By: Francis Judge
Growing up in a nominally religious home, Christmas was dominated by family and friends even more than presents and Santa; and growing up in the UK it was also a time of short days and cold weather, often with at least some snow. It was only after unexpectedly meeting the Lord Jesus and the radical effect this had on me that I appreciated that He had always been the reason for the season.
I was fortunate enough to grow up in a stable home environment with parents who loved one another, and my brother and I very much. We were not well off but never lacked the most important things in life. What’s best, I think, is that we actually enjoyed being together and so Christmas was a special time. It was a time when we all got to be together most of the time. My dad worked hard, and especially when I was younger would often only get home after I had gone to bed, but at Christmas time we would get to see lots of him.
After my parents came to faith, it wasn’t long before the Lord opened my heart to his saving grace, and experienced a transforming reality of being born again. The greatest witness to the reality of Jesus was the transformation in my parent’s lives. This was then the same reality that I found for myself as I revelled in his lordship in my life.
My dad was exceptionally good at noticing the spiritual dimension of what we did and, thus, the Christmas experience was enhanced still further as we thanked the Lord before opening presents on Christmas day. It was good that we were older and better able to wait for present opening!
As I have grown and become a man, husband, father, and now grandfather I have continued to enjoy the different seasons and to re-experience the wonder of Christmas. If anything, it has come to mean so much more than it did in my own childhood.
Jesus’ actual birth was less glorious than we sometimes think. Not the glitz of modern shops and the tinsel-clad presentation of baby Jesus, often accompanied by the tunes of Boney M or Michael Buble. It was recognized though by hosts of angels, sages from the East, and obedient shepherds, and this seems to have been enough for our Father in heaven.
He had been preparing and hinting at Jesus’ coming for centuries, though there had not been any recorded words about it for several centuries before the actual birth of Jesus. Etymologically the word Christmas has the meaning of celebrating the Christ – that is, God’s anointed king – though the word ‘mass’ is also linked to the celebration of communion (the Eucharist or thanksgiving celebration). Probably, like so many church traditions, this started off as an opportunity to simply celebrate Jesus and, in the Northern Hemisphere, a great excuse to celebrate at ‘mid-winter’ the anticipated arrival of spring to break the harshness of a long winter.
Theologically speaking, Christmas is the reminder of the advent of the God-Man, the incarnation of the Divine. But, as I’ve heard it said, “that baby grew up and became the saviour of the world”. What God did in Jesus is nothing short of the greatest miracle ever – the utterly unrestricted God limiting himself to one place and one time in the utter helplessness and dependence of human infancy. The magnitude of this self-minimization cannot be underestimated and is testimony, ultimately, to the power and commitment of God even through external weakness.
Jesus’ birth was full of long-prophesied purpose. But, there was a crucial period of extreme difficulty and eventual suffering in order to fulfill that purpose. In a sense, we could imagine this clouding the Father’s heart, except for the fact that he knew the fruit of Jesus’ obedience.
The fruit of Jesus’ willing, self-humiliation is celebrated at Christmas as we remember the baby Jesus. A humiliation that a four-year-old could naturally see themselves as superior to!
So, what does Christmas mean to me? It means family and friends, but more than ever it means Jesus; his person and the reality of his incarnation which we celebrate now.