Posted December 25, 2025
For many reasons, Christmas is a holiday unlike any other. There are holiday sales, expected to top $1 trillion for the first time. There’s travel, as more than 122 million people are expected to hit the roads and skies between December 20 and January 1. And there’s Santa Claus: to reach an estimated 238 million homes worldwide last night, he had to visit seven million per hour—116,667 per minute or 1,944 per second.
But sales, travel, and Santa are part of Christmas every year. This is not: For the first time since 1925, today’s date is the same as the last two digits of the year. Today is also unusual for those who use the day/month/year format in that it is nearly palindromic: 25/12/25.
I could not have written the first paragraph without help from researchers who knew facts I did not. However, nothing in the second paragraph required specialized skill or scholarship. I could have figured out the rarity of today’s date without the USA Today article explaining it, but I didn’t. This knowledge was available to everyone, but it took someone who knew what I didn’t to help me know what I now know.
The same holds true with the “reason for the season.” According to Gallup, 96 percent of those who celebrate today will do so by exchanging gifts. However, only 54 percent will display decorations with a religious meaning, such as a Nativity scene. And as I noted yesterday, only 47 percent attend religious services on Christmas Eve or today.
Imagine going to a birthday party where the guests gave each other presents while ignoring the person whose birthday prompted the gathering. So it is for Jesus with millions of Americans. Once I point out the fact that today’s celebration is supposed to be about the Christ of Christmas, the truth becomes obvious.
But knowing this and experiencing it are not the same thing.
This week we’re taking Christmas in the order it was revealed: to Mary, then Joseph, then the shepherds, then the Magi. We’re aligning their experiences with the promised Son as “Prince of Peace, Everlasting Father, Mighty God, and Wonderful Counselor” (Isaiah 9:6 in reverse).
So today we come to the shepherds and the promised “Mighty God.” Of Isaiah’s four descriptions of the coming Messiah, this would have been the most troubling and even fearful for them.
Shepherds in first-century Israel lived on the lowest rung of the social ladder. Because they had to tend their flocks for months in the Judean wilderness, they were unable to keep kosher dietary laws and other religious rituals and thus were barred from synagogues and the temple. Because they worked without supervision, they were thought to be thieves as well.
Of all the people Jesus could have arranged to attend his first birthday, they would be the most surprising—to polite society and to themselves as well.
Here’s the good news: The Mighty God—literally the “God who is a champion in might”—is so omnipotent that he can use anyone who is willing to be used. And the shepherds were willing to be used, becoming the first evangelists in Christian history:
They went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child (Luke 2:16–17).
Note the order:
Here’s my ministerial problem: I too often jump from the first to the third. I hear the Christmas story and work to share it with others without stopping at the manger to bow before the Child waiting for my worship.
So I am resolved to make today about Jesus; to take time for silence before his Spirit and reverence before his throne; to focus my mind and heart on my Savior; and to speak my unspeakable gratitude for his wondrous grace. I invite you to join me.
Frederick Buechner spoke of “the Truth that can never be told but only come upon, that can never be proved but only lived for and loved.”
How will you “come upon” this untellable Truth today?
“Isn’t it a comfort to worship a God we cannot exaggerate?” —Francis Chan
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