The real Christmas story has nothing to do with Santa Claus!
If you remember the 1983 movie A Christmas Story, you recall Ralphie (played by Peter Billingsley) obsessing over getting a Red Ryder BB gun as a present for Christmas. A dressed up Santa Claus, and even his mom tell him, “You’ll shoot your eye out.”
Yet, the real Christmas story was, sadly, never mentioned in the movie. The real Christmas story reveals a Father’s love. No, no a father’s love to get his son a BB gun, but the Heavenly Father’s love for you. The Heavenly Father loves you so much that He gave His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Messiah, to die as a sacrifice for your sins. It is for this very reason that Jesus had to be birthed into this earth. The free gift of salvation through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is God’s gift to you! This is the Christmas story.
Jesus actually tells this story about the Christ (Himself) to Nicodemus in John chapter 3. Listen in to hear more.
1There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
2This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”
3Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
4Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”
5Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
6That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
7Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’
8The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
9Nicodemus answered and said to Him, “How can these things be?”
10Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?
11Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness.
12If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?
13No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven.
14And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
15that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
16For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
17For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
18“He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
19And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
20For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.
21But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”
(John 3:1-21)