Do you have a family Christmas story? For some, the season is highlighted by family reunions. Others send a family Christmas letter or a social media snapshot which share the past year’s fun and facts. Those holiday letters filled with anecdotes or bragging can make you laugh or gag.
One consistent denominator is every family tries to shine the light on the good parts while working to bury their family skeletons. It is called ‘editing.’ Most reports present the family Christmas version as if it were a resume for Family of the Year. The reality version would qualify for Nightmare on Elm Street.
We recently received a holiday photo letter update where the background for the family portrait looked like the Botanical Gardens. Their home could be a cover for Southern Living. The mother’s award-winning recipes were shared as if she had won Top Chef. Their kids are successful, and their grandkids are both cute and brilliant.
While reading this glorious epistle, I looked around our house. The room is a mess. We are sick with the flu. We have a pile of laundry and a bigger pile of debt. Our grandchild just picked his nose and is faced with the momentous decision of whether to eat it or feed it to the dog.
The family I grew up in was not any different. No Christmas celebration mentioned that Grandfather Joel was an abusive alcoholic who abandoned his wife and four young sons.
We did not send out the Christmas story that my dad’s family fled like refugees. My five-year-old Dad carried the baby while the older brothers carried all the family belongings in pillow sacks. My uneducated grandmother relocated the family home in a chicken coup. Holiday Greetings! It was a chicken poop year.
Our Christmas memories never acknowledged that our great-great grandfather fought in the Civil War…for both sides! Captain Morrison’s military legacy included his time as a prisoner of war…also on both sides. Neither the Yankees nor the Rebels wanted him. He was gunned down by a renegade party apparently wearing different colored uniforms.
We were told not to mention our close kinship to ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd, the infamous bank robber with Robin Hood popularity among the working class. My maternal grandfather considered any connection to “Pretty Boy” to be both shameful and embarrassing. No Christmas card mentioned the moonshiners or included pictures of snuff-sniffen’ Aunt Savannah.
We did not share the losses, the failures, and the emotional struggles.
I remember one of our family Christmas stories that circulated through the “I don’t care” recipients.
Gerald had another good football season. Bea made her famous fudge. Rex is still a perfect angel. Bill broke his arm when his brother pulled him off the bed. Little Joe branded his leg and rear end when he came running out of the bath and slipped onto the furnace. Cassius, the dog, got out of the pen again and made his annual holiday visit to his girl across town.
On a more positive note, our family line is connected to English royalty. We are also related to one of the most influential preachers of all time, Charles Spurgeon, and to the warrior American Indian chief, King Philip.
Christmas was always a high note for the family I grew up in. My parents never diminished the preeminent priority of Jesus as God’s priceless and precious gift of Christmas past, present, and future. Our family was not wealthy, but Christmas time was always special.
My mom was a poor coal miner’s daughter. She explained the reality of the ‘spirit of Santa’ in a manner that rivals the famous editorial, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”
My purpose is to consider Jesus’ family Christmas story as chronicled in Matthew 1, the gospel that serves as a swinging gate between the Old and New Testaments. Jesus is presented as the Christ, the Messiah, the King of Kings. Jesus is the center of history from the Genesis beginning to the endless future recorded in Revelation.
It is no accident that Matthew’s account begins with Jesus’ earthly family tree. Matthew had a Jewish heritage and a professional career as a tax collector for the Roman government. That made him very familiar with the Biblical prophecy and the Jewish family lineage connected to the promised Christ.
In the middle of Matthew’s gospel is the big question asked by Jesus of his followers. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter responded, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
The Christmas story can be summarized in that glorious declaration, “God is with us.” The Creator of the universe became a person to live among us, to die for us, to dwell in us, and to reign over us.
Take your Bible and look at how Matthew begins the family Christmas story with three primary characteristics of Jesus.
- His Royalty (the son of David)
- His Humanity (the seed of Abraham)
- His Deity (from the Holy Spirit)
Interestingly, that is exactly how Paul introduces Jesus in the Book of Romans. We usually skip over this introductory section in Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus. Why? The list of names is long and boring. This genealogical version includes forty-seven names of forty-two generations. We do not know these people.
It is like sitting through a graduation ceremony where your main interest is one person. Your attention span is directly linked to where his/her name lines up in the alphabet. We treat this Scriptural section like the fast-forwarded credits at the end of a movie.
Matthew’s account goes back to Abraham. Luke’s records go back to Adam. John traces the family story back to the beginning with God.
The family tree could be labeled with the movie title, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
- Abraham-the father of our faith. His nickname might have been Pinocchio, because he always lied to save his hide. He was an habitual liar, but he believed God. He had a lot of skeletons in his closet that were not hidden from heaven’s view. The divinely edited version calls Abraham “the friend of God.”
- Isaac, the son of Abraham—He was used as a picture of the coming Son of God who would be sacrificed in our place in order to save us. As a dad, Isaac foolishly blessed the wrong son.
- Jacob, the con man—His name meant “trickster or pretender.” He was a perpetual liar and cheater, but this heavenly edited version reminds us God gave him a new name with a new blessing. He and his descendants would be called Israel, the Prince and People of God.
Note: There was an earlier time that no one wanted to be linked to that family tree of liars, fools, and con men. By Matthew’s time, one had to be from the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to have any “street cred.”
4. Judah and his brothers were the twelve patriarch tree limbs of the family tree. Now, these great family markers were men of jealousy, rage, and revenge. These guys sold their brother, Joseph, into slavey and then lied to their father that he had been murdered.
5. Perez and Zephah were sons of Judah. Their mother was Tamar.
6. Tamar-Here is the first woman named in the family tree. That in and of itself was considered shameful to the Jewish family tradition. Her scandalous story needed editing to hide her unwed pregnancy as the result of an incestuous relationship caused by her seduction by a drunken father. Nobody wanted to talk about Tamar.
Note: I imagine Tamar was cut from the early social media family photos.
7. Next comes a bunch of hard-to-pronounce names which we would all want to skip over for the sake of brevity and disinterest unless one of them was your grandfather who was a veteran. You would be angry with the speaker who failed to recognize his contribution.
8. Rahab was the wife of Salmon—This is an attention getter in the family storyline. Look her up on Wikipedia. Rahab was a former prostitute, a street hooker, a harlot. She was Julia Roberts’ Pretty Woman. She believed God. The Lord used her to help God’s people take down the mighty fortress of Jericho. She was rescued by a scarlet thread, not a prince in his convertible. I am certain she was a woman of interest. Now, which one is she in the picture?
9. Rahab gave birth to Boaz who would become a successful and kind businessman. Boaz married Ruth, the outsider of this family. She was a foreigner from the country the entire family hated. Ruth was also a poor, grieving widow. She did not start out as a media darling or a welcomed addition to the family. Ruth became the great-grandmother of David, the greatest Israelite king.
10. We skip two generations to David—the little shepherd boy, the giant killer, the songwriter, the warrior king. The poster child of the family also needed some editing to his story because of the one he is standing beside in the family photo keepsake.
11. Bathsheba—David had an adulterous affair with the married Bathsheba and then ordered her husband murdered. He led his family and friends and nation into some dark spiritual places in an attempt to hide the sordid tale.
However, David’s character is forever written in God’s Word as “a man after God’s own heart.”
Note: Do you see a pattern here in this family tree? All these people related to Jesus have their life stories edited to a good ending. Their parts in the family story are recorded to give the rest of us encouragement and hope.
BEING RELATED TO JESUS CHANGES YOUR STORY TO GOOD. The bad parts are erased, the suffering parts are useful, and the worst actions are covered in the family portrait by the blood of Jesus.
There were fourteen generations to David and then fourteen more to Jesus.
We will skip the rest because of time. Look them up. Learn their story. It will not feel like a bad thing to be related to “Pretty Boy” Floyd.
12. Solomon, the son of an adulterous affair, becomes the wisest and wealthiest king in all of history. His mystifying grandeur was accompanied by an exploration into the foolish world of vanity.
13. Others carried labels such as rebel, slave, exiled, evil, half-hearted, unfaithful, idol worshiper, good guy. Then, there is the pogo stick king, Jumping Jehosaphat.
History is what it is. It cannot be rewritten. You and I cannot change where we came from. We cannot change our family members, although some try to. We cannot change our family experiences, good or bad.
However, by God’s grace, we can stand in the family picture next to Jesus. His Person creates a lens filter through which others see us in a more favorable light.
Our names are written in the family story with descriptions like “child of God” or “heroine of the faith” or “follower of Jesus” or “redeemed from slavery to sin” or “dear to God’s Heart” or “beloved family member” or “saved believer” or “the one whom Jesus is not ashamed to be his/her brother.” Some of you are described as “a bride adorned in beauty” or “a good soldier” or “the righteous one.”
Look at you in God’s family photo. “The apple of his eye…His vessel of honor…the dearly beloved…the called and chosen…the child of promise…His crown of glory.”
What about all those bad moments in your life? The skeleton in the closet? The moment of unfaithfulness? The bad attitude and even worse actions? What about the mistakes you made and the messes you caused?
What about family conflicts? What about those moments where you fell and failed? What about when you were the last, the least, and the lowest?
None of that is in the family Christmas story!
There is your picture and your name right next to Jesus. You are called “God’s joy…a new creation…God’s light in this world…the perfection of beauty…the one blessed forever…God’s masterpiece!”
Step back and see the big picture. Jesus LIVES in you to LEAD you to others He intends to LOVE through you.
God carries on His perfect plan with imperfect people. Jesus brings about individual change and generational change. The mistakes lead to miracles. The big messes produce the majestic colors of God’s masterpiece.
Take this to heart:
WE ARE ALL MORE SINFUL THAN WE COULD EVER DARE TO IMAGINE and WE ARE ALL MORE LOVED AND ACCEPTED AND BLESSED THAN WE COULD EVER DARE TO HOPE.
THAT IS OUR FAMILY CHRISTMAS STORY!
Here is our Christmas message: LOVE ONE ANOTHER! LOVE FIRST! LOVE MOST!
LOVE FIRST...LOVE MOST 
Excellent and thank you.
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