I have to admit when it comes to Christmas, I am a bit of a Scrooge. I think a lot of it has to do with the grand build up and then a great let down. It has also been a bit of conflict between my faith and the world's vision of Christmas. The "true meaning" of Christmas is supposed to be about celebrating the birth of Jesus, God's greatest gift to mankind. Instead of focusing on that great gift often times we get caught up in buying presents, overeating, sending Christmas cards and feeling somewhat a failure because we did not meet the world's expectations of what Christmas is all about.
With all of that said, what are you teaching your child about Christmas?? Is Christmas all about presents and Santa Clause?? Is it about making your child's Christmas the best ever beause you bought him or her the most fantastic toy ever?? From my experience most of the toys we bought our children were broken or forgotten about by February. I can personally remember just a few presents from my childhood; I got a desk one year and I always got pajamas from my Grandparents (which we got to open up Christmas Eve).
To show what a Scrooge I was when our children were growing up; I did not want to celebrate Christmas with Santa Clause. My husband said we had to have Santa Clause, so we did Santa with a twist; Santa brought presents because he was so excited about Jesus being born. Santa came Christmas Eve, but we made sure the presents from Santa were simple. I was concerned that when our sons found out there was not Santa that it may make them think that I was lying about Jesus. I remembered how angry I was at my mom when I found out she lied to me about Santa and did not want to do that to our sons.
If you think about the "Biblical meaning" of Christmas it really is a bit humbling. God gave us His one and only Son. Could you give your child away? God who is Holy, perfect and under no obligation to give us sinners anything gave his son to the human race. Think about giving your child to someone whose capability of caring for your child is a lot lower than your capabilities. A king giving his only child to a pauper. The child went willingly because he loves his father and he loves the paupers.
With all of that said, I am going to give some suggestions to help you focus on the Biblical meaning of Christmas; Christmas Eve service at church, Birthday cake for Jesus, Nativity scene out without the baby Jesus until Christmas morning, bake cookies for the elderly, policemen, firemen etc., project Angel Tree, Shoeboxes for Samaritians Purse, read the Christmas story out of the Bible. Hopefully your child's expectations about Christmas will be rooted in the Biblical meaning of Christmas.
Matthew 1:23 "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"---which means, "God with us."
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