A Merry Little Christmas

Christmas is quite possibly the biggest and most sentimental celebration in American culture. Whether you’re a believer or not, Christmas is a time full of deep meaning and significance to many people. It’s at the end of our year, and many of us feel the desire for this celebration to bring a satisfying conclusion to the story of our year. It’s the time we’re supposed to remember “what matters most”: family, friends, and - of course - Jesus (the reason for the season). We want experiences that fill our hearts with wonder, and draw us closer to others. We want time to reflect on the year, and to be thankful for all we have. And we want traditions that help us experience the loving taste of nostalgia. But the more expectations we put on Christmas, the bigger it gets, and the more difficult it is to satisfy all those desires. But maybe “big” is not what Christmas is about. Historically Christmas has not been one of the most popular and beloved holidays. It’s only been in the last 150 years, largely thanks to Charles Dickens and Coca-Cola, that Christmas has become a big deal.Even for Christians, Easter is the much more important holiday, as we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus. Throughout history, Christmas was not seen as the important, end of the year celebration it has become. Rather it was the beginning of the Church calendar. It’s not the time that we remember the “big thing” God did in the world - that’s later in the story.In fact, the subversive beauty of Christmas is its smallness. It’s the fact that the birth of Jesus was a mostly unnoticed event in His time and place. It’s a time for us to marvel at how the infinitely large God of the Universe became as little as a fetus in a poor, teenage girl’s womb. It’s about the strangeness of the God of Creation resting in a manger. It’s a reminder that God works in small, unseen ways through the lives of ordinary, insignificant people to make the biggest difference in His Kingdom. And though the world may not notice right away, through the story God is weaving in history, the impact of ordinary people interacting with an extraordinary God has eternal significance.So this Christmas season we’re going to have ourselves a merry LITTLE Christmas. We’re going to look at the ordinary people in the Christmas story who chose to be faithful to the small role God asked them to play in His grand narrative. And as we do, we’re going to imagine what small roles God has called us to be faithful to in His Kingdom. And though this Christmas may not stand out as the most “meaningful” or the “biggest” in our memory, it will be another chance for us to faithfully honor the King who chose to reign from a Manger Thro