The Christmas You Always Wanted

Isaiah 9:2-7; Luke 2:1-20

December 24, 2005

Dr. Larry D. Thorson

The Christmas you always wanted. For some they dream of a white Christmas. For others its chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Yet others it’s about being home for Christmas. Listen to the later 20^th century songs about Christmas. I didn’t realize how many are about someone’s perfect Christmas past.

I’ll never forget my first Christmas with the girl I was to marry just a week later. It was to be the perfect Christmas because we were going to spend it together with her family on her parents’ farm in Virginia. I wanted to give her just the perfect gift that would show that I was a sensitive kind of guy who actually listened to her. On a date she had mentioned how she had heard the Ouachita Baptist College choir and really like their music but had never been able to find it for sale anywhere. I made a mental note of that and in the days before the internet tracked down the Ouachita Baptist College choir where I bought a cassette tape (hey, cd’s, mp3’s and IPods hadn’t been invented yet) of their music. I was so proud of myself. I wrapped the present up and threw it in my suitcase and flew from San Jose to Virginia. Christmas Day arrived and I was so excited to see her reaction to my great sensitivity. But when she opened the present she didn’t have the pleased look that I had hoped for. Somehow in the frantic packing of my suitcase I had wrapped the wrong thing and had left the Ouachita Baptist College choir tape at home. What I had wrapped wasn’t something she could relate. Of course mistakes happen but this was my first Christmas gift to her and I can only imagine what must have gone through her mind about who she was marrying. So much for the perfect Christmas that year, at least we had each other.

Well things didn’t go much better for Joseph and Mary on that first Christmas either. For starters Caesar Augustus, the ruler at the time issued a decree that he wanted a census to be taken of his people. Great, of all the times he would call for a census it would have to be when Mary was in her ninth month of pregnancy. You see to register in a census meant traveling to one’s ancestral hometown wherever that was. Couldn’t he have waited one more month? Did he have to do it now? The ninth month of pregnancy is not the time you want to travel.

That reminds me of a sign I used to see at Happy Hollow Park in San Jose where I celebrated many a birthday growing up. It was outside a harmless little train ride called Danny the Dragon and it said “Due to jarring bumps on this ride pregnant women are cautioned about riding”. Bumpy roads like the road to Bethlehem are just not good for pregnant women.

Of course there’s always the possibility that they could have gotten to Bethlehem, registered in the census and then gotten back home to Nazareth before the baby even stirred. Luke 2:6 says “While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son.” Great, of all the times the baby could be born he had to come while they were on the road. Perfect, just perfect. Can it get any worse? “She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn”.

Perfect, just perfect. In case you’re not aware of what a manger is, it’s the box they put straw in for the cows to eat out of. My father-in-law raises beef cattle in Virginia. I’ve watched his cows eat and it’s not a pretty sight. What they’ve been eating on is not something you want to lay a little pink baby in. Besides, think about it, this is their first child. You know how parents are with their first child.

With the first baby you pre wash your newborn's clothes, color-coordinate them, and fold them neatly in the baby's little dresser. With your second baby you check to make sure that the clothes are clean and discard only the ones with the darkest stains. With the third baby you say “hey boys can wear pink, can't they?”
With the first baby at the first sign of distress - a whimper, a frown, anything - you pick up the baby. With the second baby you pick her up when her wails threaten to wake your firstborn. With the third baby you teach your 3-year-old how to rewind the mechanical swing.

But the biggest difference with first time parents and the more seasoned ones is when they have to leave their baby with a sitter. The first time you leave your baby with a sitter, you call home 5 times. With the second baby you remember to leave a number with the sitter where you can be reached…just before you walk out the door. With the third baby you leave instructions for the sitter to call only if she sees blood.

So here was Mary, an unmarried pregnant teenager far away from her family’s support system giving birth to her first baby in a barn. That after having obeyed everybody she was supposed to obey including God.

The Christmas you always wanted. Think about it. The only thing perfect about the first Christmas was the baby. Not even remembering the actual date has gone right. It’s highly unlikely that Jesus was even born on December 25. Spring is most likely, because the Bible says shepherds were watching their flocks at night and they would have done that in the spring when their ewes were being born. In fact sometime around AD 200, theologians concluded Jesus was born on May 20.(1) It wasn’t until AD 385 that Pope Julius I declared December 25 as the day for celebrating Christ’s birth.

The reason for December 25 was to challenge the pagan celebration of the Roman god Saturnalia. Saturnalia (from the god Saturn) was the name the Romans gave to their holiday marking the Winter Solstice. Over the years, it expanded to a whole week, December 17 through the 23rd. In this holiday the Romans would exchange presents and decorate evergreen trees. But it degenerated from mostly tomfoolery, marked chiefly by having masters and slaves switch places, to sometimes debauchery, so that among Christians the word "saturnalia" came to mean "orgy". That’s why the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church tried to overcome it with their own holiday they called Christmas.(2) They said “we can wrap presents and we can decorate trees as good as any pagan.” But what got lost in their attempt to christianize a pagan holiday was the baby. That’s why we give gifts to one another at Christmas instead of to the baby. The controversy over whether we say “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” is just an ancient debate being revived. The non-believers are simply reclaiming what they originally started.

The Christmas we celebrate is really about being with the people we love and especially Jesus. No animosity. No sickness. No separation. For me it’s a big turkey on the table with all my wife’s trimmings surrounded by my wife and children. But my dad can’t be there tomorrow because he died in 1991. My mom can’t be there either because travel at 87 is difficult for her. My inlaws can’t be there because they live in Virginia. So Christmas can’t be all that I want it to be.

But every year Christmas is a reminder to me that because God became a baby and became the perfect sacrifice for my sins that one day the Christmas I always wanted will be mine. On that day there will be no animosity and no sickness and no separation from those I love.

All Jesus asks of you is that you open your spiritual mind and heart and allow him to be your savior and your lord. You can do that afresh by saying to him “Lord Jesus, I am a sinner, I sometimes or often do bad things or think bad thoughts. I need you to save me. Come into my life, I give it to you.” If you prayed that prayer tonight Jesus came into your heart. The next step would be to get to know him in the Bible and in prayer. Get a Bible and start reading it everyday starting at the Gospel of John. Get involved in a church where you’ll be taught the Bible. Then on Christmas you can enjoy whatever circumstances are yours this year knowing that the Christmas you always wanted is coming one day. Enjoy this experience today and know that the best is yet to come.

1) The Case for Christmas by Lee Strobel, p.20 Zondervan Publishing

2) Wikipedia online encyclopedia article on “Saturnalia”