What is the True Meaning of Christmas?

For Christians that celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on December 25th of every year, understanding what the true meaning of Christmas is should be a necessity. There is, after all, “a reason for the season,” and that reason is the birth of the Man (Jesus) who provided the basis for our salvation. But what are the things we should know? How do we separate the commercial from the sacred? That's the point behind learning something more about Christmas, rather than it being just a night when Santa Clause comes down our chimney and leaves gifts. It was actually Jesus who gave us the greatest gift of all.

The true meaning of Christmas is love. It's easy enough to say that we “love” something these days. We “love” our new high-definition LCD TV with all the toys that come with it, and we “love” that we may be on winter break from school or have a week off from the office. Those are all good reasons to love, one might suppose, but those are superficial kinds of love. The love that embodies Christmas, though, is much deeper and vastly more satisfying than just the way we love giving and getting presents. In the Gospel according to John, one of his most famous passages (John 3:16-17) speaks of how God so loved the world that He sent His only Son to us, to live among us, and to suffer and die for us so that we could be saved. And that's the greatest gift of all.

We celebrate God's gift to us by observing Christmas. God understood that He was dooming His one and only Son to a painful death at our hands, and certainly Jesus knew this as well. Yet He and His father saw something within us that led God to offer us this ultimate gift. And though we believe the actual date of the birth of Jesus, as a man who would grow into adulthood and become the basis for the greatest story ever told, was most likely between 6 B.C. and 4 B.C., we would really be guessing (and for no good reason) as to the month or even day He was gifted to us. December, for most Christians in the world, also seems to have a powerful hold. It is the beginning of the winter solstice, and we seem more attentive of our lives, our relationships with others, and with our Savior, Jesus Christ. For this reason, among many others, we can feel in our souls that this month seems the most appropriate time of all to appreciate what we've been given, not only in a material sense but – far more importantly – in the spiritual.

The gift of Jesus, salvation, is a gift of ultimate love. When Jesus accepted punishment at the hands of the Romans, He paid the price for our sins (even though He was pure and free of all sin). This gift was the purest act of love, and serves to remind us of what is truly important as we come to observe Christmas with friends, family and the fellowship of the human race that continues to benefit from that first gift on that first Christmas.