Maybe a day with family, maybe to go back 10, 20, 30 or 40 years and enjoy a treasured day …

Maybe to spend Christmas Eve with a loved one who has left this earthly abode for a new residence in heaven …

Maybe to be a little child again … and feel the excitement and anticipation of Santa Claus coming to bring presents … Remember how exciting it was to slip out of a cozy bed and Christmas morning and race to see if Santa brought the desires of our heart? A little doll, a new book, a stocking filled with apples and oranges and candy canes … oh, the desires of our hearts were so simple then.

And now today, when so many blessed Christmas Eves have come and gone, Santa’s red suit has made a subtle change, He now wears a little blanket and lies in a manager filled with straw and His name is Jesus, the Christ child.

He came as a little baby, not to scare us but to woo us, to invite us, to plead with us to believe in Him, and to accept the greatest gift of all time, the gift of Almighty God through His Son Jesus Christ.

We often pass the year without seeing Him, we become accustomed to doing it all ourselves, to thinking this world is all there is. We tend to put ourselves on the throne and let the childlike awe of what Christmas really is slip away to some seldom opened memory that gets stored in the back of our minds.

Every year we open that memory a little, but that’s not enough, we need to pause and be still. Make that cup of tea or hot chocolate or hot spicy cider and curl up in your cozy chair and read the Christmas story (Luke 2) one more time. Give yourself the gift of being still, the gift of time with the Christ Child, the greatest gift ever given. Read the story of Jesus birth and think about it. The stores will still be there, the shopping will get done.

And then ask yourself the question, what is it I really, really want for Christmas?

I want to remember the baby Jesus who was born so long ago, who grew up, and who took my sins into His body and died for me on that fated cross.

I want to remember the greatest gift of all—Jesus paid for all my sins and secured my place with Him in the heavenly realms for all eternity.

What an incredible gift … and all we have to do is believe in Jesus Christ.

So, my dear ones, what is it you really, really want for Christmas?