Christmas is probably one of the greatest times of the year for people of the Christian faith. It's one of those rare holidays that actually starts long before the day begins. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, usually right after Thanksgiving, Christians begin their shopping and decorating. The tree goes up, the nativity scenes go up and the shopping sprees all over the globe take up hours of their day.



And then the actually day comes, which begins the night before with Christmas Eve services and caroling out in the streets. After that the gifts get placed under the tree and the milk and cookies go out for Santa. On Christmas morning the gifts get opened by all the wide eyed children, followed by a yummy Christmas breakfast. Later on everyone goes to the grandparents to have a big Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. More presents are exchanged. Everyone laughs and sings and has a wonderful time.

When the night ends we all go home, have a few last Christmas cookies and finally, after a long day of partying and having a jolly time, we go to bed.

And with all of that, you can count the number of times the name Jesus was mentioned on one hand and have about four fingers left over. The only prayer of the day was probably grace at dinner.

This isn't exactly what the apostles had in mind. It certainly isn't what Jesus himself had in mind.

The truth is, many of us have lost the real meaning of Christmas, the birth of the Christian's Lord and Savior. This is supposed to be a celebration, yes. But the celebration is supposed to be about the King of Kings, not about giving presents and watching "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer" for the one-hundredth time. It's not about stuffing ourselves with turkey and Christmas cookies. It's about giving thanks for God giving Christians his only son, our Lord and Savior.

Yes, many of us have lost the real meaning of Christmas. It's so easy to do with all the commercialism of the day. Much of the problem is the media. Children put on the TV and see all these ads for toys and seeing Santa live at some shopping mall and that's all they can think about. And how do you tell your five year old that Christmas is not about Santa and Toys? How do you tell him it's not about Christmas trees, eggnog and watching Christmas movies about characters that don't even exist?

The truth is, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. We don't have to prevent our children from having the things at Christmas that they look forward to. All we need to do is make sure that some time during the day, we sit down with our children and teach them the real meaning of Christmas. Read the Christmas story to them from the Bible, or from a good children's book about the subject. Make them understand that Christmas is an important day, not because we get gifts, but because God gave us the greatest gift of all.