December 25th we celebrate the Christian holiday, Christmas; with great anticipation and excitement we begin Christmas music as soon as we’ve eaten the last of our Thanksgiving turkey. But December 25th is just like any other day of the year. The precise date of Jesus birth is unknown, and most scholars doubt it was even in December. I think Christmas is important (obviously, otherwise why would I take the time to write 24 posts about it?), but it’s important that we understand Christmas is nothing by itself. December 25th is just a day chosen arbitrarily. The date was decided when Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the official Roman religion, church leaders then decided to borrow the date from multiple pagan festivals of the sun. The day itself is really meaningless, but what we celebrate is most significant: the Creator in the flesh, sent to save. Christmas can be holy, meaning “set apart”; it is just a day, but it can be far more when we take the time to think about what we’re celebrating. December 25th may just be numbers on a calendar but I extend the challenge, both to you and to myself, to use that meaningless day and to make it holy, to set it apart, to let go of the stress of the “holidays”, and to rest in the truth of Christmas, to reflect on the peace that the knowledge of a Savior brings; and to let the holiness of that time renew our minds extending beyond the 25th and into the rest of our year.