to a point where we actually never take the decorations down!
The question I have is, why? Why do we dress the shops up and go through all this extra effort for Christmas? Surely there must be more to this holiday than decorations and fancy gifts.
I suppose the reason the shops put so much effort into decorating is because they know that with Christmas comes and increase in sales, and an increase in sales means more money. So the sooner people start buying, the better. But, are the shops to blame for us seeing Christmas this way. I honestly think that the reason our perception of Christmas has changed is because we have allowed it to be changed. We have somehow made it all about the ‘what we can get’ and not about what we have already been given
We need to get back to basics; we need to understand what Christmas is really about. Make a choice this year to look beyond the gifts and decorations. I know that might sound hard, but I came across this video and it really opened my eyes to the true meaning of Christmas
You see, Christmas is and always will be about Jesus, he is the reason that we celebrate this time of year. We get so caught up in giving and receiving gifts that we ignore the fact that we have already been given the perfect gift, a relationship with Jesus.
So my challenge is this. This year choose to get to the heart of Christmas. Choose to trust Jesus and have a relationship with him. His gift is can never be outdone, and it’s free! Don’t get caught up in the hype of Christmas, but rather get caught up in the reason for Christmas.
Jesus is real. So real that we celebrate his birth. So chose to honour that celebration by giving God the gift that is His greatest desire, a relationship with you.