A (Single) Christmas Challenge
This time last year I chatted with Dominic Steele on the Pastor’s Heart about how Christians can better love singles through the Christmas and January season.
I thought I’d share one of the things he and I spoke about—namely how spiritually isolating this time of the year can be for many single Christians—before also making a specific suggestion you might like to consider doing in response.
Here’s what I said at the 8.40min mark:
If you are a Christian and you are married to a Christian and particularly if you have children, for weeks and weeks leading up to Christmas you’re trying to remind your children what this time of year is all about. It’s about Jesus. We’re celebrating Jesus. On Christmas Day, you will normally, as a family, go to church and depending on what your wider family situation is that celebration on Christmas Day can be very much intentionally, obviously and unapologetically focused on Jesus.
But if you’re single and you are from a non-Christian family you don’t have that. You don’t have the person who wakes up next to you on Christmas morning and says, “Wow! Jesus has come to earth”. You don’t have the family necessarily—though some do—who will go to church with you and celebrate that with you.
[…]
Many singles don’t have someone who is helping them to actually focus on what this time of year is actually all about, what we are celebrating. That doesn’t mean they personally can’t remember. Of course they can! But they often do it outside of immediate community.
So here’s my Christmas suggestion—well, really my Christmas challenge—especially if you are a married Christian or perhaps a single Christian who has a strongly Christian extended family.
On Christmas morning, would you consider calling or texting a single Christian friend to rejoice with them that God has drawn near to us in Jesus?
In the midst of the busyness and the presents and the overly-excited children would you take the opportunity to encourage them with the good news of Emmanuel?
Would you make it a priority to remind them of how much you love celebrating that wonderful, exciting, amazing truth with them because you are united together in the one whose birth we celebrate that day?