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Christmas Traditions
Growing up in Australia, Christmas Traditions were a little bit different than they are here in Midwestern America. What is your favorite Christmas Tradition?
1 John 3:5
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Do you have a favorite Christmas tradition? For me, growing up in Australia, Christmas, of course, was always in the middle of summer, and so traditions for our family would include eating a lamb roast for lunch and then sitting on the couch watching the cricket on the telly. Maybe while the fan was blowing to try and keep us cool in the heat. A lot of people around us would not have many Christmas lights on their houses because it was the middle of summer, didn’t get dark early, what was the point of putting up lights?
Now, that’s probably very different to the traditions that you’re used to at Christmas time. Yet, regardless of what the traditions are that we have in our lives, we want to remember the most important reason for Christmas. Christmas truly is about solving our biggest problem. Our biggest problem is sin. That is when we have broken God’s law. Our Christmas traditions, the joy that we might have and the feelings that we might have in our traditions, they might distract us a little bit from our sins and failures, but they don’t take them away or remove them. But that is why we have Christmas. The true reason.
John, in his first epistle in chapter three, he says talking about Jesus,
You know that he appeared in order to take away our sins and in him there is no sin. (1 John 3:5)
The baby Jesus came in that manger, true God and true man with the sole purpose of taking away your sins. Martin Luther once said that your sin can be only in one of two places. Either it is on you and you’re responsible for it or it is on Jesus and he is responsible and takes it away from you.
The Lord doesn’t want you to ignore him. He doesn’t want you to ignore Jesus or ignore your sin. Otherwise, you will be responsible for it. But rather, he wants you to trust in that baby Jesus who came to take away your sins. Jesus did that with his sinless life and with his holy death on the cross. His resurrection proves that your sins have been taken away.
And so this Christmas, regardless of what traditions you celebrate or maybe this Christmas, it won’t even feel like Christmas to you at all. You can still have joy knowing that the baby Jesus came to take away your sins and to give you heaven. Amen.
