Entering into the Christmas season is always a great pleasure for me. Not the pushing and shoving and shopping and such, but the hustle and bustle does invigorate one. No, it's the celebration: the decorating of the home, the setting and celebrating of traditions; sappy Christmas movies that don't really have much to do with Christmas itself but do enlarge the spirit of the Holiday within the hearts of those who watch, the many versions of "Little Drummer Boy" that keep cropping up, "visions of sugarplums" dancing in all the heads of all the little children who've ever heard the poem by Clement Moore.

But what makes Christmas special is not just the Christ-child, it is the CHRIST, the Son of the living God - Jesus Himself. Born of a virgin. Living a sinless life in order to fulfill His purpose in coming at Christmastime anyway--to shoulder the responsibility for my sin willingly on a rough-hewn cross. I am so thankful that Jesus initiated Christmas so that my inadequate payment for my sin would be covered by all of His adequacy - His abundance. It is the Life found in Jesus the Christ that makes me so thankful every year, at both Thanksgiving and at Christmas.