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Why Christmas? How Holiday Loneliness Points a Deeper Longing

CBN

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During the holiday season, we are inundated with commercials that promote a version of Christmas that a lot of people find hard to live up to. Instead of comfort and joy, many feel sadness and stress.

"Our Christmases are never as good as a commercial," Dr. James Sells, professor of psychology at Regent University, said. "We create such an expectation of achievement that it becomes impossible for us to ever reach."

Still, we try -- shopping until we drop, spending more than we know we should.

According to some surveys, 42 percent of Americans say Christmas is stressful, nearly 60 percent will carry Christmas debt over into the new year, and 45 percent say the financial strain makes them want to skip Christmas altogether.

"The higher our expectations, the greater stress that we self-create in order to meet those expectations," Sells said.

But in London, CBN News found someone who sees a way to redeem the excesses of Christmas - what he calls "Santa Claustrophobia."

"Well, I think there's a lot of hype around Christmas -- a lot of eating, drinking, shopping," Nicky Gumbel, vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton, said.

"But I think it can be a time where it exacerbates people's issues and their isolation, their loneliness, their kind of homesickness -- for God, really, which is what loneliness is," he said.

In the publication, Why Christmas?, Gumbel hopes to alleviate that homesickness by pointing people to their true home -- with the Lord.

"It's a great opportunity to tell people the good news about Jesus, the coming of God to this earth to transform our world and to transform all our lives," Gumbel added.

The illustrations are by Charlie Mackesy, a former atheist who now marvels at the scene of Jesus' birth.

"I think the Christmas nativity when you really look at it is far more shocking, and far more beautiful than you can imagine," Mackesy said. "Because it's the human race being received with grace."

Mackesy points to the shepherds, regarded at that time as godless, filthy thieves.

"There was a law that said if you find a shepherd in a pit, leave him there," Mackesy explained. "And they were the ones who were invited; they were the ones who actually introduced the birth of this person to the world."

"That's making a statement at the outset that Jesus invites the outsider in, immediately into His presence," he said.

Mackesy and Gumbel believe that invitation stands today.

They hope "Why Christmas?" reaches people weary with the holiday season and ready to hear the good news "that God loves them, God wants to be in a relationship with them," Gumbel said.

"That Jesus came to this earth to die for them so that they could have life and life in all its fullness," he said. "So the message of Christmas is a really wonderful, positive message."

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