How Not to Ruin Christmas: Don't Miss the Miracle of God's Greatest Gift

By Dan Metzger

You want to have a good Christmas. Really, you do. But every year, something steals your joy. Could that something be you?

At Christmas, there's lots of talk about comfort and joy...but the reality of the season is often less than jolly. The holidays have a way of underscoring grief, magnifying divisions, and creating chaos in the fragile

• Language: English
• Publisher: Invite Press
• Release date: Oct 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781953495877

Dan Metzger

Dan Metzger is the Senior Pastor of St. Marks United Methodist Church in Findlay, Ohio. After receiving his Master of Divinity from Asbury Theological Seminary, Dan began serving churches throughout west Ohio. Dan and his wife Holly have three amazing daughters: Adelyn, Renee, and Emilia. Dan is passionate about helping people find and tell their own stories of life change through Jesus.

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How NOT To Ruin Christmas

How NOT to Ruin Christmas: Don’t Miss the Miracle of God’s Greatest Gift

Copyright 2023 by Dan Metzger

All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission can be addressed to Permissions, Invite Press, P.O. Box 260917, Plano, TX 75026.

This book is printed on acid-free, elemental chlorine-free paper.

Paperback: 978-1-953495-86-0; eBook: 978-1-953495-87-7

Scripture quotations are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 —10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

MANUFACTURED in the UNITED STATES of AMERICA

To Holly, my favorite Christmas present

Contents

Introduction

Worry

Conflict

Misery

Selfishness

Regifting

Questions for Small Groups

Introduction

To be clear, I know you don’t want to ruin your Christmas. However, I’m also certain it’s happened before. Somehow, despite your best efforts, you’ve had a lousy Christmas.

Life doesn’t just stop in late November, when Jingle Bells starts playing on the radio. If anything, life intensifies. A birth at Christmas feels even more special . . . because it’s Christmas. A death feels even more tragic . . . because it’s Christmas. If you lose your job or get in a fight with your family, if feels worse . . . because it’s Christmas. If it snows on Christmas, it feels magical. If it snows in late February, it feels tragic.

Every Christmas has the potential to be the best Christmas ever—or the worst. Some of that is out of our control. Sometimes terrible, tragic things happen around the holidays, and it seems to overshadow everything that is supposed to be good and joyful about the season.

Some of it, though, is absolutely within our control. The way we approach the season and the things we expect the season to bring can often become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For generations, Christians around the world have grown to expect these four things: Hope. Peace. Joy. Love.

These four beautiful themes encapsulate so much of what the story of the incarnation is about. In the birth of the Christ child, we can come to expect to find the beauty and wonder that results from the gift of God coming to walk with us. Because it’s Christmas, our hope is like no hope we have ever experienced before. Our peace is a peace that surpasses our understanding. Our joy envelops every part of our lives. Our love is a deeper and more abiding love than we feel at any other time of the year. This is the kind of Christmas we long for, and when we approach Christmas with this expectation, this is the kind of Christmas we can experience.

Unfortunately, this is not the Christmas we often expect to have. We have become realists. We have lowered our expectations. All that mushy stuff might sound nice on a Hallmark card, but in our houses, life is a mess. The season brings with it a steady stream of issues to worry about, broken relationships, and unrealized dreams. We’ve come to expect the worst to happen, and when it does, we feel justified in our skepticism.

Expecting a lousy Christmas is a sure way to have a lousy Christmas. When you do, you are likely to miss the miracle of the greatest gift God has ever given to humankind.

R

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow woke up on Christmas morning 1863 to hear the church bells ringing. He had woken up alone that morning, as two years earlier, his wife, Fannie, had died after her dress caught fire in a terrible accident. Henry had tried to put out the flames, severely burning himself in the process, but it was too late.

His son Charlie was off fighting for the Union Army in the American Civil War. On the first day of December, Henry received a telegram. Charlie had been shot through the right shoulder at the battle of Mine Run, barely avoiding paralyzation, as the bullet traveled through his back and clipped his spine.

You can imagine the conflicted feelings Henry had upon awakening to joyful church bells that Christmas morning. He was a widowed father of six children, the oldest of whom was fighting for his life as the nation was in the middle of a bloody war. Putting ink to paper, he began to write his poem I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. At the end of each stanza, he repeated the line that angels had sung to the shepherds on that first Christmas night: Peace on earth, goodwill to men.

In his poem, he pondered that though these words had been sung through the ages and around the world, maybe they were being drowned out by the sounds of cannon fire. Perhaps pain and hurt and violence were winning the day. He then wrote this stanza:

And in despair I bowed my head;

There is no peace on earth, I said;

"For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Maybe there is nothing good to expect at Christmas anymore. Maybe for Henry, and for all of us, there are only misery and pain. But Henry added one more verse to his poem:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men."¹

Something in the sound of the bells reminded Henry that even in his darkest circumstances, surrounded