What is the spirit of Christmas? We can best answer that by first asking ourselves...
1. What is Christmas?
Christmas is the celebration of the birth of
our Lord and Savior. Matthew 1:21-23
says, “And she shall bring forth a son,
and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their
sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the
Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall
bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being
interpreted is, God with us.” As
Christians, we celebrate the birth of the Son of God, when God became flesh and
dwelt among us. “And the Word was made
flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only
begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). It is precious to us because He came to all
people everywhere. John 3:16 reminds us
of this: “For God so loved the world....” John prophesied that the church will be made
up of people from all points of the globe.
“...for Thou wast slain, and hast
redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people,
and nation” (Revelation 5:9).
At Christ’s birth the Shepherds came, later the
Wise Men came and at the Temple Simeon and Anna recognized Him. Different groups of people, from different
parts of the world welcomed the little King of Kings! We see when Jesus was
only twelve he astounded and confounded the teachers of the law. In His ministry he came to women of ill
repute, maniacs and tax collectors. Some
of the highest-ranking religious rulers came to Him such as Nicodemus. Even the enemies of our Lord said, “...behold, the world is gone after him”
(John 12:19). Christmas is a reminder
that Christ is the gift to the entire world. “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift” (II Corinthians
9:15). Christ was born to die for our
sins. He rose again and is willing to
give eternal life to whosoever believes by repenting and putting their whole
life in His hands by faith.
2. Why
Gifts at Christmas?
Like a tree with one trunk and multiple
branches, the custom of gift giving has more than one reason. The record of gifts at Christmas comes to us
from the Wise Men or Magi, ”And when they
were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and
fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto
him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh” (Matthew 2:11). The Magi viewing from Jerusalem would have
seen the star as it in the sky above the little town of Bethlehem. (Christ was a toddler at this time). So after the Wise Men left Jerusalem, God
continued to guide them to the exact spot to find Jesus and it is no coincidence
that gifts were brought to Jesus on. So
the first Christmas gift giving did take place.
The
second branch on our Christmas tree comes to us from an actual person named
Nicholas, who was born during the third century in the village of Patara, when
this area of the world was under Greek dominion. He was reared in an affluent family and while
very young, his wealthy parents died leaving a substantial fortune to him. Nicholas committed his life to serving Christ
and took very seriously the words of Jesus when He said, “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave
me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in” (Matthew 25:35). “And the King shall answer and say unto
them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least
of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:35,40). Shortly
after entering the ministry Nicholas became the Bishop of Myra located in
modern day Turkey. As Nicholas beheld
the poor and abused of his community, he desired to secretly become a blessing. So he stealthily set out at night away from
observing eyes and threw small sacks of money into people’s windows, chimneys
or shoes which had been placed outside the houses. Because of the vast sum of money left to him
in his inheritance, he was able to keep this custom up for a good while. One of my favorite stories of this kind man
tells of a poor village man who had three virgin daughters and in that time and
area of the world a man was required to pay a dowry in giving his daughter away
in marriage. If a man were not able to
make dowry, his daughters would not marry or, even worse, become prostitutes to
make money for the family. As each girl
came of age to be married, Nicholas anonymously threw a sack of gold into the
house to cover the girls’ dowries. One
night, one of the girls had washed out her stockings and hung them above the
smoldering embers of the fireplace to dry while she slept and when Nicholas
threw the sack of gold into the chimney, the dowry money for the girl landed in
her stocking. Thus, the custom of
hanging stockings at Christmas was born.
By the time the reformation began to take
place, Nicholas, like many departed saints (which all believers are) who had
lived a good Christian life, began to be venerated beyond God’s design. Thus, to restore the true desire of Nicholas
to remain unknown in his giving so that Christ might receive the glory, Martin Luther of Germany began to refer to
this ancient giver of gifts as “Christkindl” meaning “The Christ Child.” Therefore in the original intent of Nicholas,
to give God the glory as the giver (James 1:17), Luther encouraged everyone to
give in the spirit of the Christ-child.
And this is where we get our modern “Santa Claus,” a derivative of the
Dutch name “Sinterklaas” meaning Saint Nicholas. Let us embrace the spirit of giving like the
Wise Men as an act of worship to Christ and let us be practical in our giving
to be a blessing to those we love in the spirit of Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment