Opinion

Know the baby: Rethinking the way we celebrate Christmas

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Everyone knows to “keep the Christ in Christmas” during the holiday season. It is an idea found plastered on t-shirts and shouted from the pulpits of our churches. We know that baby Jesus was only a baby for a little while, that he grew up to save us from our sins.

But we hear this every year. The nativity and life of Christ has become commonplace in our Christian society. Outside of Christian circles, people seem to forget that Jesus was more than a baby, but inside, we seem to forget that Jesus was more than a man.

We The Threefold Advocate would like to take time this season to remind you of the magnitude of the Christmas story.

Think of God. Not the God you comfortably talk to, or the God whose name is casually taken in vain, or the God of the Old Testament who seemed jealous and angry. God is all of those things and none of them. He is so far beyond our understanding that all we can do is make up poor analogies to try and see him.

This God, for some reason, loves us—the pitiful creations who would dare doubt the existence of the one who keeps our lungs inflating every minute. He loves us so much that he decided to become one of us.

Think now of the stable where Jesus was born. Inside you’ll find hay and dirt and animal dung. Think of the birth itself. There was blood and amniotic fluid and maybe excrement. There was screaming and noise.

Think of God’s fullness, his divine nature and spotless perfection, in the form of a squirming, wrinkly baby.

This season, instead of insisting on saying “Merry Christmas,” instead of “Happy Holidays,” think instead of the unimaginable love of a God who would become one of us in order to save us.

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