Christmas means more: Launch

There is a Christmas worship song that has a chorus that goes like this:
“Crackers and turkeys and pudding and cream,
toys in the windows that I’ve never seen.
This is the Christmas that everyone sees, but Christmas means more to me. It’s somebody’s birthday I won’t forget, as I open the things that I get.
I’ll remember the inn and the stable so bare, and Jesus who once lay there.”
Musically the song isn’t anything special, but that chorus is a really powerful reminder as to how easy it is to get distracted by all sorts of stuff coming up to Christmas, and end up forgetting the reason for it all.
It is time for us to reclaim Christmas as a celebration of the birth of Christ. Christmas means more than Santa, Coca-Cola adverts, decorated trees and cheesy pop tunes.
Christmas isn’t meant to be about getting the most expensive presents under the tree, but remembering the most expensive gift God freely gave us.
It is time to rise up against the trend of refusing to call Christmas ‘Christmas’ for fear of causing offence.
It is time to let the world see the gift of love that was born in a manger.
This is a time for us to say to the world “Christmas means more”.
So often as Christians it is easy for us to throw out a quick “Jesus is the reason”, send our nativity based Christmas cards, and then proceed to celebrate Christmas the exact same way everyone else does – worshipping at the altar of High Street tills, getting caught up in the business of parties, focusing on the turkey and mulled wine, and forgetting that Christmas means more than this. This year we want to go back to the heart of it all, putting Christ at the centre. There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with the other things – I’m sure God loves to see us having a great time, but when they take priority over celebrating the birth of Jesus then we having lost the meaning of it all.
All4God.co.uk will be bringing you a multitude of devotionals, reflections, discussions and Christmas music to help you remember what Christmas is all about, to equip you to show the world what it is all about, and to shout out that “Christmas means more!” This is the start of 12 days of Christmas Means More, and the plan is each day there’ll be at least one new post, so keep coming back, keep remembering that Christmas means more than Santa, presents and parties, and together let’s make sure that we let people know about the gift of life God made freely available to them this Christmas.
We’d love you to get involved and interact with this, through leaving your views as comments, through our Facebook page where we’ll be posting a few discussion questions, and even through you writing a devotion about what Christmas means to you if you are up for it – get in touch with us through the Contact us page if you are!