Published on: 23/12/2025
This month, the theme for our blog posts is ‘gifts’. My fellow blog writers have already written about gifts of the spiritual kind, so for my blog post I’d thought I’d write about something seasonal – Christmas gifts. Or perhaps, I should say, the gift of Christmas.
Over the past few years I’ve felt an increasing pressure to get Christmas ‘just right’ – in the food I prepare, the gifts I give, the way I decorate my house, in my choice of Christmas cards, in the way I contribute to special services at Church, the way I seek to share something of my faith with friends and family – I could go on. This year I started thinking about Christmas in August and yet I am still ‘behind’ when it comes to preparations. When did Christmas become such a source of pressure and anxiety?
I tend to lean towards perfectionism in other areas of life so this may be a bigger problem for me than for others, but from what I hear from friends, I think it’s quite common. This is only the second Christmas that I have been a parent, and already I feel a huge pressure to make the season ‘perfect’ for my daughter, even though she is too young to understand!
I could feel this pressure mounting in early autumn so this year I have tried to make an effort to remember the ‘reason for the season’ – that God himself came to be with us in the humblest of circumstances. This has meant intentionally scaling back and simplifying the things we do during Advent and the amount of money we spend on Christmas. We are still making room for fun, festivities and traditions, but we are also leaving space for rest and reflection; to ‘keep watch’, as Matthew 24:42 puts it.
As disciples of Jesus, we are called to do both – celebrate the joys of the season and spend time in worship of the God who came to save us – ‘born that man no more may die’ (Charles Wesley). The gift of Christmas is the promise of salvation.
So if, like me, you’re feeling the pressure of Christmas perfectionism, I invite you to consider the last verse of Christina Rossetti’s famous carol, ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’:
‘What can I give Him,
Poor as I am? –
If I were a Shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part, –
Yet what I can I give Him, –
Give my heart.’
What God wants from you this Christmas is not the perfect Christmas dinner, the most beautiful tree, or the most thoughtful presents – it’s you, yourself. Time spent with him in worship and adoration at the manger.
To access daily devotions during Advent and the twelve days of Christmas, download the Church of England’s Everyday Faith app.
This week’s blog post has been written by Hannah Sandoval, Lights for Christ Enabler