Christmas Grinch

Ignoring Christmas, are you kidding? How would that be possible? The stores started assembling their elaborate Christmas displays in mid-October well before Halloween. It is a tradition in my family to wait until the day after thanksgiving to get all the decorations down and the tree up. Some wise people have been purchasing gifts all year long in anticipation of Christmas morning. Then there are those Christmas parties and the anticipation of spending the holidays with family and friends. With all this activity it is impossible to ignore Christmas.
Maybe that is exactly the problem. We are so busy getting ready for Christmas and cleaning up after Christmas that the true significance of Christmas can be ignored or missed entirely. Perhaps we need to learn the lesson that Dr. Seuss writes about in the Christmas classic, "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas."

And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?
It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
"It came without packages, boxes or bags!"
And he puzzled three hours, `till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!
"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store.
"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"
                 
Christ is what Christmas is about. The more we ignore that the greater chance that we will miss Christmas. The more we recognize Christ and His gift of eternal life the more Christmas will mean to us. Though I love the tinsel and decorations, the family and friends gatherings, the opportunity to show my love to my loved ones by giving a small token gift, and the small traditions that make this such a blessed time of year, I fully realize that Christmas in it's true significance, can be experienced without any of those things. Christmas is about Immanuel, God with us. So really everyday ought to be Christmas in the believer's heart. May you have a great Christmas season, and may you have the joy of having Christ within you all the days of this new year!!