If you know me you know that I’m not a “legalist” and that I love Christmas. This year Christmas is on a Sunday (December 25^th by the way). It occurs this way at various intervals and won’t happen again until December 25, 2022. That means this Christmas is a rare opportunity to gather on the Lord’s Day in worship with the church.

Yes, I know that Christmas Day is a busy day packed with various and sundry family traditions. There are gifts to exchange, food to eat, movies to watch, and more food to eat. And all that’s great. I can’t wait for our kids to be together with us.

Still, at FBC Magnolia we are gathering for worship on Christmas morning and I hope our non-traveling able-bodied church members will be there. In fact, I think they should be. Here’s why.

If we’re not careful, celebrating our Christmas traditions becomes more important than celebrating Christmas. It’s not that there is necessarily anything wrong with our traditions. It’s just that there’s everything right about gathering with the church on the Lord’s Day to sing, pray, and preach in celebration of the good news heralded centuries ago by the angels to shepherds abiding in their fields.

It is the Lord’s Day. Are we going to say that gathering in worship on Sunday is important except when the day we celebrate the Lord’s Advent falls on Sunday?

And what will our children and grandchildren learn if we abandon the worship of Jesus on the Lord’s Day in favor of Santa Claus and brunch?

At this point some are labeling me a meddling hyper-legalist while a few are offended that I celebrate Christmas at all. It’s not easy making anybody happy and impossible making everybody happy.

I celebrate Christmas because Christ “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8)

And that’s why this Christmas, on the Lord’s Day, I plan to be with our church family singing, praying, and preaching Christ.