All of the planning and anticipation of the holiday season build into a crescendo of Christmas greetings, frenzied package opening, and feasting throughout the day. Christmas Eve services close, and Christmas Day flys by. The lights eventually are turned off, the decorations are taken down, and life rolls on eventually leading to the holiday anticipation once again.
But how do we keep the Christmas fade from happening? I don’t mean keeping the lights and trees up all year round (although there are those that do). I’m referring to the meaning of Christmas. The baby in the manger to save us all. At the end of Christmas Day, I usually think of a song from my childhood, “Keep Christmas with You all through the Year”. A song from a Sesame Street Christmas special that became a tradition to watch on Christmas Eve. But I seem to reflect on the words as I am in bed, ready to drift to sleep.
Keep Christmas with you
All through the year
When Christmas is over
You can keep it near
Think of this Christmas day
When Christmas is far away…
Simple, maybe silly, and certainly intended to be secular, but there is some application for the Christian. Don’t throw away Christmas with the empty boxes and bows. Don’t store it away in the attic until next year. In Charles Dickens’s classic tale “A Christmas Carol,” Ebenezer Scrooge says, “I will honour Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the past, the present and the future. The spirits of all three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”
As Christians we need to take the spirits of Dickens and exchange them for the Bible. Remember the teachings and stories from the past, the relevancy of what it says about today, and its prophetic future. Store them all in our hearts and carry Christmas, the baby who will save us – Jesus, God with us, throughout the year. Find a good devotional, or a reading plan that takes you into God’s word daily. You’ll find that Christmas, Easter, the ascension and other important biblical events are just as important everyday as they are in their season.
Isaiah 55:10-11 – For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.