For the Love of Christmas

I love the Christmas season!

I love driving around with my girls and exclaiming at the lights.

I love baking (and eating!) Christmas cookies.

I love the colors, the smells (thank you Yankee Candle for somehow capturing so many) and the anticipation that comes with this time of year.

I love the homemade Christmas ornaments that hang on our tree (one of three we put up!).

I love snowmen, Santas and nutcrackers. People seem kinder, more hopeful, more connected, more willing to believe that there is something beyond today, beyond ourselves.

It is a magical time of year, but of course we believers know it is not magic at all, but Christ.

I think I could list 100 more things that I love about this time of year, but the thing I probably love most about the Christmas season is the music.

Although by the twenty-fifth I may want to gouge my eyes out if I have to listen to Santa Baby one more time I never tire of the carols.

And not just because of the inherent beauty of the music, although that certainly plays a part.

I have come to find so much truth and depth in the classic Christmas carols that they help me worship in a way that brings me to a deep place of understanding of my Lord’s heart, character and will.

My favorite – O Come All Ye Faithful is a check for me.

When I sing it it causes me to ask myself if I am worshiping God with my life, with everything that I am.

This is what adoration would look like.

Another one that is sung in possibly every Christmas special ever made – Silent Night – reminds me of the wonder and beauty of Christ’s birth and I marvel at this piece of God’s perfect and ageless plan.

One I love that is slightly less well known – I Heard the Bells on ChristmasDay – reminds me to hope and rest in God’s power and sovereignty in the midst of sorrow, pain and suffering which seem in no short supply these days.

A lesser known verse in another long time favorite, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, has really resonated with me this year and I find myself earnestly praying it every time I sing.

And the perennial favorite Joy to the World! is one that fills me with the astounding hope and of course JOY that comes from serving a God who loves this world so deeply that his perfect plan means he waits for us to choose the savior who came to us as a poor man’s baby, but whose kingship cannot be denied and whose power breaks that of the evil in this world.

So yes, the tinsel and the trappings of the season are fun and I enjoy them as much as, or probably more than the next girl, but I love how much the music of Christmas brings me close to the heart of God and the redemption story which is His love for the lost, his power to save us and His presence then, now and always.

Happy advent and Merry Christmas!