By Pastor Jeff    

I think it’s neat how Christmas is sometimes celebrated differently in every household. Some put presents under the tree unwrapped on Christmas morning, while some can’t wait until Christmas morning so they celebrate on Christmas Eve, while others make long journeys across the land to arrive at their loved ones home just in time to unwrap those wonderful thought filled presents. However, there is always that one thing that no matter how you celebrate Christmas that never really seems to change. And by the way it just so happens to be my favorite tradition. That’s the fact that traditionally Christmas calls all of us home.

Home, where is home? It’s often said by many that home is where the heart lies. Home for my wife and our two boys for the past 13 years has been in the state of Oklahoma, but before then it was Arkansas. So this Christmas Season we will make the 3-hour drive down I-40 to meet with our family and follow after those never changing family Christmas traditions.

You know what I am talking about. We all have them, some will spend Christmas Eve with family there sitting around the fire eating dinner and talking about the past year and all of its ups and downs, while others will gather for their amazing Christmas Eve service at their local church, some will spend Christmas Eve walking around their neighborhood singing Christmas carols, while some will spend the night serving in a local soup kitchen. All of those traditions are great and wonderful, but if you would please allow me to share just one of our Walker family Christmas traditions.

We, the Walkers, have a Christmas Eve tradition. Every Christmas Eve no matter where we are, you can find all of us, Ty, Trey, Maresha and I, all gathered around the kitchen, baking a cake. Yes, you read me right we bake a cake and decorate it with Happy B-Day Jesus! Then on Christmas day we all sing Happy B-Day to Jesus, eat cake and open presents. This was a tradition that we started with our boys at a very early age. Some might ask the question, why? You see we wanted to make sure that in the midst of all of the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season that our boys (Ty & Trey) never forget the true meaning of why we celebrate Christmas.

It’s easy to forget what Christmas is all about this time of the year with all the shopping, the wrapping and unwrapping of the gifts, and all the feasting and partying that comes with the season. It’s important enough to us that we take time out every year and remind ourselves of why we are celebrating.

You see Christmas is about the celebration of Christ’s birth and as long as we remember this it will ultimately remind all of us to stop this Christmas season and make room for the greatest love story of all time.

The story of how our Savior, Jesus, was born in a stable because there was no room for his family in the inn. Think about that for just a minute. God came to the earth, in human form, “to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10), “that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). This is why we celebrate Christmas. Our Lord God, Jesus Christ, Immanuel, our Savior, came into this world, the world he created (Gen. 1:1; John 1:3), to save those who would believe in him from eternal separation from him (John 3:16; Romans 3:23, 6:23).

So I guess what I was hoping to achieve with this blog this morning is pretty simple. I want all of us to remember why we celebrate Christmas and more than that remind ourselves that Christmas is more than a single day, but it’s about a God who had a plan to save the world and it all started on that one special day in the manger of a little town called Bethlehem.