Christmas Eve 2025
Introduction
Sometimes Christians aren’t sure how to handle the beauty of Christmas. There are warnings about commercialism and materialism. And many well-meaning Christians say things like they just want to focus on the meaning of Christmas and not be distracted by all the shopping and gifts and lights. Most go along with the celebration of Christmas, but they may often feel a tinge of guilt. One way to answer this question is by going back to the beginning.
Creation as the First Christmas
It’s true that the birth of Jesus was the first Christmas, but there’s another sense in which the very first Christmas was actually four thousand years before that, when God created the heavens and the earth, when God said, let there be light. That first Christmas was when God made everything and made the first man and woman in His image and presented that enormous, lovely world to them as His gift —there were even two special trees at that first Christmas.
Think about that: that first Creation-Christmas was loaded with stuff – all the stuff that God had made. God made it for Adam and Eve to enjoy, to use wisely, to share, to give, to glorify. And none of it was a distraction. All of it was an invitation – an invitation to know the One who made it, who gave it.
I often say that Genesis 2 is a treasure map: God put Adam in the garden and pointed out the river that ran out of the garden, and He told Adam that it divided into four rivers: down the first river there was gold and other precious stones; the second river went to an exotic land called Ethiopia; the third was a river that went into Assyria; and I love the fact that the last one is simply called Euphrates and God doesn’t tell Adam where that one goes. It’s a mystery. At that first Creation-Christmas, God gave the world to Adam and Eve, full of treasures and beauty. At that first Creation-Christmas God pointed at everything He had made and said it was all very good and it is all for you to enjoy.
Adam sinned not by being distracted by the stuff that God had made, but by not believing in the goodness of God as demonstrated by all of that goodness in creation. In other words, the goodness of all the gifts was an invitation to believe in the goodness of God. But instead of receiving those gifts and believing in the goodness of God, Adam doubted God’s goodness and tried to create his own goodness. He believed the lies of the serpent that God was withholding some good thing from them.
And so Adam plunged our race into the darkness of sin and death. Not only would there be sickness and dying, there would be greed and lust, envy and pride, and even the creation-gifts would have thorns and weeds and pain. And so ensued centuries of murder, adultery, wars, lies, and betrayal. Adam and Eve were escorted out of the garden, and God placed cherubim at the entrance of the garden, on the east side of Eden.
The Dayspring from on High
Down through the centuries, the darkness of sin continued, but God left a light in the darkness: He pointed Abraham to the stars shimmering in the night sky; He put candles in the Holy Place – He led His people through the wilderness like a pillar of fire by night. And as our Old Testament ends, the Prophet Malachi says, “But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall” (Mal. 4:2). The Old Testament promise is that the long night of Adam’s sin will come to an end.
So when John the Baptist was born, his old father Zacharias sang a hymn of jubilant praise, which closes with these words: “Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:78-79). The Dayspring from on high hath visited us. The sunrise that Malachi foretold is about to happen: the dark night of sin and death is about to break.
The word “dayspring” is a wonderfully archaic word from the Middle English tendency to create ‘kennings’ – a kenning combines two words to create a new word with a different meaning. For example, a “whale-road” is a Middle English kenning for the ocean. A modern kenning we still use is “book-worm” for an avid reader. Dayspring refers to dawn, sunrise, or the east, where the day breaks. It combines the word “day” with “spring,” which means origin or source, and usually refers to water, to the mouth of a river.
Malcome Guite points out that since Christ is called the Dayspring, the Christian life is in a sense oriented to the east, to Christ the Great Sunrise. In fact, the word “orient” means east, as in “the three kings of orient” that we sing about. After a pitch dark night, navigators would get “oriented” or “re-oriented” by the light of dawn, by the Dayspring in the east. C.S. Lewis pictures this Christian journey to the east vividly in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Notice the ship’s name: Dawn Treader. And which way were they sailing? Of course towards the east, the utter-east, where the water is sweet, like liquid light, and Aslan’s country beyond.
Conclusion
Our sinful hearts get so disoriented in our sin and bitterness and rebellion. We forget the goodness of God. But the beauty of God still shines in our darkness. And to prove it, God came down. God came near. The Morning Star was born. The Utter East was born in the Middle East. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. The Light became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory. And He was crucified for our sin, and He rose from the dead so that we might be re-oriented to Him.
The problem is not the stuff. The problem is the direction you’re going. Sin disorients because it turns you away from the source of the light. Sin fundamentally turns you inward; sin is self-centered, self-serving, self-oriented. But all the good gifts of God are invitations out of yourself and into the east. All the good gifts of God are like Dawn Treaders, meant to carry you toward the Dayspring, toward the source of all good things, like rivers flowing down from the Eternal Garden, from the Sunrise on High.
So take and eat. Take and drink. Wrap and unwrap. Give and receive. Sing out. Laugh for joy. Delight in the gifts of God because every good and every perfect gift comes down to us from the Father of Lights, liquid light, light you can drink. And Christmas is the renewal of the invitation to that great adventure.
Which means can’t stay here. You have to keep moving upstream. All of this is just the first fruits, just the first flecks of gold in the water, but there is greater treasure to come, greater beauty, greater glory – that you were made for, that your heart longs for. Sin tries to grasp for this final beauty here and now, but faith looks through all the gifts toward the Utter East, and determines to sail to the Son beyond the Sun.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.
Photo by Jordan Wozniak on Unsplash
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