Daily Devotion for Advent - December 24th

Christmas in a 3-year-old's house - Chris Lee

Well, we have a 3-year-old in our house, and this is the first year that he’s really cared about Christmas.  He loves the ornaments on the tree and all the extra lights that are up, but most of all he loves the Christmas music.  I’ve been trying to explain to him the difference in “winter songs” from “Christmas songs.”  I’ve told him that the songs about Jesus are Christmas songs, and the ones about snow and sleighs and reindeer are winter songs, but he apparently doesn’t care.  

I love hearing him sing songs like “Deck the Halls” and “Jingles Bells” because I have finally learned the words that I never knew were in these songs.  For instance, in the last line of “Deck the Halls” I always sang, “Troll the ancient Yule tide carol,” but apparently the real words are “Shawl the angel you tide Sherril.”  I am not entirely sure what the line means, but, to tell you the truth, I didn’t really understand what I had been singing all these years either.  And in “Jingle Bells” my son taught me how the second verse goes, and that it begins with, “A seder to ago…”  Apparently there is a verse about a Jewish Passover meal…who knew?

He has fun singing those songs, but there is something that changes in him when he begins singing songs like, “Joy to the World,” “Away in a Manger,” or “Silent Night.”  It’s like all of a sudden, when he begins singing about the birth of Jesus, he gets serious about it.  He sings with more determination and is more intentional about learning the words. 

I know that I am sharing a story from a musical family, but that doesn’t matter.  God beckons us all to sing praise, to sing declaration, to lift up a song of praise.  There is no condition on whether or not you had formal training.  There is something that happens in our souls as we lift up these songs to God, and God is pleased in these songs.  Let us sing at the top of our lungs and celebrate because the Lord has come!  May the joy, the love, the hope of Christmas fill up your life as you sing these Christmas songs (or winter songs), so that we may live differently, and so that others may see the difference the birth of the Christ child makes in us.  Merry Christmas!

Chris Lee