Finished your Christmas shopping yet? Hoping that Amazon can rush a gift to someone you forgot to put on your list? Are you feeling stuck because you didn’t actually forget that person, but put off thinking about it because you didn’t know what to buy?

Well, you know — there’s always gift cards.

It’s fun to give gifts at Christmas, or at least, it should be. There’s nothing wrong with giving gifts to the people we love, especially when the gifts are thoughtful, when they communicate I know you well enough to know that you would enjoy this. But for too many people, the opportunity to give a gift of love becomes more like an obligatory chore, sullied by the pressure to “get it right.”

Moreover, what constitutes “right” is too often determined by consumer desire. Already, when I was growing up, my sister and I didn’t really appreciate it when Grandma gave us socks and underwear for Christmas, even though we needed them and she gave them in love. Instead, we took such things for granted, and hoped instead that someone would buy us whatever we lusted after as we watched the commercials that punctuated our Saturday morning cartoons.

This is, to a greater or lesser degree, what Christmas has become for many. But it’s not what it should be, nor what it could be.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not telling anyone to stop buying presents, cold turkey. There might be a mass rebellion in the family, and who knows — the economy might collapse! But at some point, we need to pause, take a breath, and distance ourselves from whatever anxious traditions we’re trying to maintain, just long enough to remember and appreciate why we celebrate Christmas in the first place.

Yes, “Jesus is the reason for the season.” But let’s not sentimentalize the story. We’re not talking about a cute little baby in a tidy little manger surrounded by cute little farm animals. We’re talking about the gritty physical reality of a teenage girl giving birth to her first child without the benefit of a physician or anesthesiologist, in a setting more like a barn than a sterile maternity ward.

And let’s not forget what the apostle Paul tells the Colossians. He wants them to be amazed at the ancient mystery that’s been revealed to them in the gospel: “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him” (Col 1:19, NIV). This baby, this squalling mass of flesh who needs to have his umbilical cord cut, is the embodiment of the fullness of God, of the cosmic Christ who was the firstborn over all creation, the one who would become the firstborn from among the dead.

This is the miracle of the Incarnation. This is the heart of what we call Christmas. And it is the wonder appropriate to such a miracle that we should cherish in our own hearts. However we choose to celebrate the holiday, let’s set aside the time and space to remember and appreciate what makes the holiday a truly holy day.