Even in a season that is often filled with so much anticipation (it’s the most wonderful time of the year?), joy can be a bit hard to come by. Gifts and food are expensive, families bring drama, and the busyness can make us feel overwhelmed or frantic.  If you look up Top 10 Christmas songs, or Most Popular Christmas songs, you find surprising insight into what people look towards for joy.  

In the tune, “White Christmas,” one’s perfect holiday season relies on the weather and some nostalgia (...just like the ones I used to know…).  Another favourite, “I’ll be Home for Christmas,” sings about our desire to be close with family, and for predictability (...you can count on me…).  In the ultimate Christmas classic, “All I Want for Christmas” by Mariah Carey, she feigns simplicity in saying she “doesn’t care about the presents,”  and that “there is just one thing” she needs; but we realize that her joy is contingent on a romantic relationship!                   

These popular holiday songs really just expose the things that our culture looks towards for Joy.  You see, all humans have a joy vacuum. We’re desperate for it and we will chase anything to get it, even though most of it doesn’t seem to satisfy us for very long, if even at all.   

If we’re looking for lasting joy, we need look no further than the Christmas story where the angel announced “good news of great joy for all the people.” God packaged our ultimate reason for joy in the form of a humble baby in a manger.   Or, as voiced in the carol, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come!” Our joy starts because God came.  When Isaac Watts wrote “Joy to the world,” it first appeared in a publication in 1719 where he declared that the Christmas hymn was inspired by Psalm 98. That we sing, and we find joy, not simply because God is, but also because of what he has done!  Our joy continues because God didn’t stop at the manger. Jesus didn’t just come to earth, but lived the life I should have lived and died the death I should have died, so that I am accepted by God not because of what I’ve done for him but because of what he has done for me.  

The power of a Saviour is that our actions are now fuelled by joy instead of striving for it. The joy of wanting to please the one who has done all this for me.  The joy of wanting to resemble the one who has done all this for me.  The joy of wanting to be near the one who has done all this for me.  And this is the explanation to why the vacuum we experience inside is so huge; why you can put celebrity in it, you can put your best plans and dreams in it, you can put billions of dollars in it, and it’s still there.  You can put anything in there and it seems to vanish. If you put anything other than God in the centre of your life, it’s simply incapable of bringing you lasting joy.    

St. Augustine puts it like this in his famous line in his book, Confessions.  He says, “We take joy in praising you, O Lord, for thou has made us for thyself and our hearts are restless till they rest in thee.”  We were built for this good news.  We were built to experience God; if God isn’t part of our lives, neither is joy.   So, I hope you find much JOY this holiday season, not just in the songs themselves! May we instead hear the sounds of the season as reminders of our ultimate reason for true and lasting joy.