gifts on Christmas Gift-Giving

While Christmas traditions vary the world over, gift-giving is a central practice just about anywhere Christ's birth is celebrated. Sometimes gifts are exchanged on De­cember 6, the feast day of S...

In many Christian lands Epiphany is the most important feast of Christmas. Especially in Latin countries the arrival of the Wise Men, the Three Kings, looms large in the imagination. My native city, N...

What do you want for Christmas this year? If you were to ask a typical little boy, he’d probably give you two words: video games. There’s a little boy I know named Brian. For weeks he bugged his paren...

A preaching professor at Harvard University tells the story of the year his 5-year-old son was working on an art project in his kindergarten class. It was made of plaster, resembled nothing in particu...

In rural Msinga, a municipality in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, the highlight of Christmas Day festivities is when men, newly returned home from work in the big cities, gather to sing a...

If you ever find yourself sympathizing with Charles Dickens’ character Ebenezer Scrooge regarding the commercialization of Christmas, you’re not alone—this has been a common complaint for quite some t...

Christmas is about receiving presents, but consider how challenging it is to receive certain kinds of gifts. Some gifts by their very nature make you swallow your pride. Imagine opening a present on C...

A man who was well-to-do enjoyed buying his father unusual and exotic presents for Christmas.… But one particular Christmas this man found a gift for his father that was truly unique: a talking bird t...

The other way to destroy the relational bonds of gift giving is to turn a gift into a commodity. Let’s say it’s my birthday. Ten friends come over to my house, and we eat a good meal, and they all bri...

For the real good of every gift it is essential, first, that the giver be in the gift–as God always is, for He is love–and next, that the receiver know and receive the giver in the gift. Every gift of...

The Strain of Time Time marches forward for all of us, doesn’t it? There are 365 days in the Gregorian calendar. There are 365 days in the Liturgical calendar. While the respective beginnings and en...

We know the excitement of getting a present - we love to unwrap it to see what is inside. So it is with our children they are gifts we unwrap for years as we discover the unique characters God has mad...

We know in­stinctively that Christmas is more than shopping mall Santas, silver bells, and snow-flocked trees, but such things are so entangled with our impressions of Christmas that it’s hard to kn...

It’s not only more blessed to give than to receive, it’s also a whole lot easier.

When thou makest presents, let them be of such things as will last long; to the end they may be in some sort immortal, and may frequently refresh the memory of the receiver.

A gift’s value is in the way it makes and reaffirms bonds between people. It’s an expression of a relationship. This isn’t to say that the cost of a gift doesn’t matter, but it certainly isn’t the mos...

A man whose hands are full of parcels can’t receive a gift

Grace is a gift that costs everything for the giver and nothing for the recipient.

Trade with the gifts God has given you.

Reflection In Isak Dinesen’s 1958 short story, “Babette’s Feast,” we see Babette Hersant, a 19th century French chef from Paris, seek political asylum in the Jutland region of Denmark in the home of ...

The season of Epiphany is an invitation to follow Jesus into the ways of gratitude and joy,. We are no longer bound by the dissatisfaction of our consumer culture that tells us to keep striving for mo...

Gracious God, we fail to give to others, when you have so generously given to us. We look for our maximum benefit and minimum sacrifice. We have forgotten where every good gift comes from – you. Holy ...

In his book of sermons titled The Magnificent Defeat, Frederick Buechner mentions two qualities of childlikeness. First, children have no fixed preconceptions of reality. If someone tells them that ...

"To be alone with Jesus in adoration and intimate union with Him is the Greatest Gift of Love - the tender love of Our Father in Heaven.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.

The Sabbath is a gift we do not know how to receive. In a world of doing, going, and producing, we have no use for a gift that invites us to stop. But that is the original gift: a gift of rest.

It’s easy to label what we consider “good things” in our lives as gifts from God and to welcome them with gratitude. But when difficult things happen, we don’t look at them as part of God’s good plan ...

God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.

Holy One, Giver of every good and perfect gift It is your great grace that offers us salvation It is grace upon grace that gives us the chance to join you in your saving work You trust us that much Yo...

Sabbath is the most precious present humankind has received from the treasure house of God.