How Men Can Put Christ Back at the Center of Christmas Day

Christmas was never meant to be just gifts and chaos. It’s supposed to be a celebration of Christ — but most men find the holiday overrun by stress, parties, and materialism. In this episode, Don shares practical ways you can bring the worshipful meaning back into Christmas Day and lead your family with intention.

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Question for You

What’s one way you’re putting Christ at the center of your Christmas this year? Comment below — your example might inspire another man to do the same.

⏰ TIMECODES

00:00 Rediscovering the True Meaning of Christmas
 02:47 Setting the Tone for a Christ-Centered Christmas
 04:18 Making Christmas Eve Worshipful
 06:48 Creating a Worshipful Christmas Morning
 10:00 Meaningful Christmas Day Traditions
 13:19 Encouragement and Final Thoughts

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#ManhoodTribes #FaithForMen #ChristmasMeaning #ChristCentered #MensLeadership

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Transcript

Don Ross: 0:01

All right, men we're a couple days out from actual Christmas, and if you're like me, you're probably wondering what has happened to the Christmas season and how did it become so stressful and hectic, and in fact, isn't this season supposed to actually be about Christ? Where has any of that even been in the Christmas season? It's just felt like parties and gifts and materialism, and yet you want it to feel like it's actually worshipful and meaningful. If you're kind of caught wondering what happened to Christ in the middle of Christmas, then I want to actually give you some suggestions today on how you can make Christmas Day even more worshipful and meaningful for you and for your family. So let's dive into that today here on the Manhood Tribe Show. My name's Don. It is really good to be with you just a few days out from Christmas if you're watching this video when it first airs. If not, I hope that you'll pick up some good tips for this from this video for next Christmas season or sometime moving forward, to just help you think about how to make the most of a season that really should be centered on something spiritual and worshipful. But we can just tend to get caught up in the things that aren't actually that. Christmas is actually a religious holiday, believe it or not, sometimes here in America, and I think broadly in the West. Christmas just kind of becomes this generic time of year that gets wrapped up in all kinds of other competing agendas that. Aren't actually about anything that the holiday has to do with this is a time that's meant to be about Jesus, about celebrating his birth and what his incarnation, his coming into the world as a human taking on flesh for our sakes, what that means and what that does for us and for the rest of humanity throughout history. It is a special, special day, and yet it is so easy in our culture right now for that incredibly special. Religious and spiritual meaning behind Christmas to just get washed away in the midst of the busyness and the materialism and the fun and the gifts and the parties and the everything else, there's so much going on in this season. Jesus isn't gonna really like force all of those things out of the way so that you will pay attention to him. He wants to be invited into the season so that you can really enjoy him and make him your priority. But you might be thinking, is it too late for me to do that? I mean, here we are, Christmas day is knocking on our door and maybe it's not felt that way at all for you this year around Christmas season, it's felt anything but worshipful. And so you might be wondering if it's just too late, if you've kinda lost your opportunity. And I wanna say to you, no, it isn't. As a man, as a husband, as a dad, these are your opportunities to be able to really set the tone for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and to make the most of them so that they really do become Christ-centered and they become the kind of worshipful. Worshipful experience that you hope that they would be. So let me give you some tips on some ways that you can really think about doing that. Because here's the thing, and I'll say this is especially true for dads and maybe even more especially true for dads with young kids, that if you're in that kind of season in your life, yeah, life is just full. Your kids schedules tend to dictate the season. Your kids' attitudes and their abilities to handle certain situations can often determine how you have to handle those situations. And so, you know, just be aware that that's the fact. Whether that's fruit, whether that's the season of life that you are in or not, you probably have competing agendas and expectations on you as well. And so just acknowledging that there's a lot going on is okay to do. It's okay to take the pressure off of yourself and realize you don't have to create the. Perfect Christmas in order for it to be a good Christmas, in order for it actually to feel like it aligns with the priorities that you have in your life. It can still be that way. Even if there's some things that don't go exactly the way that you would want them to, or there's some expectations that you have to take on that you don't really would like to do. There can still be moments of what you want Christmas to actually be, but it is gonna take some intentionality for you to be able to do that. So let's talk about a few ways that you could do that. Let's start with Christmas Eve night, because this is for many people where the worshipful experience probably actually begins or find some of its biggest meaning. If you're a churchgoer, you probably are gonna attend some kind of Christmas Eve worship service as a way of being able to celebrate the Christmas season and the arrival of Jesus in his birth. Now that's great, but that can also just be kind of like another box to check, right? It can just be one more thing to do. So how do you actually make it as something that isn't just that? Well, I think it's important, especially if you have a family, to try to set the tone for what that's gonna be like both before. After the service, the service itself should probably be meaningful and special for you and your family, or your loved ones, or your friends or whoever you're attending with. But the before and after is what is actually going to make it the most meaningful. Before you might want to have some time to just talk to your family about what the service is all about. Why do you celebrate Christmas? What is going on right now that want, you want to make this a really special occasion? Why is this service different than any of the other church services that you go to throughout the year? This can be a 30 second conversation or it can be a 20 minute conversation. It really doesn't matter as long as you're just kind of bringing it up. It helps set the tone for everybody to be thinking about. What going to the church service is actually for that. It's not just one more thing to do on the calendar of events that happens in December. And then you wanna really make some plans for what you're going to do after the service. If you've got a family with kids and maybe you need to get home and get kids to bed, that's just a part of it. Okay. Make plans for that and do something special at bedtime. Maybe there's milk and cookies, maybe there's a Christmas story. Maybe there's something that you can kind of weave into that tradition to make it special for. If you're not somebody who has a family at the moment and you're just trying to figure out what to do, uh, after a Christmas Eve service, maybe you make some plans with some friends. Let's, let's do a dinner together on Christmas Eve as a way to be able to celebrate something special. You might not be able to go out to dinner, but you could do a small and simple dinner at somebody's home again. Everybody is probably partied out by this point in time, so just do it as something that's simple. You might, maybe everybody's already had dinner, in fact, and so you might just want to do a drink and a dessert as a way to be able to celebrate something together and make it meaningful. All right, and then on Christmas morning is really when you want to try to capitalize on setting the tone for the day, and this is really where you as the man, as the leader, as the pacesetter for you and for your family, can actually bring about a worshipful experience on Christmas. Now, here's what I would say. Here's the key. Don't overdo it. You don't have to preach an hour long sermon or create, you know, the perfect Christmas morning moment in order for you to make Christmas really be about Jesus. But it is important to be able to set the tone for the day. And you might even want to let your family know ahead of time, Hey, here's how we're gonna start out the day. We're not just gonna start by ripping into presents, okay? That's not gonna be the first thing that we do. The first thing that we're gonna do is we're going to, and you figure it out from there. Maybe it's that you're going to say a prayer together. Maybe it's that you're going to read the Christmas story from the Book of Luke to be able to remind yourselves of the story of Jesus' birth. Maybe you're going to light a candle and sing a Christmas Carol. Maybe if you celebrate that. Advent season and follow the Advent Reef, you're gonna light the final advent candle and actually talk about what that represents and why it's meaningful. So make it something simple. Make it something small and likely something brief to be able to say, here's how we're going to set aside some time to start the day off focused on Jesus before we just go about the things that are materialistic. And to that note. Then if what you do after that is move straight into gift giving, which is most likely, if you've got a family with kids, then figure out how you can start into that gift giving will. Don't just let it be this free for all tear into things. Now, there might be a time for that, but you can start it differently than that. You might say, everybody's gonna pick out one. Present that they want to present to someone else. Okay, so it's, it's not about them, it's about someone else in the family. They're gonna go pick out one of mom's presents and say, mom, we really want to see you open this one first. And then everybody gets to experience mom opening that present and enjoying her moment of being able to do that and take time going around to each member of the family, doing that one at a time so everybody gets a special moment. Everybody gets some anticipation of what it's like to see someone else enjoy a present instead of just them enjoying presents. And then if from there you move on to, okay, everybody can just open whatever they wanna open, then that's great. And maybe it becomes a little bit of a terror in the house as that happens. But you know, sometimes that happens on Christmas. Maybe everybody's enjoying that kind of slower rhythm, especially if you've got older kids or no kids in the house. That might be a much. Easier way to kind of take the gift giving rhythm is to go one at a time and to present gifts to each other and watch somebody enjoy opening them. Okay? Even just simple things like that can change the rhythm can change the pace can change the tone and the meaning of what Christmas Day really looks like. Then at some point in time during Christmas day, you do want to have probably a meal that you're celebrating with family, with friends, with extended family. And during that meal, you just want to take some time to do something that's meaningful. Maybe that's sharing a word of encouragement about the other people at the table. Maybe that's everybody taking, uh. An opportunity to contribute to the prayer before the meal where they can express something that they're grateful for from the past year. Uh, maybe it's a moment to remember any kind of loss throughout the year, even if it's just a moment of silence to mourn the things that have been hard throughout the year, uh, to give people an opportunity to be able to do that. Whatever it is, you make it your tradition, you make it yours, but just do something that's going to be simple and straightforward and again, brief. But it allows some meaning to be brought into some of those traditions so you're not just blowing through those things, kind of getting through them and forgetting what they're about. I will say that the most meaningful Christmases that I've had with my family were the ones that we just moved slowly. We were intentional to have a little bit of worship time before we open presents. We took present time at a little bit of a slower pace. We had brunch or lunch with our family and that that was not a super formal or dress up or high stress kind of situation, but it was laid back and enjoyable. And we had some time to be able to say something meaningful around the meal table and to actually appreciate what we loved about the day. And then the rest of the day could be for resting, for relaxing, maybe for enjoying some of the gifts that we've gotten. But all of those kinds of things are made much better by a slower pace and a worshipful focus to the day. And again, that focus doesn't have to be accomplished. By spending the whole day only ever talking about Jesus or only doing spiritual things, it can just be that you're weaving your allegiance to Christ into the right moments throughout the day so that it keeps him at the center. Now I use the word allegiance on purpose because you guys know that here at Manhood Tribes, we talk about allegiance as one of our five marks of manhood. And this is on purpose because a man's allegiance really does dictate what the rest of his life looks like. And so you want your allegiance to Christ. To show up on Christmas Day. And these are some of the simple ways that you can be able to do that without having to stress about how to make it just like the most worshipful or most perfect experience, or that you don't even know how to do any of that. And so you're just gonna let it kind of be whatever it's gonna be, and then it's not worshipful at all. Allow your allegiance to come in, even if it's in one or two simple things to help you make the most of the day. If you've got more questions about the five marks of manhood and how you could be able to weave those kinds of things into your life, you can take a short quiz that I've created called How Manly Are You? And that will help you evaluate how you're doing in each of those five marks, and what are some ways that you can improve in those things and including in the area of allegiance. So go check it out@manhoodtribes.com slash manly. You can download it for free right there and take it within just a few minutes and figure out what are some things you can do to get better at being a man. Now I do want to leave you with some encouragement and a picture of what Christmas can really look like if you do it well By putting, putting a worshipful focus on Christ at the center of what your Christmas day and your Christmas activities kind of look like. I want you to imagine a Christmas morning where the kids expect scripture and prayer first. Not because you forced it, but because it's part of your family story and what you do together. I want you to imagine a home where peace outweighs frenzy because you as the dad, as the husband, as the man in the home, set the tone of worship. I want you to imagine your kids growing up, remembering not just gifts, but rhythms of faith. Because let's be honest guys, most of us, and most of our kids especially, don't remember those gifts even a month later. But what they do remember is the rhythms and the traditions that you. As dad and as leader of your household can actually create, those are the things that will stick with them, and those are the things that they will carry on into their families as well. If you don't have a family, that's okay. You start setting those traditions now and then if you do have a family at some point in time, you're able to build those rhythms and those traditions into your kids' lives as well. Christmas doesn't just have to be about stuff. It can be about Christ. If you'll take some intentional steps just to be able to make it so. All right. I would love to hear from you guys. What's one thing that you are doing this Christmas to be able to put Christ at the center of what you're doing to make it a more worshipful and meaningful holiday for you, for your loved ones, for your friends, for your family. Put that down in the comments and I look forward to engaging with you about those things, and I will look forward to talking to you again in the new year. We will take. Uh, next week off from Manhood Tribe's content, but I will be back in January with a really cool new series to start with you. I look forward to talking to you then. See ya.