As soon as the Thanksgiving turkey was eaten, I started playing Christmas songs.

It’s so good to hear them again after a 10-month break. (I stop listening to Christmas music at the end of the twelve days of Christmas.)

A nice feature of modern streaming technology is that I can pick the category of Christmas music that I want to hear.

At first, I clicked on the category “Religious Christmas Music”. This enabled me to hear traditional Christian music that is seldom played in the multi-cultural, multi-religious environment of Silicon Valley, except in chuches.

Nevertheless, after hearing “O Holy Night”, “Silent Night” and “Away in a Manger” for several weeks, I was eager to hear “Jingle Bells”, “White Christmas”, and “Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly”.

At first I felt a bit guilty.

Jesus is the Reason for the Season!

Should I only listen to songs about the birth of Baby Jesus?

But then, I remembered. The Incarnation means that Jesus embodies all that it means to be human, as well as all that it means to be God.

So we shouldn’t only rejoice that Jesus is Emmanuel, meaning that God is with us.

We should also rejoice that Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us where we can go riding in a 1-horse open sleigh with bells jingling. (John 14:1-3).

We should rejoice that there’ll be an infinite number of White Christmases spent with those who we love so that our days will be merry and bright, and all our Christmases will be white.

We should rejoice that we’ll deck an infinite number of halls with boughs of holly as we see a blazing Yule before us; we’ll strike the harp and join the chorus an infinite number of times; and we’ll all sing together joyously an infinite number of times. (see the chapter “Best Friends Worship Together in Spirit and in Truth” in my book Lighting the World, at pages 179-186).

We should rejoice that the first sign that Jesus is the Light of the World was that he celebrated with friends and family at a wedding by turning water into wine. (John 1:1-5,9; 2:1-11).

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

Do you believe in the Incarnation—that Jesus is the Word of God made flesh (John 1:1-5,9,14)? How? Why?

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For related thoughts, please read my blogs “The Star of Bethlehem Was a ‘Can of Tuna Fish’”, “The Christmas Star: I Saw It in Real Life”, and “The Nativity Scene: The Magi”.