2 Ways to Point Kids to Jesus During the Busy Christmas Season

For all the gifts that Christmas brings, it can also deliver much distraction and confusion around the gospel. As for distraction, any parent can tell you that it’s a struggle to keep parties and presents from becoming the focus of our kids’ attention in the month of December. And regarding gospel confusion, we don’t have to look further than messages promoted as good news by popular Christmas movies.

Consider a few examples:

Such quotes reflect the nature of expressive individualism that marks today’s culture, a worldview that reduces the good news in December to: “Christmas comes from inside your heart. It’s what you make of it.”

Thankfully, God’s Word provides much better news built on a firm foundation. Scripture says that Christmas originates from God’s heart and His plan to save a people for Himself. Paul said it this way: “When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).

Christmas, therefore, isn’t about what we make of it; it’s about what God provided: the sending of His Son to meet our desperate need for mercy and grace.

But this creates a challenge for parents: How can we celebrate and make Christmas holly and jolly for our kids while also clinging to truth and pointing them to Jesus and the real reason for celebration? Here are two ways we can magnify Christ and have gospel conversations with our kids as we celebrate the Christmas season.

Look back from the nativity

One errant doctrine kids can mistakenly come to believe as they view manger scenes and listen to “Silent Night” is that Jesus came into existence on Christmas morning. While Jesus was indeed born as a human on the first Christmas (and became incarnate nine months earlier inside Mary’s womb), the second person of the Trinity has always existed. Christmas celebrates Jesus’s incarnation, not His beginning—since, as God, He is eternal.

Jesus claimed that He existed before Abraham (John 8:58) and spoke of the glory He had with the Father before the world was made (John 17:5). One of the best ways to help kids grasp this reality is to help them see Jesus in the Old Testament. This is what Jesus did for His disciples following His resurrection.

Christmas is a wonderful time of year to help kids see how the Old Testament points to Jesus. Advent calendars and traditions such as a Jesse Tree can be helpful tools for parents to show kids that the real nativity didn’t appear out of thin air; it was promised and prophesied from some of the earliest pages in the Bible.

To help kids see this, consider reading Old Testament verses that contain Messianic prophecies at the dinner table or before opening presents—passages such as Isaiah 7:14 & 9:2-7; Jeremiah 23:5-6, and Micah 5:2-5. For younger kids, you might also consider writing such Scripture references on slips of paper and hiding them with non-breakable nativity scene figures in different places of your home to make a scavenger hunt. Then let kids assemble the nativity scene while you read each verse and explain what it says about Jesus.

Look forward from the nativity

Just like how Jesus existed before His incarnation, He also exists past the manger. There’s a tendency, however, for kids (and adults) to be drawn to the Baby Jesus pictured at Christmas but engage little with the resurrected Lord who calls us to follow Him today. We can help kids move beyond this by keeping the cross and resurrection in view at Christmas.

One way to do this is to focus on why Jesus came. Kids love asking “why?” so it makes sense to tap into their curiosity and point them to the real reason we celebrate Christmas: to celebrate the good news of God becoming a human to save sinners.

There are many theologically rich Christmas songs that do this, such as: “Joy to the World,” “What Child Is This,” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” which has a line celebrating “God and sinners reconciled.” We can likewise help kids understand that Jesus was born to live a perfect life, die a sacrificial death, and rise again.

Consider decorations you might insert into your Christmas décor to accomplish this. If you have a nativity scene, you might help kids make simple crosses to display near the nativity, or place small rocks there to symbolize the grave and Christ’s resurrection. (Tip: If you need room, you can remove the wise men, who likely arrived a couple of years after Jesus’s birth when His family was living in a house.)

Likewise, what ornaments might you add to your Christmas tree to help kids understand all that Jesus was born to do? In our house, we’ve always displayed a crown of thrones as a tree topper to remind our family of the depths of sacrifice Jesus endured to be Immanuel, “God is with us” (Matthew 1:23).

Steward the season

In many ways, Christ’s birth is like the hinge of a giant gate. Like how a hinge may look humble and unimpressive on its own—as the original nativity did in its time—the first Christmas connects everything that came before it (the Old Testament) to everything that follows (the rest of the New Testament and us today). A healthy hinge also allows a gate to open wide for people to enter. Similarly, a right understanding of the nativity in the context of God’s redemptive narrative can open the minds of our kids to the beauty of Christ’s gospel and invite them into His kingdom.

This Christmas season, let’s enjoy gingerbread houses, twinkling lights, and cheesy, feel-good movies. But let’s also make sure we steward the season to point our kids past the presents and the pop philosophies (ex. “Just follow your heart.”). We can give our kids something much more wondrous to behold this Christmas.

Let’s point them to Jesus!