When Christmas Expectations Are Ruined

I’ve loved Christmas for as long as I can remember. Since becoming a mom, I’ve had grand expectations for what the holiday season could look like for our family. Finally, a couple of years ago, with both my children firmly out of diapers and able to focus for more than 10 minutes, I decided this would be the December when we’d fully embrace Christmas activities.

So, between my son’s preschool Christmas party and my daughter’s Christmas choir practices, I scheduled everything from attending The Sound of Music at the community theater to setting up the tree to making gingerbread houses (with festive music in the background). And of course, we planned to attend our church’s Christmas Eve service. It was going to be a wonderful Christmastide.

Except it wasn’t.

The Christmas season was miserable for us. Sickness plagued our family at every turn, and over the month, we missed every single event I’d marked in red and green on my calendar. I’d had such high expectations for the holiday season. Instead, I experienced disappointment—and the persistent feeling of being cheated out of the Christmas I’d dreamed about. But as I dove into the Word, I came to see that my ruined expectations afforded me a fresh opportunity to place my hope solely in the person of Jesus, not in what I hoped to get out of the holiday season.

Mary’s Uncomfortable Christmas

As I read the Christmas story that year, I saw I was in good company as a mom when my festive expectations were dashed. Mary was the first mother to experience Christmas, and I doubt it was what she expected when the angel Gabriel appeared to her and declared she’d bear God’s Son (Luke 1).

Her pregnancy as a virgin meant Joseph needed angelic intervention in order to believe its divine origins (Matt. 1:18–25). Caesar Augustus’s decree for a census of the entire Roman world meant long and arduous travel in the late, and most uncomfortable, stage of her pregnancy. The lack of an available guest room for her delivery (in a new town, nonetheless) meant she labored without the comforts of home and ended up placing her firstborn in an animal trough (Luke 2). Her Christmas was messy and uncomfortable.

And yet, while Mary’s first Christmas looked far from perfect—and far from what she might’ve hoped for—it was exactly what God had planned. His glory was on display through Jesus’s humble birth and declared to lowly shepherds with angelic fanfare as the good news was proclaimed: “A Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord” (v. 11, NIV).

While Mary’s first Christmas looked far from perfect—and far from what she might’ve hoped for—it was exactly what God had planned.

In response, “Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart” (v. 19). While the difficulties of the journey and her labor might’ve been disappointing, the good news of the gospel—proclaimed about this tiny babe in a manger—was worth cherishing. For that first Christmas wasn’t ultimately about what Mary wanted or expected, it was about Jesus and the good news that he came to save his people.

Israel’s Misguided Expectations

But years later, as Jesus entered public ministry, he didn’t meet the expectations of many Israelites. Although Jesus was born in Bethlehem—the place where the prophet Micah foretold the Messiah would be born (Mic. 5:2)—he didn’t turn out to be the kind of leader they were looking for. The Israelites wanted a Messiah who’d become king (John 6:15) and rid them of Rome, and be a “shepherd” full of “strength” and “majesty” whose greatness would reach “to the ends of the earth” (Mic. 5:4).

Jesus didn’t come to Israel as a conquering hero. He didn’t check the boxes they wanted in a king. He didn’t try to overthrow their Roman oppressors; he taught about a kingdom that had no earthly armies. He wasn’t physically attractive, and he didn’t even put up a fight when it came to defending his own life (Isa. 53:2–3). He was hated and maligned, disparaged, and finally crucified.

And because of their misguided expectations, many Israelites missed the Messiah they’d been longing for. They rejected him: “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11).

Because of their misguided expectations, many Israelites missed the Messiah they’d been longing for.

But for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, the kingdom that Jesus proclaims is far better than any earthly one. For Christ is full of “strength” and “majesty,” and his kingdom extends far beyond the “ends of the earth.” It’s an everlasting kingdom, and he’s its King, the ultimate defeater of his people’s enemies—those greatest enemies of sin, death, and separation from the Father. And his victory has won for us the immeasurable treasure of becoming God’s children.

Praise God for dashing our expectations with something greater than we could imagine: himself.

God’s Better Gift

Do I wish that December had gone differently? Do I wish we’d avoided a full month of sickness and tears over missed parties and choirs? Of course.

But Christmas Day still came, and the shattering of my expectations was a gift: it pointed me afresh to Christmas’s true purpose, far past the lovely songs and parties and activities. Christmas, I was reminded, is all about the good news that one miserable Christmas for Mary—and the misery and suffering of that Babe in the manger who eventually died on a cross—made it possible for every miserable sinner who comes to Christ in faith to become God’s child.