Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays!
My favorite Christmas song has always been *NSYNC’s Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays. It conjures memories that always take me back to being seven years old bouncing around the dining room table with my brand-new Walkman (gotta love that cool new anti-skip feature!) as I mixed the cookie dough for my mom to bake her cookies. It makes me think of all the years as a teen that my aunt popped this into the boom box and we danced in the living room as we decorated the tree or wrapped presents together. It makes me think of shoveling out neighbors’ cars during a snowstorm with this blaring through the headphones. Or even more recently, doing all of this with Serena with *NSYNC, once again the soundtrack to a core memory. It’s the pure love and joy that this song summons that will always have it topping my list.
To me, Christmas has always been a time of deep love and handmade gifts. Creating magic for someone else to experience just so that they know how much you loved them. A cookie that you baked because you knew it was their favorite, a bookmark to tuck inside their newest read, or an elf that you hide around the house to do silly activities all month long just to see them smile. It’s love, big and small, woven into each gesture that creates such joy during the Christmas season. This song always reminds me “to feel the love in the room” -- and it keeps me singing it on repeat year after year...
“It's a wonderful feeling (hey-yeah)
Feel the love in the room from the floor to the ceiling
It's that time of year
Christmastime is here
And with the blessings from above
God sends you His love and everything's okay
Merry Christmas, happy holidays! (oh-yeah)"
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays. <3
Reflect on the Word
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
1 John 4:7 - 21 (NIV)
Take Time to Pray
Dear Lord, I thank you for the pure perfection of a love sent to save. I pray that everyone feels the love of this season and remembers we have all been blessed with immeasurable love that flows all around and within us. With your love, anything is possible and everything’s okay! Amen.
Listen to the Carol
*NSYNC is one of the most iconic American pop boy bands of the late ’90s and early 2000s. Here they sing Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays from their album Home For Christmas.