Fred Sanders at the Scriptorium blog affirms that the true meaning of Christmas is the Incarnation, “the serious doctrine at the heart of Christmas… a theological account of baby Jesus that is the only possible justification for Christmas.”

He goes on to quote from Samuel Zwemer’s The Glory of the Manger:

The deity of Christ makes all the difference in our Christmas joy. He who came to the Manger was God’s Son. To deny this is to deny essential Christianity. If the Saviour of men is not identical with their Creator there are no good-tidings of great joy for the human race and no help in the Cross for the sinner… In our day we are told to look for “the historic Jesus,” the man of Galilee, a teacher sent of God, the friend of the outcast and the oppressed, the critic of society and the Jewish church, very like other great reformers even in his limitations. But a merely human Christ, no matter how humane and tender, cannot suffice. We need the Lord of Glory, the Christ of eternal love and eternal redemption, the Lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world. We need a Saviour who is alive forevermore and who abolished death and brought life and immortality to the world by His incarnation.

It’s a short piece worth reading.