I wrote this a long time ago....but someone just mentioned it changed their whole Christmas outlook, so I thought I would reshare. Hopefully you find it positive. Also, don't make a drinking game out of finding typos, that will get dangerous. Somethings never change. 

Accepting Pink Aluminum Christmas Trees. 

Get the biggest aluminum tree you can find Charlie Brown, maybe painted pink! 

I was recently asked to give a brief reflection on the topic Making Christmas Lasting with the focus on celebrating Christmas throughout the year. I admit that when I was first presented with this topic I had to pause and think. Christmas through the year. My first thought was to encourage more viewings of Die Hard. While sipping Baileys. That seems pretty festive to me. Of course this got me thinking about Christmas. About Christmas in today’s society. It’s a crazy time. Hustle and bustle. And it seems to start earlier and earlier. It’s gotten the point I start looking for Christmas trees on the fifth of July. Many of my friends' Thanksgiving photos included pictures of their freshly decorated Christmas trees. Before they had digested their turkey. How they were able to plow through the tryptophan has that knocks me down for several days, I'll never know. And then they embark on massive shopping trips. I envy their energy.

Many people decry this commercialization of Christmas. They see it as loss of the truth behind Christmas.  A focus on the wrong thing, taking our minds away from God. I don’t see it that way. The stores, the shopping, the décor, it doesn’t bother me. I enjoy it. You can feel the excitement and anticipation in the air.  This makes me happy.

It makes me happy because in the history of the world, there is just one person who has ever been able to produce this kind of excitement and anticipation. This amount of joy and generosity. One birth alone could every produce this kind of reaction two thousand years later.

One man.

And world still stops and celebrates because He was born. So the world rushes and shops and parties. They light up their homes. They feast. They gather with family and friends. But the world also reaches out. There are toy drives, book drives, coat drives. Your grocery store has food drives, red kettles are everywhere. It’s not enough just to celebrate with loved ones, to generously celebrate family and friends. The world reaches out to strangers and those in need. The desire to spread the joy, the hope, the excitement of the season, it extends past those we know, to strangers. Everyone needs to feel Christmas joy. And the community comes together to make sure that all do enjoy it. Not just comes together, but excitedly help one another in secret, a distinct part of the joy coming from knowing others are celebrating, happy, distracted from the daily grind, if just for a moment.

And if we step back and remember what it is we are celebrating, it's that incredible moment of generosity. A generous God giving Himself. What further need of proof as to God’s lavishness upon His children? He gave us the world. Quite literally. All good things come from Him. He gave without concern as to worthiness or appreciation. He just gave. Completely. In that context, the outpouring of gifts and festivities at Christmas doesn’t seem as outlandish. It’s simply imitating what the world experienced that very first Christmas.

So what does that mean for us? Not just the next four weeks but for the next eleven months. How can we celebrate Christmas throughout the year? I think we need to step back to look at the world’s reaction to Christmas.  Reaction to the fact that Christ was born. We need to look past what might appear to be crude materialism and see the longing and joy and the desire that is present. What is truly being expressed by the immense reaction to the season.  The world still delights at the fact that God was made man. The world still joyfully celebrates His birth. Even though it is harder and harder to see Him through the tinsel and the parties and the brightly colored lights. We all know, something, something is different. This celebration is unlike any other. And that’s where we come in. It’s our job to clear that haze, to nurture that joy and that hope and whisper “yes, yes He is real. He is here.”

The world that delights in the season of Christmas, so much so that they share that joy with strangers, is a world that desires the Christ of Christmas. To feel that loved all the year round.  That thrill of hope? It’s our job to nurture it. To feed it with truth and witness. Because if anything is clear from society’s reaction to Christmas, it is that we all crave the comfort and joy that comes from knowing truth. We are so greatly loved. So generously blessed. And we crave the presence of God; we want to feel that He is with us.

Leave it to C.S. Lewis to say it better than I. “They say Aslan is on the move… And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different.... At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside.” Christmas is that time when the world feels the jump inside. And it falls to us to nurture than, so that their hearts don’t just jump, but soar. Soar to their creator. The weary world wants to rejoice. It's our job to spread those glad tidings. He came upon a midnight clear. He is here. And He will come again.