True Meaning of Christmas

There is often a perceived tension between the Christmas tradition of gift giving and the “true meaning of Christmas.” And while it is true that we can allow worldly concerns to overshadow our focus on our Savior during the holiday season, I don’t believe that gift giving, in and of itself, is at odds with the true meaning of Christmas. We don’t often have as many opportunities to engage in rituals as in generations passed. Rituals are a way for us to act out or engage in a tangible way abstract concepts and deeper truths. Giving gifts at Christmas time is a kind of ritual. It’s a way to act out the truth that God gave His son as a gift for us all. We don’t have to have this kind of split personality approach when it comes to Christmas. We don’t have to have the secular-seeming tradition of gift giving be separate or apart from the religious focus of Christ at Christmas. When we give gifts, we can allow this ritual to remind us of the gift that Christ gave to each of us. When we receive gifts, we can have those feelings remind us of the gift of daily grace that Christ gives to us. We can be tempted to allow ourselves to become overwhelmed with over-the-top displays of wealth and status and become greedy or offended because we did or didn’t get this or that gift that we wanted, or that the gift we gave wasn’t received with the reaction that we hoped. But we can also choose to allow the act of giving and receiving gifts to remind us of the greatest gift of all.