When I was a child, Christmas was a celebrated with joy and good cheers in the retelling of the birth of Jesus. It was a time to reflect and celebrate the love of God. Those were the days when our public schools would sing Christmas Carols and act out the story of Jesus’ birth. Homes were decorated with a manger scene, filled with farm animals,shepherds and sheep, and three wise men. Their focus centred around Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus.
Today there is no mention of the religious meaning of Christmas. Instead it’s rebranded as “Happy Holidays,” “Season Greeting,” etc. It has become a secular holiday that focuses on Santa Claus, the Grinch, and all things cute and cuddly. Saint Nicholas has been highjacked and rebranded into a mythical jolly old man who lives in the North Pole travelling the world distributing gifts to good boys and girls. This too would soon change as using gender identification is seen as politically incorrect.
The school I work in has gone to elaborate lengths to decorate the gym with snowman, Santa Claus and Christmas trees for their Happy Holidays Breakfast. Families are invited to donate to a charity via their entrance fee. Not an angel in sight, not Baby Jesus, Mary or Joseph. There are lots of cute animals but not the shepherds, the three wise men, or anything remotely about Christmas. In an inner city school with a culturally diverse population, these parents and children will have no idea what the true meaning of Christmas represents. Christmas in their mind’s eyes will be about paying a fee for food and gifts from Santa Claus for their children.
Christmas has become another marketing scheme without depth or soul after the big Black Friday shopping spree.
This is our world today.
When I was a child, I recall many hymns and Christmas Carols that breathed a breath of soul into my heart. It retold the story of Jesus from many perspectives. Songs were all a celebration of the coming of Jesus in the silence of night, and echoed the holiness, joy, and peace of the season.
It’s up to us – to share the story of Jesus. It is a story about the love of God, and a son not born into wealth, but poverty. It’s about those travelling from afar to meet baby Jesus. It’s about the love, hope, grace and sharing.
Tell me the story of Jesus, I love to hear…
- Tell me the stories of Jesus I love to hear,Things I would ask him to tell me if he were here.Scenes by the wayside, tales of the sea,Stories of Jesus, tell them to me.
- Oh, let me hear how the children stood round his knee.I shall imagine his blessings resting on me;Words full of kindness, deeds full of grace,All in the love-light of Jesus’ face.
- Tell me, in accents of wonder, how rolled the sea,Tossing the boat in a tempest on Galilee!And how the Master, ready and kind,Chided the billows and hushed the wind.
I am so thankful I grew up listening to Children’s Christmas hymns as a child. Today they are a source of inner joy in a world so removed from God. It’s up to us to keep this alive for the next generation. Most in our world today don’t know who Jesus is. Most don’t know the true Christmas story.
1 TELL me the story of Jesus.
Write on my heart every word!
Tell me the story most precious,
Sweetest that ever was heard.
Tell how the angels in chorus
Sang, as they welcomed His birth,
“Glory to God in the highest,
Peace and good tidings to earth.”
Refrain:
Tell me the story of Jesus,
Write on my heart every word,
Tell me the story most precious,
Sweetest that ever was heard.
2 Fasting alone in the desert,
Tell of the days that He passed;
How He was tried and was tempted,
Yet was triumphant at last.
Tell of the years of His labours,
Tell of the sorrows He bore;
He was despised and afflicted,
Homeless, rejected, and poor.
3 Tell of the cross where they nailed Him,
Dying in anguish and pain;
Tell of the grave where they laid Him;
Tell how He liveth again.
Love, in that story so tender,
Clearer than ever I see;
Stay, let me weep while you whisper,
Love paid the ransom for me.
Hope…
May the Holy Spirit guide each of us to be a light into the world.
God Bless 🙏💕
Be Inspired! 
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