Anyone who knows me well, knows that I love the Christmas season! And I love that we serve a God who loves to celebrate!

I think my favourite miracle in the Bible might be Jesus turning water into wine. There is just something so extravagantly over the top about it. And it points to a God who sees the value in celebration, and who is generous in the extreme. We see this at the birth of Jesus too, where the angles burst into song – an extravagant, celebratory announcement that the saviour of the world had been born.

Celebrating Jesus

Christmas is often seen as a season of excess, but when we keep the focus on Jesus then the activities we do, the beauty we create, the celebratory food we feast on can all point to the extravagant love of God, the beauty of Jesus and the hope of eternal celebration in the future.

In our family, we have taken time to think about the messages that our culture feeds us at Christmas time and what we, as followers of Jesus, value and how we can use these values to shape the way we celebrate. We want to make sure that the reason for celebrating Christmas is not lost amongst the tinsel and the presents.

My hope is that, as we intentionally place certain Christmas traditions into our family life, my children and the people we invite into our house would see my deep love for Jesus and that I believe his coming to earth is something worth celebrating. And I hope that the joy that comes from these traditions reminds my family and those we share life with that Jesus is the great joy-giver and that he alone is the source of life in all its fullness.

Inviting friends into the celebration

In a book she co-wrote with her mother, Life Giving Home, Sarah Clarkson says, ‘We are challenged by the Incarnation to make our homes a small cosmos of God’s Kingdom, one more outpost of eternity right in the midst of time.’ I love this thought that God’s Kingdom comes in the small everyday acts of service and love that we carry out in our homes. This is true throughout the year, but Christmas offers unique opportunities to do this as we celebrate God coming to live amongst us.

Over the last few years our family have adopted various Christmas traditions to help keep our focus on Jesus. We love to invite those whom we walk alongside into our home and family life and doing so over the Christmas season provides lots of opportunities to talk about the goodness of God and the wonder of him coming to earth as a baby.

Advent calendars and trees
We start our Christmas traditions by celebrating the beginning of Advent on the 1st December. I have always loved Advent calendars in all the various forms they come in,
but my favourite type of Advent calendar is the Jesse Tree. The idea of a Jesse Tree comes from Isaiah 11:1: ‘Out of the stump of David’s family will grow a shoot’ (NLT). For hundreds of years Christian artists have depicted the family tree of Jesus in various art forms, such as stained-glass windows and wooden carvings, as a visual reminder of the events leading up to Jesus’ birth.

Our family’s interpretation of this idea is to hang a little wooden ornament on a branch every day throughout Advent. Each ornament symbolises a person or event in the story leading up to Jesus being born. As we read the corresponding story from the Bible every day and look at our Jesse Tree we are reminded of God’s faithfulness and of how all the promises of the Old Testament are fulfilled in Jesus. Every year I feel God speaking to me through the verses we read and I love to share what God is teaching me with those I walk alongside.

Candy canes
We have, for many years, cooked a traditional Christmas dinner for our international student friends at some point in December. We like to give them each a gift of a candy cane with a little note tied to it with a list of things that the candy cane represents: the shape represents a shepherd’s crook, which reminds us of the Good Shepherd; when turned upside down it becomes a letter J for Jesus; the white stripes represent Christ’s purity and the red stripes represent his blood; the hard candy reminds us that Jesus is the rock and the peppermint flavour reminds us of the spices that the magi brought to Jesus. This is just a little thing, but again it helps us to remember the reason that we are having a celebratory feast.

Shepherds’ meal
This is a tradition that we’ve stolen from The Life Giving Table (by Sally Clarkson). The idea is that on Christmas Eve you have a simple meal of potato soup, light lots of candles and read the story in Luke chapter 2 of the shepherds and the angels, imagining what it was like to be one of those Bethlehem shepherds sitting out on the hills under the stars 2000 years ago. I love the simplicity and beauty of this meal and the way it helps us enter into the story of Jesus’ birth. We are intentional about inviting others to join us for this meal and it is wonderful to celebrate the birth of our saviour with those we walk alongside.

Everyday conversations
These are just three of the things we do to remind ourselves and invite others to engage in the Christmas story. I also try to use the more traditional customs of the season as opportunities to talk about Jesus with my children. When we put up fairy lights, I point out that they can remind us that Jesus is the Light of the World. When we are wrapping gifts, I remind my boys that Jesus is the greatest gift and, as we prepare the Christmas feast, I remember that Jesus said he is the Bread of Life and that if we come to him we will never be hungry.

Awaiting the greatest celebration

I absolutely love Christmas time. I love the festivities, the traditions, the decorations, the giving and receiving of gifts. But over the years I have observed that occasionally on Christmas day I will catch myself feeling a little sad for a moment or two. I am reminded that even the best celebrations in this world never fully satisfy. We have within us a desire for the eternal feast in our eternal home, where we are fully known and fully loved.

Even the best earthly days are only a pale reflection of what is to come. As I reflect on this, I think that maybe these moments of sadness, of longing for something more, are actually gifts in themselves. They remind us that these earthly celebrations point to something far greater.

These moments remind us that the Christmas traditions are not an end in themselves; they simply serve as tools that point us to Jesus. These earthly celebrations are only a small foretaste of eternity and we must remember not to put our hope in the celebrations and traditions of this season but to put our hope in the one we celebrate.

I hope that, in the midst of the hurry and busyness of this Christmas season, you might find things that root you in the Bigger Story and that you might adopt traditions and practices that turn your face towards Jesus and help you to point those that you walk alongside to him as well.