All About The Baby

James Pope | 19:25, 18th December 2012

Perhaps 'I don't like Christmas' is a bit strong. I should say, I don't enjoy Christmas or rather, I didn't enjoy Christmas.  Let me try and explain.

Like most children I got really excited about Christmas. It was mainly about the presents. I loved presents!  I would open a present on Christmas morning and want to play immediately.  I have wonderful childhood memories that would appear cliché to some, of getting a new bike for Christmas and being out on the street with my dad trying to ride it, with all the other kids who had received bikes for Christmas.  I remember the Christmas where I got my Power Ranger Megazord (that’s the original Power Rangers by the way, none of this modern nonsense!)  I played forever with that toy, taking it apart and putting it back together again.

As I entered my teenage years it got tougher to get so excited about presents.  I was never really interested in gadgets and gizmos and not particularly fussed by films or music.  When I was 16 I asked for a lightsaber for Christmas, trying to hang on to the feeling of getting exciting toys.  My parents played along and I got my lightsaber but knew I wouldn’t be able to tell anyone in school in January! 

I was starting to enjoy Christmas less and less but nothing could have prepared me for what would happen to Christmas presents when you became an adult.  Socks, deodorant, gloves, shower gel and a book if you were lucky. I turned into a bit of a Scrooge, hating the commercialised elements of the secular festival and even struggling to find joy in the business of Christmas organisation in church.

But I did say 'I didn’t like Christmas'. So what changed?  

3 years ago my youngest son Ezekiel was born.  At his first Christmas I started to get feelings of enjoyment again that I hadn't had for a long time.  My presents hadn't changed, but now I was giving my child toys and watching his excitement as he opened his presents, and it was great.  Christmas was fun again; it was all about the baby!  And right there it hit me. Christmas is all about the baby!  Not my baby, but the baby that was born in the manger.  God's Son Jesus, given as the greatest present of all, Emmanuel – God with us. This baby would become the Saviour of the world.  I'd been a Christian for years; I'd been in countless nativity plays (always a shepherd and never Joseph), I knew every carol and heard the message of Christmas over and over, but I'm not sure it had ever sunk in until that point.

I enjoy Christmas again now.  I love family time, food and presents but I know now that when you peel all that back it's all about the baby. I hope you've realised it too and I look forward to celebrating the birth of Jesus with you this Christmas.

James Pope is our Children and Schools Worker. He will be leading a special Christmas service for the whole family called "The Promise of Christmas" on Sunday 23rd December at 10.30am at Highfields Cathays in Monthermer Road. Children are invited to come dressed as shepherds, angels or even a donkey!