Christmas is, for most of the world, a pagan festival. It has nothing to do with the central tenet of Christianity, resurrection. Instead, Christmas has become a frantic time of the "One-shot God". This is it. God is coming once and only on December 25 and unless the day is filled with happy people and big floppy snowflakes, it will be a flop. Wait until next year.

That, of course, is why sanctuaries are filled on Christmas Eve and empty on the Sunday following. This was our one chance and so, almost desperate, people come to make contact with the once a year God.

Such an understanding is antithetical to the God revealed in Jesus Christ. The God of resurrection. The God of Easter. Our God does not just come once a year but all year long.

At the very heart of our faith is the belief that our God is alive and living among us.

What does this mean?

It means that God is with us even when the MasterCard is maxed out, even when your husband hates his job, even when the kids are having a tough time. This is the theology rooted in Easter rather than Christmas.

A news reporter points his camera in a survivor’s face at the scene of some terrible accident when others have died,

"I guess God was with me," proposes the almost victim and in so doing condemns all those who didn’t make it to being abandoned by God.

Poppycock.

To believe in the God of Easter is to believe that God is never separated from any of us. It is to believe that even when things don’t seem to be going our way, God always is.

We can never be without God. We can act like we are. We can talk like we are. We can believe like we are without God but God is never without us. We are freed from the need to have perfect Christmas Eves or perfect Thanksgiving dinners or perfect families or perfect jobs or perfect anything.

The most beautiful aspect of the Christmas story comes when the angel speaks to Joseph and says,

"The virgin shall bear a son and they shall name him Emmanuel."

Emmanuel. It means "God with us". Not just in Bethlehem. Not just when things are going well. Emmanuel. God is with us all the time.