The Greatest Gift of All--That Silent Night

With all the hustle and bustle of Christmas festivities, the question always arises, "What is the true meaning of Christmas?" The Christian answer is, "Christ is the meaning of CHRISTmas," and the other, less religious answers are usually, "Family," or "Giving." Kids will say it's about, "presents!"

The truth is, Christmas is about all these things.  It is about giving.  The day of Jesus's birth marked the date of the best gift ever given.  The gift of Jesus, the gift of forgiveness, the gift of someone paying the price for our sins. Jesus was born to die on the cross.  He had a mission and that was to give all who believed and followed God the gift of eternal life. Yes, Christmas is about giving.  We give gifts as a way to model after Christ.  We give the people close to us gifts to show our appreciation, our love, and also as a way to sacrifice some of ourselves, whether it's time or money. In doing this, we are following Christ's example.  All the gifts under the tree are not a bad thing.  Gifts are supposed to be a way to become selfless, to think of others before ourselves.  It's about doing something for someone else simply because you know what it will mean to them. However, it is sad to see how sometimes this mindset of Christmas gets reversed and instead of being about giving like Christ gave, it's about getting what we want or think we deserve. It's so sad that something God intended to be so selfless and loving can become so twisted. What we all need to do is bring it all back to that night...that silent night.

The night was just like any other.  There was nothing special about the time or the place or even the people.  It was just a young woman and her husband who weren't important enough to get a good place to stay the night.  They were sharing a stable with a bunch of animals for the night.  When Jesus was born, he didn't have a crib, he had a manger.  Instead of warm clothes and blankets he had strips of cloth.  But this was no ordinary baby, this was a King. But he wasn't even an ordinary King, and he didn't have just an ordinary birth.  Everything went according to plan, as odd as that may seem, but God knew what he was doing.  Jesus couldn't be born in a fancy palace with gold and jewels and thousands of people bowing down at his cradle.  He had a humble birth, a birth like no other.

When we stop and think of this, all of our meaningless fuss over making everything perfect each Christmas is ridiculous.  Christmas isn't about the shiny lights, the table full of food, the beautifully wrapped presents, the detailed decorations, or the fancy clothes.  Why try so hard for all of that, when that's not what the night of Jesus' birth was like at all?  I'm not saying any of those things are bad, but when people become so wrapped up in making everything over the top and making sure everything is just exactly so, people begin to stress out. Holidays bring about a lot of stress to people.  People often dread the holiday season because of all the work that must be done and all the frustration that comes with it. When Christmas becomes anything like that, it's straying away from what it's really about.  It's about a silent night.  It's about forgetting the stress, forgetting the busyness, and meditating on the true gift that has already been given to us.  We have already received the best gift of all, now we must live in the joy knowing that we have this gift! So shut out any distractions and anything that takes your focus off the gift we've already received on that Silent Night.