Some pictures from today's festivities.

Christmastime, religious views or not, is about family.  As Christians, we come together as family to celebrate the birth of our Lord.  I mean, why do you think we do Christmas Eve services?  If it was simply about celebrating the birth of Jesus, we could do that without covering our hands in wax.  But we are meant to be together.

So we come together, in the form of a Christmas Eve service, to unify as a family, as the bride of of Our Lord.
I know many young families that do not go to their church's service, because they go with their parents to their church.  But I am not really a fan of this.  Well, let me rephrase that- I have no "official" problem with this, but they call it "church family" for a reason- your church is a family.

You may say, "But I go to a church with no one I know.  Why does it matter that I go to my church's Christmas Eve service?"
Because even if you don't know anyone, services like these are perfect opportunities to meet people.  I mean, seriously, when was the last time that you have randomly grabbed the hand of the stranger standing across the aisle from you?  You go out of your way to grab that stranger's hand- you don't just stick out your hand, but you stretch as far as you can in order to get to them.
And yep, it basically only happens at Christmas time.

So tonight's service is a great time to meet people at your church.  People are friendly, and you share an emotional connection with them.

Now, your church may not be doing a Christmas Eve service.  That's fine.  There is nothing in the Bible that says you have to have a Christmas Eve service or your church license is revoked.  If your church doesn't do a Christmas service, then maybe this is your chance to get to know the church's around you.  I mean, we as the Church are not unified by local church membership, but we are unified universally.  

So even if you don't know the people you are worshiping with, you are unified with them.  Who knows, you might discover that the God is doing some pretty awesome at the church down the street.  You then have a relationship with that church, seeing what God is doing around your city!

In a nutshell, tonight, don't go to a Christmas Eve service simply so you get "Jesus Points," or because you heard they are giving away free grape juice and crackers.  Go because you get the opportunity to celebrate the biggest miracle in the history of the universe with family.  Not your immediate or extended family, but something far greater and much larger!

And if you are in the Fountain Inn area, and are looking for a service to go to, I personally welcome you to Capstone Church's Christmas Eve Service, at 4:30PM.

I grew up in a Christian home, and many people would say I was sheltered. I would agree. I used to have to convince my parents when I wanted a secular cd. Like, prepare a persuasion speech... with references.

I believed until I was 12 that a virgin was simply "a girl who is too young and cannot have a baby." So yes, sheltered.

But my parents still did Santa. But they did it a little differently. I was always taught that Santa obeyed Jesus, and in honor of Jesus' birth, Santa brought you three presents. These presents would be left unwrapped and assembled (Santa even put the boxes in the garage in case we had to return them!)

I never heard of the whole "Santa or Jesus" argument until I was older. And when I did, I didn't understand it because my parents used Santa as a teaching tool that pointed to Christ.

Now, I know many people who don't do Santa because they don't want to lie to their kids, or who want to keep the focus on Jesus. That is fine, there is nothing wrong with that. But I do think there is something wrong with telling other parents that they should or shouldn't do Santa.

Personally, I never felt like my parents lied to me (in fact, I pretended to believe in Santa for several years because I was scared I wouldn't get presents if I said I knew).

Now, one year my parents went a little too far and bought a kit that made "Santa snow prints" in the living room. 1) it was South Carolina and around 55 degrees that year, and 2) if I had believed, I would have been freaked out realizing that there is a man walking around in my house while I'm unconscious.

But that's beside the point. The point is, the way my parents did Santa Clause, I never felt like they lied to me, and I never felt like Santa was evil, or comparable to Jesus.

I don't have any kids, but when I do, I probably will tell them about Santa, the same way my parents did: that Santa is a jolly obese individual who loves Jesus and can only eat part of a cookie, probably due to diabetes. (Should the new tradition be to leave Santa insulin?)

The joy of being a child is innocence and wonder. It is the fine line between knowing and believing. I know magic wasn't real, but it is way more fun when you see a magician do a cool trick and you let yourself get wrapped up in the illusion rather than point out the strings.

For some children, having the strings revealed to them ruins that innocence, to others, it simply brings them to the line between real and imaginary.

What did your parents do? Did you feel betrayed? How did they tell you about Santa? Please share your stories!

I have heard the following story each year from a tape my grandfather plays us at Christmas. It is from the late Paul Harvey. It is still incredibly powerful on why God came to earth.

The Man and the Birds by Paul Harvey

The man to whom I'm going to introduce you was not a scrooge, he was a kind decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men. But he just didn't believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas Time. It just didn't make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn't swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a man.

"I'm truly sorry to distress you," he told his wife, "but I'm not going with you to church this Christmas Eve." He said he'd feel like a hypocrite. That he'd much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. And so he stayed and they went to the midnight service.

Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound...Then another, and then another. Sort of a thump or a thud...At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They'd been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window.

Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter, if he could direct the birds to it. Quickly he put on a coat, galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them in. So he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow-lighted wide open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs, and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them...He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms...Instead, they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn.

And then, he realized that they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me...That I am not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how? Because any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him.

"If only I could be a bird," he thought to himself, "and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to safe, warm...to the safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, and hear and understand." At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells - Adeste Fidelis - listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas. And he sank to his knees in the snow.



It is funny, Papa each year has us sit down after Christmas, and after he half-jokes that we care more about presents, he pulls out his tape deck and a tape that has been played countless times. And out pours Paul Harvey's voice. I can quote this story, and many times when he plays the tape, we all breath a sigh and my mom says "be nice and listen." But strangely, the story always moves me.

The story is simple, yes. But it is also not cheesy. After the first year, I couldn't stand the song "Christmas Shoes". Nothing against Newsong, but it is the quintessential cheesy Christmas song about charity. And sometimes we focus too much on charity at Christmas time.

Yep, I said it: we focus too much on charity at Christmas time and not enough on the birth of Christ. That isn't to say we shouldn't do charity, we completely should. But how often do we connect Christmas with buying shoes for a poor kid with a dying mom instead of the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

This Christmas, give to charity. Enjoy family. Exchange presents. Eat way more than you should. But above all, celebrate the fact that the God of the universe saw us out in the cold, yards from warm safety, with no idea how to get there; and he became a fetus, passed through the womb, and entered the world so that He could effectively lead us.