Avoiding the "Perfect Christmas" Myth

Watch any Christmas special, and I guarantee you that a major plotline will revolve around someone “ruining Christmas” for a group of people. We feel such pressure to get it right and to have the “perfect Christmas” experience for ourselves or for our children. But nothing could be further from the true Christian understanding of what Christmas is about.

Christmas is about realizing that our best-laid plans never quite fulfill us and always leave us wanting more. Christmas is about how God comes to us when we least expect it, intervenes in miraculous ways, and takes our lives in unexpected directions.

Nothing could be further from the true spirit of Christmas than trying to have a perfect Christmas. Christmas is about celebrating what God has done in history and what God continues to do in the present. He interrupts our plans. He redirects our plans. He calls us to something different than what we were expecting, something which, if we will trust Him, will fill us with joy and wonder over His plan which is grander than ours and which is coming true in our midst and which He calls us to be a part of.

So don’t try to have a perfect Christmas this year. Instead, celebrate the way God has interrupted other people’s lives for their good and His glory, and look for ways that God is trying to interrupt your life and call you to something you might never have imagined.