Despite the acrid smell of chemical compounds and the web of flexible strands of goo covering everyone head to toe, laughter filled the room and pushed out to meet the wintry morning air.
It was Christmas morning and my five siblings and parents had just emptied the contents of six silly string cans on one another in the span of less than five minutes. As we wiped the tears of laughter from our eyes and recovered our composure, I knew we had just added another memory to the stockpile of Wishall family Christmas experiences.
During my formative years, I experienced Christmas traditions in the heart of America (Missouri) in a season of relative peace and religious freedom. As the oldest of six children, raised in a stable, two-parent Christian home—with a mother and father who wanted us to make fun family memories while always remembering “the reason for the season”—I have a veritable gold mine of such experiences from which to draw.
Perhaps you do as well.
But what if you don’t?
Could you start this year? Does it matter if you do?
Only a Positive Attitude or Something More?
While the term “Christmas” is a compilation of the words Christ and mass, referring to a worship service marking the birth of Jesus Christ, in America Christmas is a marketing-saturated, commercialized extravaganza. Retailers’ entire existence can hinge on the success or failure of their holiday sales, earning the period from October–December the title “The Golden Quarter.”1
1. The label appears widely in UK and international trade commentary and is closely linked to the long build-up to Christmas. See Mohamed Dabo, “Golden Quarter in Retail: How a Seasonal Surge Became a Year-Round Strategy,” Retail Insight Network, October 15, 2025, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/golden-quarter-retail-seasonal-surge-081108380.html.
Many “Christmas” experiences are divorced from Jesus and spirituality altogether, leaving a glut of sugar, evergreen needles, and smelly Santa suits in their wake. For many, Christmas is more about cultural expression than religious observance.2 The Christmas season equals a period in the year marked by attempts at increased cheerfulness, gift-giving, and time spent with friends and family, before reality sets back in come January.
2. Nine in ten Americans say they celebrate Christmas, but only 46% say they celebrate Christmas as primarily a religious (rather than cultural) holiday according to a Pew Research Center survey. See Michael Lipka and David Masci, “5 Facts about Christmas in America,” Pew Research Center, December 18, 2017.
As children age, many conclude that Christmas is more fantasy than reality. Parents may maintain a few traditions when their kids reach high school—seeking to maintain some semblance of happiness and cheer, even if such happiness is mostly forced. It can feel like Christmas is something special for kids, but nothing more.
Are the traditions of Christmas largely a marketing scheme or commercial extravaganza, or is something more meaningful going on? What is Christmas actually about? And are only children able to fully experience that meaning?
Christmas is Only for Kids
In this article, I will show that Christmas is only for kids—meaning that the purpose of the incarnation and mission of Jesus Christ is to reveal and carry out the redemptive plan of His good Father, which only those who have faith like a child can participate in and enjoy to the fullest. What makes up faith like a child? Trust, curiosity, teachability, and the ability to be awed—all characteristics that enable one to enjoy Christmas and to live with lasting hope and joy in every season of the year.
Fostering Trust in the Incarnate King
Christmas centers on the birth of Jesus Christ, sent into the world by God the Father to seek and save the lost. Jesus—God the Son incarnate—entered the world physically and bodily in a manger in Bethlehem and years later physically and bodily rose from the dead. In between those events, He perfectly, constantly, and completely kept God’s law and died on a cross as the personal atoning sacrifice for God’s people.
Through these actions, Jesus opened the way for orphaned sinners to become adopted sons or daughters in His family. Jesus taught that only a person with faith like a child can enter His kingdom and family (Matt. 18:3, Mark 10:15, Luke 18:17) and that any person with such faith may come in (Acts 2:21, Rom. 10:13, Rev. 22:17).
God’s Word teaches that we grow in Christ the same way we receive Him—by continuing in faith (Gal. 3:1–6, 5:6, 13–14; Col. 2:6–7) and adding regular, consistent obedience to the mix with the Spirit’s help (Phil. 2:12–13). As the old children’s song says, “trust and obey, for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”
How can we foster such trust? Kids can teach us adults a thing or two:
- Kids inherently extend trust more than adults. Kids have less experiences that threaten to jade their perspective and more readily take things at face value.
- In healthy home situations, kids particularly trust their parents, believing they will be true to their word and have their best interests in mind.
- If children cannot understand something about God and His ways, they more readily conclude that they do not comprehend fully, instead of ruling out the possibility that God’s knowledge exceeds their own.
What characterizes adults who display similar faith?
- Taking God at His Word by believing His promises, not letting a cynical spirit develop if immediate circumstances are not favorable.
- Building and strengthening an instinct to trust God when a matter exceeds the limits of their finite understanding.
- Maintaining trust over time by knowing and believing that God is at work in all things for their good and His glory.
Christmas displays and declares the trustworthiness of God, as we celebrate the culmination of God’s redemptive plan for the ages.
Consider Isaiah 49:6:
He says: ‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’
This servant is Jesus—the Messiah that God’s servant Simeon had waited his whole life to see:
Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,
according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation
that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to your people Israel. (Luke 2:29–32)
The Christmas season offers extended time to sing about Christ’s coming, remember why He came, and celebrate in response. As we do these things, we foster trust in our Savior and allegiance to our King.
Cultivating Curiosity in the Inexhaustible Savior
Children are inherently curious. Finding a parent who has not been wearied by their eight-year-old’s incessant questions is harder than finding a pre-conversion Ebenezer Scrooge in December. Kids explore, go on adventures, create, and develop—all without even leaving their room.
When kids wonder about something, they ask until they get a satisfactory answer; when they want to understand something better, they jump right in and experience it. To be a kid is to be curious! What can adults learn from this?
- Jesus said ask, seek, and knock, for the one who asks will receive, the one who seeks will find and to the one who knocks the door will be opened (Matt. 7:7–8).
- Paul prayed that the Ephesian church would grasp the full extent of Christ’s love, worshipping the God who is able to do immeasurably more than all that they could ask or imagine (Eph. 3:14–21).
- The Christmas season gives us devoted time to look back at the wonder of the coming of Christ on the human scene—the Word made flesh, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).
Christmastime provides a great opportunity to explore the unsearchable riches of Christ (Eph. 3:8–9). Carols replete with rich doctrine and advent devotionals that trace the promises, types, and themes of the Old Testament fulfilled in the Christ of the New Testament make family worship particularly fertile ground during this time of year.3
3. Our family has used a Jesse Tree tradition, to walk through stories from the Bible that highlight the overall storyline of Scripture culminating with Christ. See “The Jesse Tree: A Guide to the Advent Tradition,” Faithward.org, accessed December 17, 2025, https://www.faithward.org/jesse-tree/. Other excellent devotionals include Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Dawn of Redeeming Grace: Daily Readings for Advent (Charlotte, NC: The Good Book Company, 2019); Paul David Tripp, Everyday Gospel: A Daily Devotional Connecting Scripture to All of Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024); John Piper, Good News of Great Joy: Daily Readings for Advent (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020).
When we approach God with curiosity, seeking to know and be reminded of the glorious vistas of His character and works, revealed throughout history and seen most fully in Jesus Christ, we honor Him as the one who made us and is worthy of our curiosity and devotion.
Tending to Teachability
As fallen human beings now redeemed, spiritual growth requires teachability. Given the character and virtue of our Teacher, Savior, and Example, Jesus Christ, this should not surprise us:
- Christmas reveals a Savior who entered the world as a babe, untaught and untested in His humanity.
- Jesus learned and grew in wisdom (Luke 2:52), applying God’s Word to every situation (Heb. 5:8–9).
- Through suffering Jesus learned obedience, successfully navigated all of life’s challenges (Heb. 2:10, 14, 18), and is our example to follow in being humble learners (John 13:13–17).
God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble (1 Pet. 5:5–6), therefore, whoever humbles himself like a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 18:4). Followers of Jesus are learners by definition.4 To grow spiritually, we must cultivate teachability.
4. The primary meaning of disciple in New Testament Greek, mathētēs, is learner.
The activity of gingerbread house construction illustrates the importance of teachability. Anyone who has tried their hand at this holiday craft—using graham crackers and royal icing—knows it is no simple task. There is a process to be learned and steps to be followed:
- Constructing the bones of your house and letting the icing harden before you try to decorate.
- Strategically placing support crackers and pillars within.
- Applying decorations with an icing-then-candy-“brick-by-brick” approach instead of a covering-your-house-in-icing-then-decorations approach.
My wife and I have passed on this tradition to our progeny. Of our four kids, those who received our instruction most readily were the ones who basked in the joy of successful construction most effectively.
Kids, when trained by caring and knowledgeable people, are remarkably teachable. When kids ask questions, they genuinely want to know the answer. They readily receive instruction, soaking in new concepts like a sponge and applying new training as eager padawans.
Jesus is the most knowledgeable Teacher there is: He spoke with authority, amazing His hearers (Matt. 7:28–29, Luke 4:32). Solomon’s wisdom paled in comparison to Christ’s (Matt. 12:42), one in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:2–3). Jesus equally personifies care: He had compassion on the crowds in need of a shepherd (Matt. 9:36), gave his life for the sheep (John 10), and has a gentle heart that moves towards sinners and sufferers in time of need.
To have childlike faith is to be humble and teachable.
Abiding in Awe-ability
The traditions of Christmas have the greatest effect on kids because they have an at-the-ready ability to be awed. All it takes is a drive through a Christmas-light laden neighborhood to solicit a chorus of oohs and aahhs that puts parents watching their kid’s ballet recital to shame. The anticipatory joy experienced when the number of presents with your name on it under an evergreen tree (or artificial replica) increase adds to the experience.5
5. I leave the application and explanation of the Santa Claus tradition up to the decision of wise and informed parents. We choose to tell our kids about the historical Saint Nick and make them aware of fictional versions of the same, because we want them to know gifts come from us, keep the spotlight on God not a man, and foster truth telling. Other Christian voices maintain that preserving the story of Santa for as long as possible fosters a child’s imagination and sharpens, not dulls, one’s experience of God’s good gifts.
Awe at the most wonderful source—the God of the universe—peppers the Scriptures:
- When he looks at the night sky, David wonders at the majesty of God (Psalm 8).
- Psalm 139 expresses amazement at the ever-abiding presence of God and His inexhaustible knowledge.
- Isaiah 40 remarks that because God knows the stars by name, he certainly watches over each of His children with care.
- At the end of the most comprehensive theological section of Scripture (Romans 1–11), Paul bursts forth into praise of the unsearchable and glorious God (Rom. 11:33–36) before turning to our response of worship (Romans 12–16).
- Jesus Christ “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature” (Heb. 1:3) is the one worthy to open the scroll (Rev. 5:1–4, 9), the one worthy of all our worship.
Christ’s incarnation left people in wonder and awe: Shepherds worshipped, pagan wise men bowed down, Mary treasured it all in her heart, and Simeon and Anna rejoiced at the coming of God’s Messiah—all before Jesus was a month old. Every person with faith like a child joins their number as worshippers of the King.
Christmas is for Kids
In his first epistle, the apostle John suddenly bursts forth in praise for the wonder of being part of God’s family:
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. (1 John 3:1–3)
As God’s sons and daughters living in the fullness of time (Gal. 4:4–6) we possess the already of Christ’s kingdom now, while we wait for the not yet of its future consummation. There is much to amaze us now and even more as we look to our future (1 Pet. 1:3–5) and set our hearts and minds on Christ (Col. 3:1–4).
Children can most readily participate in Christmas traditions because they inherently trust, are curious, teachable, and awe-able. May we all engage in life with such childlike faith in Jesus this Christmas season—and every other season of our lives.
