Good morning and welcome to Starting Right with Danny Mac . I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great five-minute start to your day . So grab your cup of coffee , sit back , relax and let me help you start your day right . Good morning everyone . I hope you all had a really great Christmas yesterday . I know we did .
Yesterday was my wife and I , then my mom and my daughter and her husband . We spent some time together and now today we're looking forward to having our entire family come together . We're going to do our Christmas celebration today . It's just the way it worked out for everybody this year . I'm really looking forward to it .
It's so good when our family can get together .
In many parts of the world , today is called Boxing Day , and apparently that goes back to some old English traditions back in the 1800s where the servants had to work on Christmas Day to take care of the wealthy property owners and the families that hired them , but they were given the day after Christmas off so they could have their celebrations , and then the
wealthy families would box up some of their leftover food and give gifts to the servants so that they could have a special day themselves . That seems to be the origins of it . Nowadays it means something very , very different . In our part of the world it means the stores have almost everything on sale . It's kind of like Black Friday .
In the United States it's the biggest sale day of the year , but for many people the day after and the week after Christmas can be a little bit depressing . We've had this tremendous buildup to Christmas Day . It's been going on for two or three months now . We have the special music for it .
There's all kinds of movies some of them great , some of them not so great all about Christmas . There is a tremendous focus on Christmas Day in our culture , and there's nothing wrong with that . The only problem is when you lose sight of what it's all about .
If it's about the material things that you get and give as soon as Christmas is over , that can be a real letdown . But when we remember that Christmas really is about the birth of Jesus Christ and not about the lights or the gifts or the movies or the music , we know that we can celebrate all year long .
Back in 2011 , matthew West wrote a song called Day After Christmas . It talks about some of those things we go through when Christmas is over . The first two lines of the song say here comes the letdown . Christmas is over . Here comes the meltdown . There goes the cheer . That's the way it is for many people After the one-day highlight of Christmas Day .
There's this letdown . There's the wrapping paper that needs to go in the garbage boxes that need to get broken down . Decorations start to come down . There's this letdown . There's the wrapping paper that needs to go in the garbage boxes that need to get broken down . Decorations start to come down .
There's leftover food galore and , quite frankly , how many times can you eat leftover turkey ? And it becomes quite a stressful time for many , many people . In the rest of that first verse of his song , matthew West tells us what the best part of the day after Christmas is .
He says before we have a breakdown , let us remember that the light of the world is still here . Happy day after Christmas and a merry rest of the year . Even when Christmas is over , the light of the world is still here . In John , chapter 8 and verse 12 , jesus said I am the light of the world .
If you follow me , you won't have to walk in darkness , because you will have the light that leads to life . There is the true light of Christmas . The brightest Christmas lights can never compare to the light of Jesus . His light not only helps us to see clearly , it also gives us life and peace and strength . That's what Jesus came for .
He came so that we could have his light shining through us and in us in this world . Came so that we could have his light shining through us and in us in this world so that we could have the strength to overcome everything that we face . And it's a light that lasts all year long . It's not just a seasonal thing . He never leaves us or forsakes us .
If your hope for peace and joy is Christmas Day itself , you're going to be greatly disappointed . Is Christmas Day itself , you're going to be greatly disappointed . The joy of Christmas is not in those events that we do each year . The joy of Christmas is in the event of Christ coming to this earth .
He is the light and the peace and the joy that Christmas really is talking about . I'm going to leave you with just a clip of Day After Christmas by Matthew West . I hope you enjoy it and in your show notes today there will be a link to take you to the YouTube version of it where you can listen to the whole thing . I hope you'll do that .
I hope you have a great day , my friends . Enjoy this day after Christmas and we will talk again tomorrow .
Merry Christmas .