The way we celebrate Christ’s birth may hinder people in finding him. But it can also help others to see who Jesus is.

– What kind of psychology are you using? I am nearly convinced that what you told us about Jesus yesterday is the truth.

It is the morning after Christmas Day and an elderly man has come to visit us. His head is shaking slightly in confusion. The meeting in our home the day before has obviously impacted him. Close to 100 people had accepted our invitation to celebrate Christmas with us. For many of them it was the first time they heard the good news about Jesus. The preparations to the gathering had been full of shocking experiences.  But before I tell you more about that, I will rewind the story even further.

The mistake

When we moved to a Muslim majority nation in Central Asia we thought we were quite well prepared for what was ahead of us. And as in many other Muslim nations it was easy to get opportunities to talk about faith. Still it was hard to find occasions to share more in depth about Jesus.

The first after we moved abroad we decided, just as many other expatriates, to go home to our passport country to celebrate Christmas with family and friends. One year later we understood that this had been a huge mistake and that we had misused a great opportunity to help people to get to know Jesus.

The fight

When we approached Christmas the second year we decided to stay and to invite all our friends to celebrate with us. Not even one said no. Thus we knew that we would end up with more people in our living room than we or our landlord had ever seen before.

The preparations were chaotic and made us regret everything we had planned. The night before the celebration some liquid started dripping from the lamp in our kids´ room. I was sure that there had to be a water pipe running above the ceiling. So I spent a lot of time that I should have used to prepare for the following day in order to check things out. Finally I got to the right place just to find out that there was no water pipe and nothing else either that could produce the liquid. Fortunately the leaking had stopped. The rest of the night we spent trying to find a mouse that courageously had come to visit us.

The victory

Then the celebration started. Some young people had made a Christmas drama. A lot of food had been brought to our house and the sound level went really high as people were enjoying cakes and coffee. So I thought I would have to shout really loud when I was going to share the story about Christ´s birth from the Bible. But things did not turn out as I had expected. Actually I got scared when I stood up since everything immediately went quiet. The room was packed with people. Still there was no noise.  It was like some supernatural power had entered the room andeveryone was listening in awe.

– It is not psychology. I believe it is the Holy Spirit. God was speaking to you yesterday. He wants you to believe in him, we told the old man who had come to visit us the following day.

He still shook his head in disbelief. Could this really be true?

The conclusion

We stayed in Central-Asia for four years, over and over we experienced how the Christian feasts gave us great opportunities for sharing the Gospel. The nation we lived in had laws that made it illegal for expatriates to speak in public about faith. But as in most nations it was totally legal to invite people to celebrate with you in your private home.

It is easy to skip the Christian celebrations when we live in non-Christian nations. If we decide to celebrate, it can often be a temptation to focus on and invite family, friends and people sharing our faith instead of on those who do not know Christ. But if we make the right choices God can be born into new families and new cultures at Christmas even today.