#ASaviorIsBorn - Day 5 - The meaning of Christmas

                                           

Christmas honestly is my favorite holiday. 

It's always been the day of the year where I can completely rely on the 

Spirit to fill my heart. 

It's the day where there seems to be the most peace in the home.

It's the day where selfless love fills the air.

So yes, Christmas means more to me than any story words could ever tell.

Christmas is love and Christ is the definition of love.

Here's what Gordon B. Hinckley has said about Christmas:

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"Christmas means giving. The Father gave his Son, and the Son gave his life. Without giving there is no true Christmas, and without sacrifice there is no true worship. There is more to Christmas than neckties, earrings, toys, and all the tinseled stuff of which we make so much.

Christmas means eternity. As certainly as Christ came into the world, lived among men, laid down his life, and became the first fruits of the resurrection, so, through that atonement, all become partakers of immortality. Death will come, but death has been robbed of its sting, and the grave of its victory. “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.

Christmas means giving—and “the gift without the giver is bare.” Giving of self; giving of substance; giving of heart and mind and strength in assisting those in need and in spreading the cause of His eternal truth—these are of the very essence of the true spirit of Christmas.

Christmas means the Christ child, the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger while angels sang and wise men traveled far to bring gifts. It is a beautiful and timeless story, and I hope each of us will read it again this season.

Christmas means compassion and love and, most of all,forgiveness. “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29.) How poor indeed would be our lives without the influence of his teachings and his matchless example. The lessons of the turning of the other cheek, going the second mile, the return of the prodigal, and scores of other incomparable teachings have filtered down the ages to become the catalyst to bring kindness and mercy out of much of man’s inhumanity to man.

I rejoice at Christmas time that as a people, we Latter-day Saints know of his existence and reality, and receive certain direction from him."

(Gordon B. Hinckley, Ensign, Dec. 1983)

I stumbled across this song "I believe in Santa Claus" by Courtney Cotter King and instantly fell in love. It's a beautiful song between the ties of Santa Claus and Christ. 

Watch it, you won't regret it!

My gift today was pondering on ways I can really soak up the season before it flashes right before my eyes.