Christmas was the Nutcracker on PBS, with support by viewers like you. I would twist and twirl, on pointe with my imaginary tutu, slipping on our hardwood floors and dreaming of the day I would be the Sugar Plum Fairy. Christmas was warm oatmeal mixed with raisins and eaten hurriedly by the kerosene heater on Christmas morning. Christmas was the gifts beneath the tree, piles of cubed colors and secrets. Once there was a Strawberry Shortcake toiletry set and a few years later the boxed set of my favorite books. A riding crop and Equestrian magazine subscription took precidence when I was eleven, and violin when I was fourteen. A faux fur vest and mini-skirt-a-la-Holstein when I was sixteen couldn't persuade me that Christmas wasn't always going to be picture perfect. I used to think Christmas was all about me. Or at least Us.

Even the manger scene, the one with the perpetually headless shepherd whose neck was more glue than ceramic, wasn't enough to remind me that Jesus [Was] The Reason For The Season. We read the Christmas story sometimes, on December 25th, but that didn't puncture my self-imposed stardom syndrome. The reason we had presents and festivities was because we were people and people need attention.

I don't remember when it happened, an awareness that I was not the reason we celebrated. Of course I always knew the answer if the question was posed "Why do we celebrate this day?" But somewhere in the last few years I began to realize that I was not the reason for the season and Someone Else most certainly was. And a different sort of Christmas Joy set in, that awareness that the world is bigger than me, more than me, more than us.

But this year, as I sat surrounded by little brothers and a million presents, and a very pretty new umbrella of my own, I was suddenly struck by something that may seem a little sacrilegious, so excuse me if you will.

Somehow the Christmas story has been romanticized and dramatized so frequently that we've forgotten the gospel of it all: His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And, while I'm all for the star and the wise men and the angels in the sky, I think there's something more to that declaration of Who Christ would be to this world. Before we can have a Wonderful, we must have a not-so-wonderful. Before we can have a Counselor, there must be a problem. Before there can be a Prince of Peace, there must be a war being waged--and that is what this Christmas suddenly meant to me.

A war was waged for my soul since the beginning, the devil wants me and God wouldn't let him have me. So we have a Christmas Story with pretty angels and family traditions, but more than that we have the beginning of the end of that war over my soul, and yours. We have a Son, and a Sacrifice, and a Savior.

I grew up thinking Christmas was all about me and it turns out I was right after all.