Welcome to Culture and Christianity. This is a highlight for me. They're going to turn me loose without a guest. So buckle up. It's always a little dangerous. I think it makes everybody nervous when they give me a microphone, an open clock, and no guest at the table. But it's Christmas time. And I want to use that as kind of

the primary talking points for us today. I want to make some just, you know, I have served a

local congregation for quite a while. So I've been a part of this Christmas thing in a lot of

versions. And I'm going to give you some lessons that I've taken away from Christmas and maybe

it will help you this Christmas. And I want to start with just the effort of Christmas. It's work.

You know, in church world, especially it's work. By the time we get the Christmas and I'm done

with Christmas Eve, I have fa la la la la all I want to. but I have come to truly, truly be grateful for the privilege

of celebrating Christmas. And I want to invite you towards that this Christmas season, no matter

what your circumstances are. My mom went to heaven a little over a year ago. So that's still a big

change for my family. She and my father were married more than 65

years. And so our Christmases are different. And it's okay. They're different and there's some good

things about it and there's some things we miss about it. But the effort of Christmas, let's start

there a minute. You know, back in the day when I was a younger pastor and the church was

younger, there was a lot of anxiety about whether the celebration of Christmas was appropriate or not,

whether Christmas trees were pagan symbols, a symbol of druidism, and they didn't have anything to do

with Christianity. And December the 25th wasn't really Jesus' birthday. It's the winter solstice, and it was a pagan

holiday, and we don't know when Jesus was born, and we shouldn't celebrate on December the 25th.

Just a happy group of people. And I remember the Christmas where I decided that we were going

to celebrate. In fact, we decorated a Christmas tree as a part of a worship service.

For a while, we didn't even decorate the sanctuary.

We didn't put up, the church was very simple, not like it is today.

You know, we didn't even put up Christmas decorations.

...