Christmas is upon us once again. 
Just about everyone is out celebrating the external or physical activity of Christmas.
I am going to refer to this part of the holiday as “Stuffmas.”
Stuffmas is all about lights, parties, gifts, food and family.
This is how we have come to know and understand Christmas in our communities today. 
Santa Claus is the hero of Stuffmas.
We make our requests and can’t wait to see how he satisfies our physical longings and desires. We teach our kids to fill the post office and news papers with letters to our hero so he’ll know how to gratify our greed.
American Christmas has become Stuffmas.
Stuffmas exposes our land for its shallow, external, physical and economic ideology.
Christmas, on the other hand, celebrates our internal needs.
Christ came to save us from our sin.
Christ came to fulfill God’s work of making people right with himself.
Christ came to give us hope, peace, joy and love.
These attributes are not external but internal. They are also eternal.
Why do you think the more we focus on self and stuff the farther we travel from real peace, love and joy?
External desires being fulfilled will never satisfy the inner longings of the human soul. 
Christ came to give us that which the world cannot.
Christ came to fulfill our inner most needs and desires. 
This Christmas I pray that you will truly search for that which satisfies your soul and not just your fleshly desires.
Pastor Thomas R. Swain,
First Church of God,
Great Bend