“Christmas is about love and gifts” reads the advertisement on a screen at the mall in Bucharest. Two things are wrong with this picture. First of all, we live in Romania, and the add is written in plain English. Second of all, so glad not all Romanians got the message, because Christmas is only about Jesus.
If February 3rd people would say that my birthday is about gifts for everyone and love, I would be slightly disappointed. I would like to be the spotlight of the day. (Personally, I would like to be the spotlight all the time, but I can’t have my cake and eat it too.)
God didn’t even come down to be the center of attention. Having the barn as a home, the animal feed bunk as a crib, animal poo the fragrance of the room (that’s no Bath & Body), the shepherds your birthday guests (Kind of like the garbage collectors for us today. They were smelly and poor.); that doesn’t sound like someone who came for the spotlight. Yet, that humble baby changed history. He came to die for us, to set an example for us, to help us better understand who is our Maker and Saviour. This is the message we need not to be selfish about, but share it with others.
Sharing Christmas With Our Neighbours
There’s two main principles I keep telling our girls to remember about Christmas: 1. Christmas is not about gifts, it’s all about Jesus. 2. We celebrate Christmas because of Easter. Now, this message has to be shared with others.
As our church has organized to give shoebox gifts to the children in our poor neighbourhood, our family had the privilege to go and hand some of those to the needy Roma families that our church works with. More important than that, we were able to pray with the families and shortly share the reason of celebrating Christmas.
Visiting those families has challenged me in a lot of ways. Here are some of them:
- There are people around us, people we walk by daily that we ignore because of our busyness… these are people that we need to be intentional on reaching out. It may start with a simple smile, with an encouraging word, or even a prayer for them. Our youngest truly loves to pray for everyone. When we see or hear an ambulance passing by, she prays for those people even if she doesn’t know them. She challenges me to pray for strangers.
- Seeing their living conditions helped me truly count my blessings. For some, Christmas is a very joyful time of the year, and for others it’s a very depressive time. I am not saying for some there are not reasons to be sad, but if we would focus on serving and blessing others that have it worst than us, it will naturally bring us joy.
- I am so thankful that I have the privilege of knowing the truth about who Christ is. However this privilege comes with a great responsibility: to live my life as Christ’s ambassador, and to invite others into God’s family.
Enjoy The Blessings of Christmas
I hope I am not making anyone feel guilty for having fun at Christmas. I wouldn’t go to the other extreme and not enjoy the 
season of Christmas. I love decorating our home with a Christmas tree and nativity scenes. We love listening to Christmas carols. We enjoy giving and receiving gifts. If we make a big deal for our kids’ birthdays: balloons, gifts, guests, and candles on a cake- I hope we can make a bigger deal on Jesus’ birthday. The point is that we need to remember what we truly celebrate and not to forget to share the great message with others. And, when you are tempted to have a pity party or you are frustrated because you’re overwhelmed with the shopping, cooking, visiting family, or having guests… These are all privileges, not burdens to carry.
Have A Joyful Christmas!
Memory Verse: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6