Over 300 Days to Get Christmas Right in 2011

I don't think I got Christmas right this year.

I have a nagging sense of not tapping into to the incarnational essence of what an extended time of reflection on the birth of Christ could be for me and my family. Oh, we sang about Christ, talked about Him, watched God provide in unusual ways through the generosity of others, and my wife even did a creative candle thingy with the kids that helped fill their hearts with a sense of biblical expectation. But I still feel like we missed something big.

I'm thankful that I have over 300 days to contemplate a renewed strategy for next year's Christmas season. I think it will take me about that long to come up with a more significant way of getting more of Christ out of a cultural event that just feels like an excuse to get more loot.

Oh sure, we Christians are quick to tell our children that Christmas is not about getting presents. And we watch the Charlie Brown Christmas Special each year and take note of Linus' speech with tender appreciation. Then we go find the store adds and break out our own highlighters.

There tends to be five basic kinds of people at Christmas.



The first is the dad, single mom, college student or whomever, that simply can't swing getting everyone what their little hearts desire. They just can't afford our culture's comprehension of Christmas. They enter the Christmas season with a sense of dread and watch it pass by with much relief.  

Second, there is the individual who boycotts the Christmas commercialism altogether...Some for spiritual reasons, some for religious reasons, some just because they're to lazy to bother with any of it. 

Then there's the individual that happily embraces everything that our culture can throw at them during the Christmas season (which tends to become a more significant amount of time each year). They makes no bones about getting what they want during the 2nd most happy time of the year (the other being their birthday for obvious reasons).  

Then we have the I-just-like-getting-presents-for-other-people person. But having been a member of this club before, I kind of wonder if getting a bunch of loot and giving a bunch of loot to the ones who crave getting it is the same thing just in a different way(?).I'm not saying giving presents or even getting presents every year is wrong (I rather like it!), I'm just wondering what a pattern of lots of presents every year really does to us all in the end.

I'm not going to describe the fifth category of Christmas persons today. But that's mostly because I'm still not sure who they are or what they look like. But, I think it's this fifth category that I want to discover. I believe next year I want my family and I to approach the Christmas season from an entirely different perspective and with a brand new strategy in place.

So, I've got over 300 days to come to grips with what a truly sacrificial, incarnational, Christ-centered Christmas could practically look like for my family...

If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears.