Christmas is the one time of the year when we have the highest hopes. We plan a big family gathering and hope everyone can make it (except that one crazy uncle). We look forward to a fabulous feast, great presents, and a good time with friends and family. Unfortunately, Christmas is also the time of great disappointments: some of the relatives can’t make the trip (except the crazy uncle), the dinner flops, and the presents are duds. For the young woman, an expected engagement ring never shows up, and for her clueless boyfriend, his favorite football team loses a critical game.
Our expectations may fizzle, leaving us with a less than happy holiday season. I recently had a disappointment: a local radio station offered a contest where a listener would win a 1 ounce gold eagle (worth $2,600). I thought that would be a nice Christmas present, so I entered the contest. Did I win? Nope. Santa let me down.
I was reminded of my last Christmas as a child. Each year I asked Santa for one thing for Christmas, and probably because my wants were modest, I always got that one thing. So that last year, I asked for a walkie-talkie set (this was in the days before cell phones). But on Christmas morning, when I opened Santa’s gift, I found a junky, non-functioning toy set of radios. Even with plenty of other gifts, good food, and family fun, I found that I was disappointed with Christmas that year.
Obviously, when we set our sights too high with our expectations for Christmas, we are preparing to be disappointed. We form a mental picture of how we want things to go, and when they don’t match that picture, we feel let down. We may even feel disappointment when things go well, because our met expectations don’t give us the happy feelings we wanted.
What are your expectations for Christmas?
Your expectations for Christmas may be wonderful: your family gathered around the dinner table, everybody all dressed up like a scene out of a Norman Rockwell painting? A fully harmonious gathering? The gifts you were hoping to receive? Happiness for those to whom you give gifts? A good sermon at church for the Christmas service? Enough in the bank to end the season in the black?
If your hopes are based on any such subjective wishes for Christmas, you may well be disappointed, because what Christmas truly promises is much greater and more sure than anything society has added to our expectations for the holiday.
The first Christmas is a prime example of people misunderstanding the event and thus having unreal expectations which led to disappointments. The Jewish nation did expect a Messiah, but envisioned him as a military conqueror who would drive out the Romans and liberate Judah. Therefore, when Jesus instead fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecies of being a suffering servant (Isaiah 53), who came “not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45), and even proclaimed, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36), the people’s hopes were dashed.
Many potential followers of Jesus turned away from him when they realized he was not the type of Messiah they expected. In John 6, we read that because Jesus did the miraculous feeding, the people came to make him king by force. When he refused to allow them, and explained that he was the bread of life come down from heaven, “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.” (John 6:66). Then, when he was crucified, even his closest disciples most fervent hopes were crushed. Talk about being disappointed with the first Christmas!
What changed the disciples’ attitude and restored their hopes was Christ’s resurrection and their understanding of the promises of what Christ’s birth meant to the world. Christmas’s meaning is defined by Easter.
Easter fulfills Christmas.
Christmas is the beginning of God with us (Isaiah 7:14), of God taking on flesh to become one of us (John 1:14). Therefore, he experienced life as a man, able to suffer and be tempted as we are, “but without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Then, as our high priest, he offered himself in his crucifixion as a perfect sacrifice “by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12). The debt of our sins was cancelled, being nailed to the cross (Colossians 2:14), and our own resurrection is promised by Christ’s victory over death and the grave. 1 Corinthians 51-54 tells us, “Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.“
All of this is the promise of Christmas. This was all included in the message of the Christmas angels who proclaimed “Peace on earth, goodwill toward men!” This was all included in Isaiah’s prophecy, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” All this was foretold in the angelic prophecy that “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21).
Our hopes are not based on wishes or fantasies, but on the facts of Jesus life, death, and resurrection. Our faith is based on the promises which God’s word gives us of forgiveness and resurrection to eternal life. In those promises we will never be disappointed. Christmas is God acting in human history to bring his promises to fulfillment. For that reasons, Christmas, its true meaning, will never disappoint us, even if we never get a walkie-talkie!
Now may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.
Read: Luke 2; Matthew 2.