The Perfect Gift

How many of us are already exhausted in trying to create the perfect Christmas for our families?  We have our checklists of things to do starting the day after Halloween for some us.  Lights on the house, pictures for the Christmas card, baking, gifts and on the list goes until we can’t wait until December 26^th.  Wait, what?  Yes, folks, the day after Christmas when it is all over and only 364 days until it happens again.  When are we going to stop and smell the Christmas cookies?  As a victim of the Griswold flu, I have spent countless hours worrying and stressing about how to make sure my family had the perfect Christmas.  I am convinced that we have succumbed to our sardonic sense of humor in an attempt to evade the scenes from Clark Griswold’s “perfect Christmas” by adhering to the popular white elephant gift and ugly Christmas sweater that have come to be popular traditions this time of year. 

We have been told that it is better to give than to receive (Acts 20:35), unless in the giving you get so lost in the pursuit of giving the perfect gift that it steals the joy out of the giving.  There was ever only one perfect gift given to us on that long ago night in the town of Bethlehem in a less than perfect setting and less than perfect situation.  

“⁴And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, ⁵ to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. ⁶ And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. ⁷ And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”

Luke 2:4-7 (ESV)

Why do we think that we get to earn the title of the perfect gift giver when that title has already been taken?  If perfection were attainable then we would have no need of a savior.  Many a holiday has been ruined when it has not lived up to our idea of the perfect setting.  When we let go of our aspirations of perfection and learn to enjoy the reality of what is maybe we can relax and realize that perfection is best left to our creator who has already created the perfect gift – Jesus.

“No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”

1 John 4:12 (ESV)