It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Several items for your edification and that of those you love.
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Why Charlie Brown is Wrong About Christmas
Christmas Is Not Pagan, and Neither Is Its Date
The Geopolitics of Christmas
My 10 Favorite Books of 2025
by Rod D. Martin
December 24, 2025
Dear friends,
Merry Christmas Eve! What a glorious time to celebrate Christ’s birth, He Who has saved us from our sins, our sin natures, even death and Hell itself. Sin is not a small thing: it’s treason, against an almighty, holy King. We do not deserve the gracious pardon He offers, made possible by the perfect sacrifice of His Son, nor is there anything we can do to receive that redemption except turn to Him in faith and repentance, confessing with our mouths that He is Lord and believing in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead.
He is our all-in-all. By and through Him all things were created, and He owns everyone and everything everywhere. Yet He does not treat us as mere servants or slaves as He rightly could. The Father has adopted all who trust Him as sons and daughters, “co-heirs with Christ”. You are, or can be, a child of the King.
Choose you this day.
Christmas celebrates Immanuel, “God with us”. Indeed, Immanuel is the metanarrative of the entire Bible. On that First Advent, the Lord became flesh, born in a stable and laid in a manger, identifying with the lowliest and come to give them hope. “There was no room at the Inn” because, though Mary and Joseph were in their hometown, their family wouldn’t take them in, presumably because of the shame of the Virgin’s apparently out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Christ, fully God and fully man, can and does uniquely sympathize with us all, with anyone who comes to Him, no matter how lowly or great. He tears down the proud, but gives grace to the humble. And we shall dwell with Him in peace and joy, forever.
Tomorrow I will send you my Christmas message. But for today, this Christmas Eve, I want to highlight a handful of articles you might have missed, and should share with friends and family.
They are:
In the most Christian twenty-five minutes in all of television history, everyone knows that Linus nails the Gospel. Charlie Brown, however, is wrong about more than you think. God wastes nothing, not even our sin. And in liberty, God turns even the selfish motives of the sinner into the provision of good for all, an unconscious obedience to the Golden Rule guided as though by an invisible hand.
Every year the debate begins again. But in fact, the early church fathers chose a date based on their knowledge of the date of Christ’s death (which they believed was also the date of His conception), and while they knew that their choice for Christmas was imprecise, they thought it best to settle minor disputes for the future.
That mostly worked until, more or less, the invention of social media.
In any case, read here about the reasoning of the early church, and also why Christmas is NOT the Saturnalia, Sol Invictus, or some other pagan holiday.
Ian Morris is a Stanford historian and archaeologist. If anything comes clear in Ian’s enlightening essay, it is the degree to which hard power (e.g., the geopolitical pre-eminence of the Christian English-speaking powers since the 18th Century) shapes and changes the cultures of the rest of the world. This is perhaps the single most important argument for the continued leadership of the United States: the desire that dominance produces in others to emulate American ideas of liberty, human rights, and even faith.
Ian provides a reason many of you haven’t thought of for why that power matters. A Chinese-led world not only wouldn’t value those things, but would see both ancient and modern Chinese values — both Confucian and Communist — as better, superior, and the way to success. Instead of protecting Christianity and its values, the state power of the world would be used to suppress it and those who believe.
Finally, Christmas Eve being the first and last day of Christmas shopping for men, this helpful list:
Run don’t walk to buy these excellent books for your friends and family! And of course, the BEST gift you can give anyone is the gift of insight. For that, I encourage you to consider a LAST-MINUTE GIFT SUBSCRIPTION to The Rod Martin Report.
It lasts the whole year, it’s delivered instantly, and it’s just in time for Christmas.
That’s it! Merry Christmas Eve! And I’ll be back tomorrow with my Christmas message. Until then, Ho Ho Ho!
P.S. You’re running out of time for Christmas shopping! Give an instantly-available Gift Subscription to The Rod Martin Report!
P.P.S. If you haven’t yet, please consider giving to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, supporting international missions. It’s that time of year, and the world needs Christ.
Thank you much, Dr. Martin! I left a comment on the Geopolitics of Christmas article. Merry Christmas to you and yours!