Right up front I will say that for me Christmas starts and finishes with Jesus. He was the reason 2,000 years ago for it to start in the first place, wasn’t he? That’s why it is called Christ-mas. The last 3 letters meaning to celebrate.

How long will it last?

However, with so little about Jesus Christ in Christmas these days, and instead “holiday season”, “festive season”, and many others, how long will the title last?

Can our society still play for years on end with the Santa story? When will reality kick in? Holidays are great, but what about something more existential and longer-term meaningful for a hurting world?

Jesus came for us hurting people in this hurting world

No other faith has God coming down and living here and identifying with us. No other has God taking our shame and punishment for our rebellion against him, so that we can be led back to him.

That’s why Jesus came (Christmas), died (Good Friday), and rose from the dead (Easter Sunday). As the Son of God, if we are willing, since he never forces, he can take us back to God, allow our wrongs to be forgiven, and have us live with him forever on the new earth of heaven.

How good is that?

Probably, I also don’t believe in that God!

Misconceptions and stereotypes can travel in all directions.

Is it that God who is really mean, the Richard Dawkin’s one, or the one that hates only LGBT people, or the one that will never forgive someone who’s had an abortion?

It is easy to make a ‘straw-man’ God, the one you think only weird religious people believe in.

However, that clever game could mean you miss out on coming to know the real God, the one who created the universe, who actually is strongly interested in your present and eternal welfare. Probably, the biggest issue is that the real God will also one day judge you and me…

Now, of course, someone will say, “That’s only if that God is really there.”

That’s true. That’s why it is good to look into the evidence for that God, the reasoning for believing in him, and then to have the courage to follow where the evidence leads, onto faith.

This is a good website – https://www.reasonablefaith.org/

I’m interested in what others think, and how you got there.