Making Christmas About Jesus: Simple Shifts for a Meaningful Holiday 

Is Christmas All About Presents?

My name is Amy Kavanaugh and I’m Director of Operations for GoodKind. We’re about helping families and individuals develop the “good kind” of habits and holiday celebrations. All of our work at GoodKind began with a simple statement from our founder’s 6-year-old daughter, Cara. “Mommy, Daddy… you say that Christmas is all about Jesus, but it feels like Christmas is really all about presents.” Cara’s dad is named Clayton.

It was December 23.

Christmas fail.

Cara’s brutally honest comment sent Clayton and his wife on a quest. They realized there was a gap between our stated intentions and their kids’ lived experience. They were saying one thing and living another. And they wanted to figure out how to close that gap.

I’ll bet you want the exact same thing for the families in your church.

They didn’t know it at the time, but they were on a hunt for congruence—a concept they first picked up from pastor and writer Eugene Peterson. Congruence, Peterson said, describes the alignment between a pastor’s words and his life. A pastor shouldn’t just say what God wants him to say. A pastor should also live how God wants him to live. When the words and the life align, you get congruence.

What Peterson described for pastors, Clayton and his wife began to apply to the family. More specifically, to the family at Christmastime.

The following year, Clayton and his wife knew they had to find a solution. They needed something tangible, something engaging. Most importantly, they needed something their kids actually wanted to do. The result was Advent Blocks, a resource that helps kids—and parents—anticipate Jesus, not just presents.

“Train Up” or “Teach Up” A Child?

According to Clayton, “Our Advent Blocks journey—and our hunt for congruence—opened our eyes to the truth of a Bible verse we already knew… but, embarrassingly, didn’t completely understand. I’ll bet you know the verse, too: ‘Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it’ (Proverbs 22:6 ESV).” 

Here’s what we were missing: That verse doesn’t say, “Teach up a child,” even though teaching is important. It says, “Train up a child.”

What sticks with this hypothetical child when he grows old is not a lesson learned in Sunday School. It’s not a conversation shared around the dinner table. (Both of those matter, but something larger is at play here.) We train our children with our entire lives. 

What we say, what we do, where we live, who we invite into our homes, how we spend our money, what we do with our free time. All of it trains up our children in certain ways. 

Think about it this way: How many of our 7-year-olds have we taught, directly, to successfully navigate the landscape of our local Target? I’m guessing it’s close to 0%. Anyway, I know I didn’t teach this kind of lesson to my kids. 

But here’s another question: How many of those same 7-year-olds could, given the opportunity and a credit card, make their way into Target and come out with some Cinnamon Toast Crunch? Assuming they weren’t stopped by a concerned stranger, I’m guessing it would be pretty close to 100%.

How did they learn this skill? We didn’t teach them the way; we trained them in it. We did that training with countless trips to the store over time. 

Here’s my point: We are training way more than we are teaching. So the best way to go about parenting is to train and teach in alignment. 

We say we believe Jesus is better than anything life has to offer, but we get more excited about laying at the pool than we do going to worship on a Sunday.

We say God made us for community, but we would rather stay home and watch TV than have someone over for dinner. 

We say, “Life doesn’t happen on a screen,” but then we lose ourselves, scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.

We teach and we train. And if they go against each other, the training is what will win. 

That is what was so scary about Cara’s comment. She was directly calling out the incongruence. Yes, she was being taught the real Christmas story. But she was being trained to cherish Christmas presents. 

That next Christmas Eve, though, with one small change—the introduction of Advent Blocks—Clayton’s kids (and mine) were as excited about the story of Jesus as they were about the presents (though they were—and are—still very excited about the presents).

Do We Train Up at Home or in the Church? 

We believe the “training” of Proverbs 22:6 happens first and best in the home, but that it gains momentum when families join together. And if I had a dollar for every time a church leader said, “We need to get parents engaged in the discipleship at home,” I would have, well, a lot of dollars. When an entire church practices the faith together, everyone benefits. It’s easier to stay on course because you’ve got accountability. It takes some of the pressure off parents, because some of the road is already paved in front of them. And it’s usually a lot more fun.

This is why we created the Local Church Program for our Advent Blocks. We sell the blocks to church leaders for an absurdly low price. Why? So more of you can do this together. It works well in your home. But it works better with your whole church. 

Part of what makes the church the church—rather than just a collection of Christian families—is that we are headed the same way together. Call it whatever you want: alignment, congruence, message integrity. I simply like to think of it as training. All of us, together, practicing our faith in big venues as well as small. Under the Christmas tree on a Tuesday night and during the worship service on Sunday morning. 

So why don’t you join us this Christmas? Check out the Local Church Program and get started with Advent Blocks today!