I pray that you all have a wonderful, joyous celebration of our Lord’s birth. Here are some thoughts on the meaning of Christmas from C.F.W. Walther:
What happened [in Bethlehem] did not apply solely to the residents of Bethlehem, but to all whose nature the Son of God assumed, everyone who is called human and a sinner. For, as the angel of the Lord proclaimed, “I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people.”
An unspeakably great, unexplorable divine mystery is at the bottom of all this. God’s holiness and righteousness must shut the doors of heaven to us sinners, and He knows that neither we ourselves nor any creature in heaven or on earth can open them for us. He had therefore determined from eternity that what we could not do, He would do Himself, and He would do it in such a way that His divine, wonderful, incomprehensible, and infinite love would be made known to all creatures, to His eternal praise and glory. God had decreed that His dear, only-begotten Son Himself would be sent into the world, that He would become man, that all of our sins would be laid on Him, and that those sins would be completely and eternally blotted out by His deep humiliation and death on a cross.
-God Grant It, pp72f
