Why Christmas Happened at All

Once again, people in the Western world get wrapped up their traditions and habits to supposedly celebrate Christmas. If you study on it, God is probably not glorified by people being frantic and going into debt buying presents out of obligation. I reckon that the coddling of miscreant waifs is not pleasing to him, either —  especially since both adults and children are probably unable to give more than a thirty-second answer as to what Christmas means. We all need to learn about and focus on what is truly important.

Nativity scene, Unsplash / Debby Hudson

People are likely to know of the virgin birth, but more precisely, it's the virgin conception that is a miracle. That was a big part of God's perfect timing, which was prophesied back in Genesis 3:15 and in many other places of the Bible (I like how the birthplace of Jesus was foretold in Micah 5:2, as Micah was not a "major" prophet, nor was Bethlehem a big, important city.) Jesus had to be a descendant of Adam so he could be what the Bible calls our kinsman redeemer.

Santa Claus? Not hardly! While Nicholas was a godly man, there is almost no resemblance between him and the modern red-suited myth. Another piece of interesting information is that while there is no compelling reason to insist that 25 December was the birthday of Jesus, arguments used against that date involving sheep farming in Israel are extremely bad. Details on these and more are discussed in the following article.

In most Western countries, Christmas Day is celebrated on December 25th as the traditional birthday of Jesus, although no one knows for certain the exact day when Jesus was born, even though we know reasonably well when He was here on Earth. The Bible says: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son” (Galatians 4:4), so this was at exactly the right time in God’s master plan.

You would do well to read the rest over at "Christmas-Why?" The audio version is available here.