Making Christmas real

The end of the year brings a strange combination of familiar traditions and genuine challenges. 

While we may be surrounded by bright lights and cheerful music, with parties and celebratory gatherings, we may also be struggling financially, wondering how we are supposed to get everything done and concerned about how we will handle looming difficulties. 

It could be navigating an awkward conversation with that difficult family member, or coping with the exuberant happiness when we are grieving a loved one, or facing particular challenges that would be hard enough at any time of the year, let alone during the “festive season.”  Life can feel like too much, and Christmas sometimes makes it feel even worse.

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As Christmas approaches, whether we are dealing with a particular challenge or not, we will all again be confronted with the challenge of seeing past the consumer festival and the nostalgic traditions to the reality of the incarnation. 

Finding the relevance of this critical doctrine is not achieved by simply revisiting familiar truths through nostalgic traditions. We also have a fresh need to explore how the old truth resonates with contemporary life, including all its challenges.

We are familiar with reviewing the great step taken by the Son of God from heaven to earth, the infinite taking on infancy, the glorious riches to abject poverty, etc.  We are used to noting that He came with a purpose; He took on a human body and life so that He could experience death in that body for us.  

Indeed, Christmas is an arrow pointing to Easter, and it is right to think of that each year. 

More than that, Christmas is an arrow pointing to a God who is revealing Himself in the ultimate way, and an invitation opened to rich and poor, local and global, Jew and Gentile.  

It is a story to stir our nostalgia and our worship, an inspiring example, and, if told well, a thriller with a villain, a deadly threat, and a perfectly-timed escape.

Actually, Christmas is a many-layered story, with intriguing characters, long-awaited prophecies, and profoundly moving themes woven together. 

And yet, we so often end up repeating it as if it were merely a nostalgic children’s story to retell like an old family tale that gets trotted out once a year as we gather around a fire and nibble on seasonal treats.

How will you engage the Christmas story this year?  How will it connect with your current experiences and concerns in a unique and fresh way in 2025?

Your life, your struggles, are very real.  So was the first Christmas. It was not a pretty scene with snow falling peacefully.  It contained real fear, real confusion, real hopelessness, real heartbreak. 

The bewilderment for Mary would have been so constant, the uncertainty for Joseph so vivid. The emptiness and despair of life for the shepherds would have been genuinely bleak. The intrigue of the wise men and all who came into contact with them must have been genuinely perplexing.  The first Christmas was real. 

As we come to another Christmas, let’s not just go through the motions of another ritual celebration. Let’s not think of it only in picture book scenes, nor apply its truth in nice generalities. 

Let’s be sure to bring the most real concerns of our time to the Christmas story and find in it a Saviour who has learned what it is to be human, what it is to enter into a world of political tensions, of the deadly inhumanity of men to one another, of the searing heartache of poverty. 

May we find a richer appreciation for our Lord because our 2025 Christmas realities meet with His first Christmas realities.

The reality of the incarnation is big enough to maintain its relevance and to shine forth its significance, no matter how difficult our current experience might be. 

May we honour God by bringing our real mess up close to the very real messiness of the first Christmas. There we will find a true Saviour, who is Christ our Lord, and that really is good news for all of humanity. 

Peter Mead is mentor at Cor Deo and author of several books. He blogs at Biblical Preaching.