For Unto Us A Child Is Born

It’s no surprise I go all in on all the holidays, but Christmas is especially over the top in the O’Shag house. I’ll admit that I can sometimes struggle with keeping our holiday a Christ centered one when I love the decorating, cooking, & shopping so much, plus we let our kids believe in Santa. There are a lot of beautiful distractions during the holiday season, & a lot of chaos & stress that come with them. I think most of us know what the real meaning of Christmas is, but it can be easy to get caught up in the craziness of the season, that we don’t take the time to truly reflect & appreciate the greatest gift we have ever been given. Christmas is the time of year we remember God’s love for humanity, the gift of his only son, Jesus Christ, & the promise of eternal life. His rescue mission for a lost & broken world. Wow, how can we not be blown away by that?! How can we not be so enamored as to take the time to truly celebrate that & make sure our children know the depth of this gift? 

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one & only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Obviously I’m not implying you need to be in church 24/7, ban Santa, or feel bad about buying into a little consumerism. Clearly, you can drive by my house & see that we indulge in all the secular aspects of Christmas, but keeping Christ in Christmas is still a priority in our home. My husband & I have made this a commitment that we constantly come back to & try to keep each other in check on. We make it a habit to pray for hearts that keep the focus on Jesus, & take pointed steps to live that out in our children’s eyes. 

Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Christ, but it also just embodies this whole feeling of love & giving! It’s a time for coming together, participating in traditions & showing our love for one another the way our Heavenly Father showed it for us so long ago & continues to show us day in & day out. Christmas is the perfect opportunity to teach our children to have the hearts of givers. Start by reading the Christmas stories directly from the Bible. In them you'll find hope, joy, miracles & the assurance that Christ is still with us.

See Matthew 6:25-34. Then remind your child all throughout the season that everything we do is in celebration of Jesus’s birthday. That we decorate the house for Him, the same way we decorate for their birthdays, that He loves us so much that He wants us to give gifts to each other in celebration, & that we sing Christmas songs to praise & delight Him. 

Design Tip: I use fishing line to hang my angle over my manger scene. You can hide the little command hook under anything, but I put mine under a wreath so that conceals it perfectly.

We bake sugar cookies & decorate gingerbreads houses, but we also bake a Christmas themed birthday cake for Jesus every year. My daughter is at an age now that she gets very excited to pick out & give gifts to her family. It brings me so much joy to see that they are learning & showing hearts that understand giving. 

We read the Bible stories, watch the Christian Christmas cartoons, & swap out our Barbie play time for nativity play. We take her to the events at the church, she sees us volunteering, & we have her actively participate in donating. Do we fail sometimes, yes. Do we have to occasionally reel ourselves back in & remind each other what this time of year is really about, of course. Does she always get it, no. Does she still act like an ungrateful brat on occasion, sure does. But we see the growth. We see the maturity, & we know that if we are consistent in keeping a Christ centered holiday, she will grow to know the real meaning behind Christmas, & as a parent that is the greatest gift we can ever give her. 

So let’s all take some time today to recenter ourselves. To remember that the material things pale in comparison to the spiritual gift our Father has given us. So it doesn’t matter if you burn the ham, if you can’t afford whatever toy your kid will forget about in a week anyway, or if your tree is already dying because you forgot to put water in it for a week & a half ( that one’s for me). 

A quote that always stops me in my tracks is, 

So often I have to stop my myself & make sure I’m not too busy with the wrong things. Let’s all work together to make sure our good intentions are also the right intentions. 

Let me leave you with Robert Louis Stevenson’s, "The Christmas Prayer"

Loving Father,

Help us remember the birth of Jesus, that we may share in the song of the angels, the gladness of the shepherds, and worship of the wise men.

Close the door of hate and open the door of love all over the world. Let kindness come with every gift and good desires with every greeting. Deliver us from evil by the blessing which Christ brings, and teach us to be merry with clear hearts.

May the Christmas morning make us happy to be Thy children, and Christmas evening bring us to our beds with grateful thoughts, forgiving and forgiven, for Jesus' sake. Amen.