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If you’ve noticed, we often focus on how we are celebrating Christmas and not so much on who we are celebrating or why. This is something that often happens with ritual, and that is why we so often need to be brought back to those central questions of what it is we actually are celebration and what it is we are actually trying to do. That is why today’s Gospel is so important at the start of this Christmas Season.
Christmas isn’t just about celebrating another baby or another birth. Jesus wasn’t just some great man to look back on as an example. Jesus wasn’t just a great prophet, regaling us with His wise words. Jesus, as we hear in the Gospel today, was the Word. That Word was there in the beginning. That Word was with God. In fact, that Word was God.
Jesus is God Himself come down into this world to be one of us and to be with us. His presence here is a sign of just how much God loves us. God chose to be one of us and live among us out of love and a desire to bring us back to Him.
Jesus is the who that we are celebrating today, and His love is the why for our celebration. All the business and traditions and hubbub cause us to forget that sometimes. Christmas isn’t just a celebration, Christmas isn’t just about ritual. It is about celebrating God’s love and His coming into this world to be among us.
This year, as the normal distractions are removed from us in this season, I hope you will remember that. I hope you will recollect God’s love for you. I hope you will take the time to remind others of this love. If we can do that, then we will have truly celebrated Christmas.