Waiting For Christmas Series

It’s a difficult year to celebrate anything. Yet, Christmas is a season of hope in the midst of a really challenging year. The hope of Christmas is irrepressible no matter what you’re facing. There’s a buoyant hope to Christmas that continues to surface despite challenges.

Some years ago, The Cincinnati Post decided to keep all the bad news off its front page for one day. They decided to only put the good news on the front page of the newspaper. What would make the editors do this rare thing? They did this in honor of Christmas.

Christmas’ buoyant hope seeps through everything and moves through any obstacle.

Marxist Lenin issued an order in 1919 that if anyone didn’t show up to work on December 25 because of the Christmas holiday, they would be shot. The people turned to Christmas to gather hope and warmth in the midst of challenging times. Lenin knew this and hated it.

The hope of the Christmas message moves us; it’s irrepressible.

Now, the celebration of Christmas has grown through the years. Like the layers of an onion, the traditions around the Christmas holiday have grown. If you could travel back in time, Christmas would look really different down through the centuries! The earliest Christians really did not celebrate Christmas. These men and women of faith were more interested in celebrating Easter and the resurrection than they were in the birth of Christ. It was not until people began to deny if Jesus really came in human flesh that Christian churches began to place up nativity sets.

And the way we celebrate Christmas has changed down through the years. The modern picture of the holiday where Christmas trees are put up and presents for children are under the tree really began to take shape in the middle part of the 1800s. It’s here that a painting of England’s royal family was reprinted in New York. The painting showed the family around a Christmas tree that Albert had brought from Germany. You could see children surrounding the tree in the painting, and you could see gifts there as well. From this “middle class” looking photo, our idea that the holiday should be centered around the idea of putting gifts under a tree really took off. And with the beginning of department stores, the commercialization of Christmas really took off as we know it today. Before the start of department stores like Macy’s and their great advertising, friends and family would give handmade clothes.

Today, I want to peel the back onion to the real story of Christmas. The biblical story of Christmas has major characters and minor characters, who all play an important role in making the story of Christmas great theatre. Some of these you know well, such as Joseph, Mary, and the angels. Others are less well-known and only have cameo appearances, such as the two characters we see today: Simeon and Anna.

To prepare you for the upcoming Christmas season, I want to introduce you to these two people who were exceptional at waiting. God tells this relatively unknown man named Simeon, I will show you the Messiah before you die. And then there’s a lady named Anna, who did nothing but fast and pray at the Temple night and day. Here when Jesus is presented at the Temple, we meet a man of faith and a woman of prayer.

1. Learn to Wait

“Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 26 And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ” (Luke 2:25-26).

“And there was a prophetess, Anna, …. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, 37 and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day” (Luke 2:36-37).

So both Simeon and Anna were really good at waiting. They waited because they took the Bible seriously.

1.1 Examples of Waiting

How do you like waiting? Now, there are all kinds of waiting in life. There is “wait until your father gets home,” and there’s waiting on your plane during a long layover. And there is the waiting room where you sit to hear news from the doctor on the outcome of your loved one’s surgery. And then there’s waiting on Christmas.

Traci and I were recently watching Frosty the Snowman on TV over the Thanksgiving break. I said to her that I loved when that show came on because it meant Christmas was just around the corner when you were a kid. Maybe you had something similar which marked the beginning of the Christmas season for you. Waiting on Christmas was packed full of anticipation and excitement. But waiting for the first Christmas wasn’t nearly that exciting.