The Three R’s of Celebrating Christ This Season

After grumbling in my spirit over our ridiculously full social schedule for this first week of December, I felt like a total hypocrite. I had just done a podcast with a friend the day before, encouraging families in our church to keep their celebrations Christ-focused and to streamline their calendars and plans when necessary in order to honor Christ in every detail of this busy season.

To be honest, it’s a fight. No matter what season of life we are in, keeping our celebration of Christ’s birth pure and rightly focused seems at times an unattainable goal.

The Three R’s

Three simple principles of celebrating (I call them the three R’s) that I see in God’s word have helped me to evaluate where I am in honoring Jesus in our family celebrations. We are to remember; we are to rejoice; and we are to repeat.

Remember & Rejoice

God commanded Israel to celebrate a number of annual feasts. If we look carefully at his instructions (Leviticus 23), we see that His purpose in insisting that they celebrate was two-fold. He wanted them to remember the good things He had done for them in the past, and He wanted them to rejoice in that goodness, ultimately rejoicing in HIM.

It takes intentionality to remind ourselves – minute by minute – of the reason we are baking all those cookies and wrapping all those gifts and going to all those parties. But doing so can radically improve our attitude as we move through the season.

When we remember, we will rejoice in Christ’s first coming into this broken world to save us from our sin, and we will rejoice in the promise of His second coming as reigning King to restore all that was broken through our sin.

Repeat

What about the third R? Psalm 78:4 says, “We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.”

Passing the gospel story on to the next generation requires repetition, and one effective means of repeating God’s truth to our families lies in establishing traditions. The Advent season is an ideal time to begin a new tradition that points our families to Jesus.

It could be as simple as baking a birthday cake for Him and singing “Happy Birthday.” Or it could be something more involved, like making an Advent log and gathering to light the candles each night while you have a family devotional that focuses on how Jesus’ coming fulfilled all the prophecies from the Old Testament.

A Final Encouragement

Whatever it is, take a step. Do something to reel in what sometimes feels like the insanity of the season. The world is watching. The way we celebrate can speak a word to them of our beautiful Savior and of His love for them.