Christmas is a very special time of the year when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Savior of the world. It’s a time of fellowship and love, and the giving of gifts one to another.

It’s also a time when children look excitedly at opening all the brightly wrapped presents under the Christmas tree.

I remember one Christmas in particular when we had sat down and read the beautiful account of Jesus’ birth out of Luke Chapter 2. If it wasn’t in the Bible, it would be almost impossible to believe that God would come like He did to save us sinners. What love!

Joanne prepared an exceptional Christmas dinner, and we ate and ate. And as we ate, we fellowshipped around all that the Lord had done for us. It is so good to count our many blessings and name them one by one. Even when we have had hard or difficult times, it’s still amazing to look back and see how good God has been to us. Even this year with COVID-19 and all the unrest in this country and around the world, we have so much to be thankful for.

After the table was all cleared that particular year, and our wonderful cook, Joanne, was thanked for all the work and love she put into the special meal, we headed into the living room. There, our Christmas tree, which we had cut earlier out of our own woods, was beautifully decorated with lots of presents underneath it.

Our young children’s eyes were all sparkling, and they had big joyous smiles on their faces as they eagerly awaited opening the presents. Christmas is such a wonderful time of the year of giving and receiving gifts. And it seems children make it much more special. Well, our children received a number of gifts, of which some were new toys to play with along with a number of new tools. Our children really like to get new tools that they could use to help me fix things with on the farm here.

Well, after a while, it was time to go out and do the evening chores: milking the cows, feeding the calves and giving the cows some fresh hay to munch on overnight. Then it was quickly into the house for the children to play with all their new toys and tools.

As it got way late, bedtime, something totally unexpected happened. Catherine started crying. We were startled and asked her what was wrong. Her reply, “I’m so tired, I just can’t stay awake, but I don’t want to go to bed, I just want to keep playing with all my new toys.” With that, we as parents had to smile and laugh. We told her it was bedtime and that tomorrow she could play with her toys a lot more. What a wonderful Christmas Day we had, and it continued for many days after.

It’s sad that in this world today, so many people don’t know the real meaning of Christmas. To be politically correct, it is “Happy Holidays” or something else. But when you remove Jesus from Christmas, it’s very empty. That’s why there are so many suicides and so much depression after Christmas. And there’s so very little love in so many families today. But when you have Jesus you have love, joy and peace. Whether you have a Christmas tree with presents or not, if you have Jesus, you have everything. If you want to have a wonderful Christmas this year, with all the unrest in the world, invite Jesus into your heart and home. He is what Christmas is all about. And you can go to bed Christmas Day night and every night thereafter with the Prince of Peace in your heart.

From our family to yours, have a blessed, Christ-filled Christmas.