Christmas Is Really for the Kids: Sermon Preached on Thursday 25th December 2025

Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot and St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – Isaiah 52:7-10; Luke 2.1-14

“Then an angel of the Lord stood before them… and they were terrified.”

Christmas is really for the kids. The animals and the baby in swaddling clothes in the stable, and the angels with their cotton wool wings singing sweetly in the night, and the shepherds with their robes, and lots of dressing up. And Santa flying through the Bethlehem sky and the reindeer singing along with the angels as they passed.

(Actually, I made that last bit up – we all know that Santa, whose real name is St Nicholas, didn’t start his work delivering presents to children until about three hundred years after the first Christmas, because it was only then that there were enough children who believed that Jesus Christ was God.)

But that’s really what Christmas is about, isn’t it? A cute story with lots of pretty elements, and Cadbury’s selection boxes, and lots of turkey, and kids getting toys from Santa and having fun. Or maybe it’s something more profound than that?

Of course Christmas is for kids. The presents from Santa and nativity plays and selection boxes are for kids, and the real story of Christmas is very definitely for kids. But it’s also for adults too. For if Christmas is just for kids, then once we get past the age of 12 or so we can stop taking it seriously, and once Boxing Day comes, we can put it away and not think about it for another year, like the tinsel and the baubles for the tree that spend all year being stored in the attic.

But if Christmas is true – if the baby Jesus really was God-made-human, then this is the most important event in history, and the most important story of our lives. And it’s a story that is a lot more gritty than we tend to remember it from school nativity plays—less Disney, more like Happy Valley or perhaps an ancient equivalent of The Wire.  

Let’s start with the Gospel reading we had in Church on Sunday past, because it sets the scene in important ways. It takes place one day in the town of Nazareth, when an angel came to a young woman called Mary, who wasn’t yet married, and told her she would give birth to a son called Jesus, who would be a king. She was very frightened—I mean, we all would be if an angel appeared to us, let alone if it told us a story like that. But more than that, Mary came from a culture where being an unmarried mother was highly stigmatised. There was a huge risk that she was about to see Joseph break off his engagement to her, and perhaps lose for life her chances of respectability and of finding a good husband. Nonetheless, she said yes to God. She didn’t have to. People knew how to deal with unwanted pregnancies back then too.

(This isn’t the sort of stuff you usually find in Disney children’s movies, is it?)

Joseph stuck with her in the end, and then after all that – and this is where we jump into the action today – government bureaucracy intruded on her private life at the worst possible time. When she was heavily pregnant, the man she was engaged to, Jospeh, had to register for a census about a hundred miles away in his family’s hometown, a place called Bethlehem.

Because so many people were travelling because of the census, the young couple couldn’t get a room in a hotel or a guesthouse, and they had to sleep in a stable—from this, we know they couldn’t have been that well off, because if they’d have had enough money, they would have found someone, somewhere, to put them up. But they were obviously pretty skint, so they had to spend the night in an outhouse. Now, wouldn’t you know it, when they were staying in that dingy old stable, Mary started to give birth, in the middle of the night.

While, this was happening, there were shepherds sleeping out with their animals in the nearby fields, and some angels appeared to them. These hard mountain men had seen off many a wolf and many a bandit, but they were absolutely petrified—I mean, we all would be if an angel appeared to us, wouldn’t we? But the angels told the shepherds something wonderful had happened – a baby who would grow up to be a king had been born in the area, and they would find him asleep in a manger. They would find a future king sleeping in a feeding box for animals!

That was appropriate, because this King would grow up to upend everything people thought they knew about who was important and what living a good life meant.

And why was God on earth, as a baby, in an animal’s feeding box? Because He was on a rescue mission, to save human beings, the pinnacle of His creation, whom He loved, from the worst of ourselves. No matter how clearly God showed us the way to live well, we always found a way to mess things up and we still do, usually because we’re greedy, or angry, or self-centred. Sometimes we do things in the moment and even minutes later look back with horror, wondering what had got into us. We all mess things up sometimes – children and adults alike.

God didn’t rescue us from this by seizing power and making us obey Him, but by coming into the world as a tiny baby, growing up to live a perfect life as an adult man. He proclaimed a Kingdom where the poor, the despised, and the few in number mattered immeasurably—the rich and powerful were usually too consumed with their own success to know how much they needed God. Yet although He did everything He could do avoid taking power, He still ended up being put to death by cruel men. But this man was the source of life, so in dying, He opened the way to eternal life for all who believe in Him and seek to live as He taught, no matter how old or young, no matter where they come from, no matter how many mistakes they’ve made. If we trust Him like a little child trusts their parents, He will lead us to Heaven.

That’s something worth celebrating, including in the commercial Christmas sort of way. One thing we know about Jesus is that he liked eating and drinking, because that’s something that his enemies attacked Him for. So please celebrate Jesus Christ’s birth with turkey, and selection boxes, and with the presents that Santa brought you, and if you’re old enough perhaps even with a little libation or two. But please don’t put Christmas away with the tinsel in a few days’ time. Instead, be like the shepherds and praise God because for this little child who is King of the Universe. Make Him the King of your life, and you will find that He leads you to a richer and better life than you could ever have imagined for yourself.

And now to our wonderful counsellor, mighty God, everlasting Father, to Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace, and to the Holy Spirit who overshadowed Mary, be glory in the highest, until the end of all ages. Amen.

Bethlehem Twilight, © Gerry Lynch, 14 November 2022.