I grew up in a medium-sized country church with 300-plus people on a Sunday. There was so much I loved about growing up there but one thing stood out when I was under 10 yrs old. Every year the kids would do a Christmas program. For all my years that meant listening to my mom sing Away In A Manger while trying to get the 2 yr old kids to sing and do the motions with her. But what really got me excited in the weeks and even months leading up to the Christmas program was the goodie bags we would get afterward. It was like the sweet payoff from going to church every Wednesday night and Sunday morning. You might be thinking that it was really easy to buy me out. A few cookies and maybe some peppermints... wow Will it’s easy to bribe you. Those are the kinds of bags I have seen at other churches but not my church. As great as those bags were to my friends I had truly experienced something that was at another level. What I was used to were the common simple brown lunch bags but they were absolutely packed full! There was always a piece of fruit and some unshelled peanuts for bulk but there was also at least one if not multiple full-sized candy bars along with a generous handful of other candy. Adding to my joy was the fact that unlike getting candy at other times of the year my parents placed no limit on how much of it we could eat. Maybe they were feeling generous because of the Christmas Season, maybe they were happy that I was excited about church, or maybe they thought the fruit and peanuts balanced out the massive sugar load! I don’t know but it was awesome!
I look back on those years with fond memories but I realized in thinking about those goodie bags that I would think about them very differently now. I am a pastor, dad, and adult. Like most parents I want my kids to experience some of the good stuff that I did as a kid and hopefully, I minimize some of the other stuff. We take our kids to see Christmas lights, enjoy meals with extended family together and we try to travel around the holiday to have that good road trip time together. But, I realized if I were trying to recreate those bags (I don’t know if the church I grew up in even still does them) I would think through an entirely different lens than I did as a kid.
In that post-childhood lens I think about all the emails and texts I would have to send to mobilize volunteers to pack the bags. I would have to make sure the expenses came from the right budget line or that I got volunteers on board to pay for the items. I would have to organize a time and place to pack the bags, get them stored before the event, and make sure they got passed out. It would be so expensive to supply all that food for all the kids (we probably had 120 kids in our Christmas program growing up) and I don’t know where you even buy 50 lb bags of peanuts because I am sure it took two of those.
I am walking through all of this with the bags to make a point about Christmas itself. I was taught from a young age not to make Christmas about material things like getting gifts for myself and that lesson of focusing more on Jesus than the consumer trappings in this season has stuck. But as an adult, I can still get trapped by them in a different way and that’s what thinking about the Christmas bags of my childhood made me realize. All the logistics of this season. Sure I can avoid making Christmas all about the money and though I like getting gifts I honestly think I could go without and be just fine. Steph and I often forgo getting each other gifts because we would rather travel to see family or get our family bigger presents. We make a gift budget when we do get gifts. What I realized I can still get trapped by are all the logistics.
Planning family gatherings and events is my jam. Thinking about 100 activities to do with my kids so they have fun is also something I love to do. Steph and I love road trips so all that goes into those is exciting. Even as a pastor this season is a high point for the church so we wanna get everything right that we can. I have found that what crowds out Jesus from my Christmas season is not wishing and hoping for gifts or material things but just the busy scramble of trying to make it good... Did you feel the pain in your heart reading that sentence that I did typing it...
Even though I focus on what Christians would call the good things of the Christmas season like family, giving to others, and celebrating Jesus I can still get lost trying to make it good and not spend time with Jesus who is the one who made it possible for things to even be good. I consistently make Jesus coming to earth and the great gift He gave us by being Emmanuel, God with Us the most important thing I think about this time of year. However, I have seen that it is very easy to not spend time celebrating that with Jesus Himself.
That is my goal then for this Christmas to lavishly spend time celebrating Jesus with Jesus himself. I am still going to plan fun things for the kids and spend time with family, I am not necessarily cutting things out but maybe I will be less worried about getting them planned and keeping my focus on Jesus, not just this season that is about Him. The best gift He gave us, after all, is coming to be with us and that’s a present I hope I look for every day!
- Pastor Will