The Christmas season can be tough. For many people, the sights, sounds, and aromas of Christmas resurrect painful memories of heartache, disappointment, or loss. The transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge, or the “perfect” Christmas kiss at the end of a favorite Hallmark movie, may cause some hearts to flutter, but will bring tears of pain or guilt or deep sadness to others. I’m one of those people for whom Christmas brings a mixture of emotions. I have some great memories of

After Easter, Christmas should be the happiest day of the year in Christian worship. The reason I say “after Easter” is that Good Friday and Easter is the goal of Christmas. The death and resurrection, the salvation of sinners through the death and resurrection of Jesus, is the goal of Christmas. Christmas is not the goal of Easter. Christmas is a means. The salvation of sinners on Good Friday and Easter is the goal. Jesus came at Christmas to seek and save the lost (Luke

(Jon Bloom is an editor at www.desiringgod.org) Bethlehem, at the time of Jesus’s birth, was a little town with a population of only about three hundred. Yet within a period of just a few months, it saw the gloriously humble entrance of God the Son into the world (Luke 2), as well as the brutal deaths of baby boys by the command of Herod the Great, who tried to kill the Son (Matthew 2). It’s not unlikely that a few inhabitants witnessed both events firsthand. We too are cau