| From | Focus on the Family <[email protected]> |
| Subject | Happy Incarnation Day — The Christmas Story |
| Date | December 26, 2025 4:00 PM |
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Happy Incarnation Day – The Christmas Story
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[link removed]
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Happy Incarnation Day — The Christmas Story
By: Glenn T. Stanton
Faithful Christians would do well to always think of Christmas as Incarnation Day.
It is the day we celebrate the fact that Jesus, the Word, became flesh and dwelt among us. To be absolutely correct, it actually happened some nine months earlier in the miracle in the womb of a humble Jewish girl.
The Christmas miracle is God becoming man in the eternal and beloved Son of God, spoken of through the prophets and the Apostles. But it is told most dramatically in John 1:1-14.
‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:1-5 ESV).
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Read More …
For more articles, follow The Daily Citizen on
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Facebook,
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Youtube !
Match doubles your gift for faith-based news!
Thank you for subscribing to the Daily Citizen Weekly eNewsletter where you receive clear, faith-based news and analysis. Our goal is to help you understand issues that affect you, your family, church, and community.
The Daily Citizen by Focus on the Family, depends on gifts from faithful donors. Thanks to an $8 million matching opportunity provided by generous donors, your support will go twice as far.
[link removed]
Your gift will be matched dollar for dollar! Your gift of $25 will become $50, $50 will become $100, and $250 will become $500.
The deadline is December 31,
[link removed]
so please give today!
Paul Batura, Vice President, Communications
[link removed]
[link removed]
President Trump: ‘We’re Saying Merry Christmas Again’
By: Zachary M. Mettler
President Trump declared the return of “Merry Christmas,” an open invitation for Americans to be bold and unafraid to share their Christian faith this Christmas season.
“We’re saying MERRY CHRISTMAS again!” the White House posted on X on December 1, alongside a picture of the smiling president beside a fully decorated Christmas tree in the Oval Office.
During his first campaign for president, then-candidate Trump would regularly assure crowds that “We’re going to be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again.”
“You go into a department store. When was the last time you saw ‘Merry Christmas?’ You don’t see it anymore,” Trump contended during a speech at Liberty University in January 2016. “They want to be politically correct. If I’m president, you will see ‘Merry Christmas’ in department stores, believe me, believe me.”
The president, known for speaking in generalities and hyperboles, certainly recognized a very real cultural phenomenon.
According to a 2022 report produced by the International Institute for Religious Freedom, Christians often engage in “various forms of self-censorship” in response to secular intolerance.
[link removed]
[link removed]
Theologically Solid Christmas Songs are Appropriate All Year Long
By: Paul Batura
It seems good people can disagree on matters of music. But assuming Christmas music are worship tunes designed to celebrate our Lord’s birthday and pay homage to Him, should it ever be out of season to sing of the Incarnation on any given day of the year?
Christmas music with good theology seem appropriate twelve months out of the year.
As a child, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” was my favorite of all the carols. Originally a poem written by the English Methodist Charles Wesley, who penned over 6,000 hymns, he was said to have been inspired to write it after hearing church bells on Christmas Day. The Anglican cleric and evangelist George Whitefield, a colleague of Wesley’s, adapted and revised it.
All the verses are jubilant and triumphant, but the third verse sums up the significance of Christ’s purpose just beautifully.
“O Come, All Ye Faithful” is probably my favorite carol as an adult. Often accompanied by brass and rich instrumentation, it’s written in a way that allows congregations to sing robustly together.
[link removed]
[link removed]
Blue Christmas — The Longest Night
By: Jeff Johnston
The Christmas song, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” tells us:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year
With the kids jingle belling
And everyone telling you, “Be of good cheer!”
It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
The song was first popularized in 1963 by Andy Williams, the crooner with the mellow tenor voice. It goes on to describe the Christmas season as “the hap-happiest season of all,” with holiday greetings, marshmallow toasting and “caroling out in the snow.”
But for many, this can be a difficult season. Some are dealing with grief over a loved one who died in the past year, or they have estranged family members. Others struggle with mental health or addiction issues — which the long nights and demands of the season can exacerbate.
Some feel a real loneliness, separated from family and friends, or the season may bring up memories “of Christmases long, long ago” — that weren’t all that great.
Some of us struggle with seasonal affective disorder when the days are short and there’s less sunlight. I know I bring my “Happy Light” out in mid-November, counting the days to December 21 when the days finally start getting longer.
There are times that Christina Rosetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter” resonates more with me than “the hap-happiest season of all.”
[link removed]
[link removed]
‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ is Still Worth Watching
By: Paul Batura
Months before its December 9, 1965 debut, The New York Times television reporter Val Adams called A Charlie Brown Christmas a “big gamble” that was “tampering with the imaginations of millions of comic strip fans on how Charlie Brown, Lucy and others should act and talk.”
It might have been a risk, but it was a wager that certainly paid off.
How and why does a nearly six decade old animated television program manage to connect with younger audiences — and still draw many of us older viewers back year after year?
One of the main reasons is that A Charlie Brown Christmas isn’t about Santa Claus and reindeer and the traditional sentimental trappings found in your typical holiday television fare.
It’s about the birth of Jesus Christ, perfectly and poignantly articulated by Linus in the climactic scene of the Peanuts’ gang’s stage performance.
In writing the special with producer Lee Mendelson and director Bill Melendez, Charlie Brown creator Charles Schulz insisted on including a passage from the gospel of Luke, which contains a detailed description of Jesus’ birth and the popular Christmas passage read every year in churches all over the world.
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[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
Happy Incarnation Day — The Christmas Story
By: Glenn T. Stanton
Faithful Christians would do well to always think of Christmas as Incarnation Day.
It is the day we celebrate the fact that Jesus, the Word, became flesh and dwelt among us. To be absolutely correct, it actually happened some nine months earlier in the miracle in the womb of a humble Jewish girl.
The Christmas miracle is God becoming man in the eternal and beloved Son of God, spoken of through the prophets and the Apostles. But it is told most dramatically in John 1:1-14.
‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:1-5 ESV).
[link removed]
Read More …
For more articles, follow The Daily Citizen on
[link removed]
Facebook,
[link removed]
X and
[link removed]
Youtube !
Match doubles your gift for faith-based news!
Thank you for subscribing to the Daily Citizen Weekly eNewsletter where you receive clear, faith-based news and analysis. Our goal is to help you understand issues that affect you, your family, church, and community.
The Daily Citizen by Focus on the Family, depends on gifts from faithful donors. Thanks to an $8 million matching opportunity provided by generous donors, your support will go twice as far.
[link removed]
Your gift will be matched dollar for dollar! Your gift of $25 will become $50, $50 will become $100, and $250 will become $500.
The deadline is December 31,
[link removed]
so please give today!
Paul Batura, Vice President, Communications
[link removed]
[link removed]
President Trump: ‘We’re Saying Merry Christmas Again’
By: Zachary M. Mettler
President Trump declared the return of “Merry Christmas,” an open invitation for Americans to be bold and unafraid to share their Christian faith this Christmas season.
“We’re saying MERRY CHRISTMAS again!” the White House posted on X on December 1, alongside a picture of the smiling president beside a fully decorated Christmas tree in the Oval Office.
During his first campaign for president, then-candidate Trump would regularly assure crowds that “We’re going to be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again.”
“You go into a department store. When was the last time you saw ‘Merry Christmas?’ You don’t see it anymore,” Trump contended during a speech at Liberty University in January 2016. “They want to be politically correct. If I’m president, you will see ‘Merry Christmas’ in department stores, believe me, believe me.”
The president, known for speaking in generalities and hyperboles, certainly recognized a very real cultural phenomenon.
According to a 2022 report produced by the International Institute for Religious Freedom, Christians often engage in “various forms of self-censorship” in response to secular intolerance.
[link removed]
[link removed]
Theologically Solid Christmas Songs are Appropriate All Year Long
By: Paul Batura
It seems good people can disagree on matters of music. But assuming Christmas music are worship tunes designed to celebrate our Lord’s birthday and pay homage to Him, should it ever be out of season to sing of the Incarnation on any given day of the year?
Christmas music with good theology seem appropriate twelve months out of the year.
As a child, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” was my favorite of all the carols. Originally a poem written by the English Methodist Charles Wesley, who penned over 6,000 hymns, he was said to have been inspired to write it after hearing church bells on Christmas Day. The Anglican cleric and evangelist George Whitefield, a colleague of Wesley’s, adapted and revised it.
All the verses are jubilant and triumphant, but the third verse sums up the significance of Christ’s purpose just beautifully.
“O Come, All Ye Faithful” is probably my favorite carol as an adult. Often accompanied by brass and rich instrumentation, it’s written in a way that allows congregations to sing robustly together.
[link removed]
[link removed]
Blue Christmas — The Longest Night
By: Jeff Johnston
The Christmas song, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” tells us:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year
With the kids jingle belling
And everyone telling you, “Be of good cheer!”
It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
The song was first popularized in 1963 by Andy Williams, the crooner with the mellow tenor voice. It goes on to describe the Christmas season as “the hap-happiest season of all,” with holiday greetings, marshmallow toasting and “caroling out in the snow.”
But for many, this can be a difficult season. Some are dealing with grief over a loved one who died in the past year, or they have estranged family members. Others struggle with mental health or addiction issues — which the long nights and demands of the season can exacerbate.
Some feel a real loneliness, separated from family and friends, or the season may bring up memories “of Christmases long, long ago” — that weren’t all that great.
Some of us struggle with seasonal affective disorder when the days are short and there’s less sunlight. I know I bring my “Happy Light” out in mid-November, counting the days to December 21 when the days finally start getting longer.
There are times that Christina Rosetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter” resonates more with me than “the hap-happiest season of all.”
[link removed]
[link removed]
‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ is Still Worth Watching
By: Paul Batura
Months before its December 9, 1965 debut, The New York Times television reporter Val Adams called A Charlie Brown Christmas a “big gamble” that was “tampering with the imaginations of millions of comic strip fans on how Charlie Brown, Lucy and others should act and talk.”
It might have been a risk, but it was a wager that certainly paid off.
How and why does a nearly six decade old animated television program manage to connect with younger audiences — and still draw many of us older viewers back year after year?
One of the main reasons is that A Charlie Brown Christmas isn’t about Santa Claus and reindeer and the traditional sentimental trappings found in your typical holiday television fare.
It’s about the birth of Jesus Christ, perfectly and poignantly articulated by Linus in the climactic scene of the Peanuts’ gang’s stage performance.
In writing the special with producer Lee Mendelson and director Bill Melendez, Charlie Brown creator Charles Schulz insisted on including a passage from the gospel of Luke, which contains a detailed description of Jesus’ birth and the popular Christmas passage read every year in churches all over the world.
[link removed]
SHARE THIS EMAIL  
[link removed]
[link removed] Incarnation Day – The Christmas Story [link removed]
mailto:?Subject=Check out this email from Focus on the Family&Body=I saw this and thought of you! [link removed]
[link removed]
Marriage |
[link removed]
Parenting |
[link removed]
Today's Broadcast |
[link removed]
Family Store |
[link removed]
Focus Careers
You are subscribed as
[email protected]
.
We apologize if someone else has submitted your address without your permission. Make sure you receive Focus emails — add
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This is the Daily Citizen e-newsletter.
Download the Focus on the Family App
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Manage Preferences
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[link removed]
Unsubscribe From All Focus Emails
|
mailto:[email protected]
Contact Us
(c) 2025 Focus on the Family,
[link removed]
8605 Explorer Dr Colorado Springs, CO, 80920-1051
tel:8002326459
1-800-A-FAMILY (232-6459)
Source Code: 2405201
[link removed]
Update Profile This email was sent by: Focus on the Family
8605 Explorer Dr Colorado Springs, CO, 80920-1051, US
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