Unwrapping the True Meaning of Christmas: A Christmas Cracker Perspective
The Joke, the Crown, and the Gift: what Christmas really means.
A Christmas cracker typically contains three things: a small gift, a paper crown, and a joke or riddle. In this piece, we're going to explore Christmas through the lens of these three components, and by the end, hopefully unravel what Christmas is all about.
The Joke
Q: Why don’t you ever see Santa in hospital?
A: Because he has private elf care!
Jokes like this often epitomise what Christmas means to most people. Santa, baby Jesus, nativities - it’s all a bit of a joke. We enter this festive period where we temporarily tell each other stories (some pagan, some religious) before entering the real world again in January. To most people, Jesus is one of these jokes. How could God, if there is one, come into the world in such an unexpected, lowly way? We weren’t the only ones who saw Jesus as a joke.
In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. "He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! Let this Messiah, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe." Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him."1
When Jesus was being crucified, He was made a public spectacle of humiliation. The world mocked Him as a fool. But in His suffering, He offered a love that no mockery could weaken.
The Crown
It’s an ironic symbol, isn’t it? We wear the crown, acting like kings and queens of our own lives. But this little paper crown also highlights the true irony of Christmas: our self-made reign contrasts sharply with the Christmas story where a real heavenly King came to Earth. And yet, Jesus didn’t wear a crown of self-interest and honour, but one of shame and pain. This Christmas, we can be reminded that true authority and power isn’t about wearing a crown for ourselves, it’s about bowing to the true King who wore one of thorns for us.
The Gift
Do you know anyone who has ever kept the gift or toy from the Christmas cracker? Like everything else in the cracker, the gift is discarded and quickly forgotten. But at the heart of Christmas is a different kind of gift: one that’s given2 not because we deserve it, but because we desperately need it.
‘For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God’ (Ephesians 2:8)
Unlike those little trinkets we’ll quickly throw away, this ‘gift of God’ is priceless and eternal. It’s the kind of gift that, if we accept it, will transform our lives forever.
Epilogue
Recently, I listened to a sermon in Oxford that unpacked the true meaning of Christmas through this lens of a Christmas cracker. I take no credit for this analogy but owe it to Vaughan Roberts, the rector of St. Ebbe’s Church, Oxford. I trust he won’t mind me borrowing this analogy, with the hope that it might help others reflect on what Christmas really means.
Happy Christmas everyone & thank you for all your support this year!
Mark 15:31-32 (NIV)
‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’ (John 3:16)