Joy to the World: How Christ's Coming Changed Everything (and Still Does)

by Scott Hahn

“There are many reasons that we love the celebration of Christmas, but two stand out: it is a time for joy and it is a time for family.

Christmas is, for me, the joy and the love that passed between a young woman and the child who had been placed in her arms.

If we don’t understand Christmas, then we don’t really understand what Jesus did when he saved us.

The Christmas story has an unconventional hero—not a warrior, not a worldly conqueror, not an individual at all, but rather a family.

The family is the key to Christmas. The family is the key to Christianity.

Since the family is the ordinary setting of human life, he came to share it, redeem it, and perfect it. He made it an image and sacrament of a divine mystery. Salvation itself finds meaning only in familial relations.

Everything has changed since Christ’s birth, yet everything remains to be changed,

What happens in Bethlehem doesn’t stay in Bethlehem. It goes home with pilgrims.