My Favorite Holiday 🎁

Today just happens to be one of my personal favorite holidays. I know what you’re thinking: Daniel, it’s December 23^rd. Calm down.

But I mean it! I love Christmas Adam (better known as December 23rd), and I’ll tell you why. As a pastor, Christmas Eve is one of the biggest days of the year for me. Our Crossroads Family shows up to worship, we put on service after service, and it’s such an amazing day!

But everyone needs to slow down at Christmas, to just be with their family and take in Christmas season. For most people, that’s Christmas Eve, but for my family, it’s Christmas Adam.

This hardly needs to be said at this point, but everything about Christmas, Christmas Eve, and yes, even Christmas Adam looks a little different this year. We can’t control what Christmas 2020 looks like, but we can choose how we let it affect us.

Many people are struggling to get excited about Christmas without the parties and extended family and normal celebrations we love. Many of us have experienced some difficulties, some brokenness, and some painful losses this year. Right about now, we might be feeling the exhaustion.

I think we could learn a little bit from Christmas Adam this year. You see, what makes this holiday great, isn’t the chaos. It’s not the lights and the crowds and the music (even though I love all of that!). Christmas Adam is special because it’s peace. It’s a quiet, hunkered-down kind of joy. It’s a chance to just be, to receive from the Lord, and reflect on all the good things he’s done. And nothing, not even 2020, can erase those things.

Lucky for us, Christmas was never dependent on our energy level or how festive we felt. Christmas is about a God who came to bring redemption to a broken earth. Joy to the World isn’t a glittery, out-of-touch phrase to decorate wrapping paper. It’s a message of hope picked up on a heavenly frequency, rooted in one cause—the Lord is come.

Wherever we find ourselves this Christmas, we still have one job, and that job is to receive our King. He is still here. He is still Immanuel, God With Us.

Knowing that with confidence, brothers and sisters, it is my absolute joy to wish each and every one of you a Merry Christmas.

P.S. – Here’s a little Christmas message I recorded a few years ago. You might notice that we were celebrating Christmas a little differently in 2016, but the sentiment is still true. I hope that this quick Christmas message blesses you!