I love Christmas.
But.
This Christmas will feel a little – or maybe a lot – weird. Mom is gone, and that’s a colossal loss. I’m not sad for her, but I’m sad for us. Christmas was her favorite time of year, and she always made it special for everybody. Perhaps you are – or were – blessed with a mother like that.
So the sights, sounds, smells, and delights of Christmas 2025 are hitting me a little differently. The lights are beautiful, but I sure miss driving Mom around to point out the best ones. Even the Opryland Hotel – gorgeous as it is – isn’t shining quite as brightly for me. All the familiar carols are merry, but any one of them can spark instantaneously a vivid memory that makes me long for yesterday.
If you know me, you won’t be surprised to hear that I love the aroma of holiday delicacies – maybe a little too much lol – but nobody on Earth makes fudge like Mama’s. That too is gone. And to be quite honest, every moment of the season – even the extraordinarily happy ones – brings with it a potential shadow of sadness.
I don’t mean to depress you. I don’t want to depress myself either. Christmas is still wonderful – it’s just not perfect. And I think it’s imperfect for a very critical reason.
Christmas is a foretaste of glory, you see. It’s the tasty appetizer before the delectable entrée that’s coming. It’s the prelude to eternity, and the dawn of our deepest joy. It’s flavorful – yes – but not nearly as wonderfully scrumptious as the main event that’s certain to follow.
Even our best Christmas is imperfect because deep within is us there’s an awareness that we’re still longing for something more. The truth of Christ’s Incarnation – “God with us” (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23) – gives great hope to our darkest day, but it also reminds us that earthly joys are mere echoes. They’re never ends unto themselves.
Deep within us, we’re longing for home. Home home. The sights and sounds and smells and delights here point in a more permanent direction. Each flicker of temporal joy in part illumines the ultimate reality that is ours in Jesus Christ! You and I weren’t made to live here forever. Even our happiest moments here serve to awaken in us an unquenchable longing for a world where sin and separation will be no more.
Christmas makes us homesick for another world – a perfect world. The joy, beauty, and wonder of Christmas are temporary glimpses of far greater realities, helping us embrace the truth that this world is not where we ultimately belong.
In Christ, you and I are headed to a place so perfectly exquisite and satisfying to the very core of who we are that the merriest day here is but a sampling of the glory that’s coming (John 14:1-6; 2 Corinthians 3:18).
Sometimes our thirst for those distant shores is less evident than we sense it at other times, but you and I are always longing for God – to see and know Him as He is. And we are longing to be with our loved ones in a place where everyone will be whole. It’s coming, my friend! And “so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).
You see, regardless of what may appear on our Christmas list, our deepest desires aren’t for earthly things – but for God Himself. Christmas, with its focus on the divine entering the human, awakens our innate hunger to be home at last in our “true country” (Hebrews 11:13-16) – and I’m telling you it’s just over the horizon!
I’m so glad that Jesus was willing to enter into our broken world. That changed everything. Christ has shown us the fullness of the love of God, and how we are to live each day in the light of that magnanimous love. Christmas tells our story, and it’s the story of the already and the not yet – held together simultaneously and securely by God’s grace.
Our past is His. Our present is His. Our future is His.
So all is well. Christmas is good, and it points to the best. We have it on excellent authority: “God … will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:3-4).
Our neighbor here in Franklin who loves Christmas with unbridled passion, Matthew West, sings these tender lyrics to the Lord …
“And it took me back to 8-years-old
My Daddy’s hand and a story told
About Heaven’s love and the manger lo
And a promise that’s still true
You’re still the hope of Christmas
You’re still the light when the world looks dark
You’re still the hope of Christmas
And You’re still the hope of my heart.”
So, if for you this Christmas feels a little bit like, “This is not quite it,” that’s a really good thing. Because it’s not quite it! That’s why the post-Christmas letdown, when the holiday hype fades, isn’t just about leftover tinsel and trimmings and all the rest. It’s the human soul’s stark realization that this world can’t completely satisfy (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4, 11). And it points us to the ultimate satisfaction that will be ours on the day when Christ comes again!
“He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found.”
The humble arrival of Jesus captured by the timeless Christmas story invites our humble worship of the King of Kings! So enjoy all the parts that you can. Choose with me to believe that this Christmas season can help each one of us walk by Christ’s Spirit into a deeper place of reverence and awe, where – because of the built-in imperfection – our deepest longing can grow and flourish. It’s the longing to be home with our God and home with our forever family.
Home is where we’re headed. Home home.
I can almost taste it.
Pastor Charles
Amen and Merry Christmas