And so

You’ve got to get the love.

You’ve got to notice it, perceive it, and turn it over in your mind. You’ve got to get it.

Christmas at its core is about love. The world has gone on off on this theme and tried to own it. What the world does with love is turn it into things. The commercialization of Christmas was inevitable once the world ran with it.

The world gets Christmas wrong because they suppose it’s about our love—our love for our kids and our spouses and our fiancés.

That’s not the love at the core of Christmas. If we make our own love the core, Christmas loses its power and purpose, its hope and its joy.

We do not celebrate at Christmas the limited, flawed, temporary, fickle love that humans extend so feebly to one another. If every kiss really begins with Kay Jewelers, as the jingle implies, then “love” is for sale at the mall. You can get that kiss if you purchase for her a big enough diamond. This is stinking thinking, as someone said. It takes the idea of love, empties it out like an old box, and feels it with wispy nothings.

Christmas has been separated from the love that started it. It is almost unrecognizable now in many homes and almost all stores. You have to dig to find even a hint of the root of Christmas.

Christmas has “Christ” in it for a reason. His love, not ours, is the reason for the season.

We will have opportunities to sit down with various groups through this holiday season. We should consider it our privilege and responsibility to remind others from whence this celebration comes. God demonstrated his love for us by sending his One and Only Son. Especially among our children and grandchildren this truth should be known and reinforced.

God’s mission was to save us by sending his Son. Our mission is to make this truth known at home and around the world. Christmas, properly understood, is the heralding of God’s amazing love.

Join that angelic chorus in proclaiming the Savior’s birth in Bethlehem so long ago.