December 24 Valley Community Presbyterian Church

This year my whole immediate family worshiped together for Christmas Eve, the past couple of years we have attended different services. I liked the way that children, youth and families all took part in the readings for this service. In addition to being the early family service it was also a Wellspring led service. Wellspring is the praise band at Valley, while I normally enjoy wellspring's music, I was disapointed that they did not do tradtional Christmas hymns for this serivce. This notion was also expressed by others who attended the serivce, I think sometimes we tend to desire familar things, and Christmas hymns is one of those. One thing they did at this service I really liked was instead of passing the plates for the offering, everyone was invited to come to the "manger" to leave gifts and to pick up a candle for each family. This led me to think that isn't it strange that we exchange gifts in celebration of Jesus's birthday, what would it be like if we exchanged gifts for other birthdays than our own. If I were working in a church I would like to do a sermon or message ( Sunday school, etc...) around this idea, we get so caught up in gifts we get for others or receive ourselves, what gifts do we give to Jesus for his birthday? I also wonder if Christmas eve worship serivce sometimes is more about who we will see or talk to than about truly preparing to celebrate Jesus's birthday?