The Believer's Gift to Christ, Part 2

We are obviously in the midst of the largest, longest, most elaborate and most expensive celebration in the western world, Christmas. Nothing even comes close to it. In fact, you could collect all other holidays celebrated in the western world, put them together and they wouldn't approximate Christmas. More activity goes on, more events, more spending, more celebrating, more parties, more everything than with any other event.

In fact, this is surely the most well-known ancient story in all of western civilization, the story of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. And it's interesting to me that the world would spend so much time and so much effort for good and bad reasons to accumulate such a massive event as to what Christmas has become, realizing that at the heart of it all, it is to mark the birth of the Son of God. It is amazing what the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ two thousand years ago has set in motion in terms of society. And it seems to me it gets bigger every year. It certainly starts earlier every year...for sure. Though the main event historically is the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, that no longer is the simple reality of Christmas...that has been severely obscured and confused and clouded by unrelated silliness like Santa Claus and reindeer and all the entourage that goes with that. And mix in a few winter items and somehow you get a rather confused scenario. . . .

http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/42-265