Jesus's birthday party

By Jessica Connor

Red-faced and sad, I have to confess: This morning I asked my 7-year-old son, "Do you remember why we celebrate Christmas?" and he responded, "Because it's Santa Claus's birthday."

With a crash, all my happy notions that I was doing right by him as a Christian parent crumbled to the ground, replaced with shock and disbelief.

My son “ the product of Sunday school and children s church and a Christian upbringing, not to mention a mom who discusses Jesus morning and night with him “ has become so fully entrenched in pop culture he actually forgot about Jesus.

I took a breath and corrected him: Christmas is Jesus birthday, not Santa s.

He shrugged, a little embarrassed himself. But Mom, at school and with my friends, all anyone talks about is Santa, so I just forgot.

I think I said all the right things after that. I shared the stories and talked about how silly it is that people get so confused about the meaning of Christmas.

But inside, I was dumbfounded. How could my child, who nightly thanks Jesus Christ for being our Lord and Savior, have actually forgotten about the birth of said Savior? I just couldn t believe it. I mean, I do Jesus birthday parties every Christmas morning, bring out the nativity set and tell the First Christmas stories from the Bible “ the same stories I overheard him telling his sister about last week.

So I asked my son what he thought we should do to help him and all people remember what Christmas is really all about.

He suggested we do two things: 1) Make a big sign. 2) Change the way we pronounce the i in Christmas from the short i sound to the long i sound: CHRISTmas.

I like.

Merry CHRISTmas, everyone. Let s all do our part to share the real reason for the season everywhere we go.