The older you are, the more Christmas memories you have. I have a lot of Christmas memories. Please allow me to share a few with you.
My Johnston grandparents, George and Mattie, were married on Christmas Day, 1900 (okay, I wasn’t around for that, but please let me continue.). Travel was by horse and buggy, so entire families seldom got together...except for Christmas.
We probably think that Christmas Day would not be a good day for a wedding, but you can understand how it worked at the beginning of the 20th century.
Some people are fortunate, or not so fortunate, to have been born on Christmas. The best man at my wedding is an example.
As a kid, I received exactly what I wanted from Santa, a double-decker car garage, including little cars. After a full day of playing with my new treasure, I put it on my bed and then dozed off to sleep. The next morning it was flattened! I forgot to mention my younger brother and I slept in bunk beds, me on top and Jim on the bottom. In the middle of the night, Jim had a dream and rolled off the bed and came crashing down on top of my new car garage! I wanted to hit him, but couldn’t very well punish him for such a thing. To this day I wonder if he really did do it on purpose. Oh well, love you, Bro!
My neighborhood friend had an Uncle Dick who came each year pretending to be Santa Claus for neighborhood children. If I recall, he was juiced up at the time, which made him hilarious.
Some memories of Christmas were also eventful, but not always in a good way. I served many years as a Law Enforcement Chaplain. I would see the darker side of families who probably shouldn’t have been together for the holiday. I’ve had to go to fatal accidents and then report to parents the deaths of their children. Others experience abandonment from family. I’m aware of someone whose father said, “I don’t ever want to bother with you again.” Some go through the agony of estrangement or illness.
You probably have your own stories. But mine have balanced out somewhat. When I was a young boy my Mom spent some time in the hospital for depression. My dad worked swing shifts, so I became his overseer. Christmas was fast approaching and we didn’t know if Mom would be able to take a leave from the hospital. On Christmas Eve I saw someone pull up in our drive. It was our pastor. He went around to the passenger side and opened up the door...for our Mother! That was the best Christmas gift I ever had, even better than that car garage.
I close with this memory. In 1996, my wife and I went with a church group to Israel. We went to Bethlehem to visit the Church of the Nativity. As we descended into that small cave under the floor of the church, we stood by the place that tradition says is the birthplace of the Lord Jesus Christ!
You may never get to visit the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, but you can still experience it, every time you have a new birth among your family and friends. Every birth is a fresh start, a new beginning.
“Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life emerges! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins.” 2 Corinthians 5:17-20 (The Message Translation).
How does God give us that fresh start to become a new person? The answer is a call to the manger. That gift overcame all brokenness, and estrangement from others and God, and provides eternal life itself.
