The endearing book Christmas Thoughts by nineteenth-century pastor, theologian, and Anglican bishop J. C. Ryle is a collection of five reflections that invite readers to pause and consider our spiritual state and relationship with God as we partake in our Christmas celebrations.
These warm-hearted writings were originally composed by Ryle during the Christmas season as personal communications to his parishioners and distributed from house to house. They were hugely popular and eagerly read in towns and villages across England, each running into multiple editions and printed in tens of thousands of copies.
Each reflection offers unique insight into Ryle’s heart as he shares his own personal Christmas experiences and urges those whom he shepherds to make meditating on their salvation in Christ the central theme of their Christmas gatherings:
Reader, if you have become one of Christ’s friends already, I exhort you this Christmas to be a thankful man. Awake to a deeper sense of the infinite mercy of having an Almighty Saviour, a title to heaven, a home that is eternal, a friend that never dies! A few more years and all our Christmas gatherings will be over. What a comfort to think that we have in Christ something that we can never lose!
Christmas Thoughts contains some of the most popular reflections written by Ryle at Christmas and published during the 1850s and 1860s. They have not been issued in this Christmas form since they were first printed more than a century and a half ago—yet Ryle’s writing remains timeless, helping us to make the very most of Christmas with Christ:.
If our Christmas is nothing more than merry-making and a holiday, and Jesus has no place in it, it can hardly be called “well-spent.”
A Christmas without Christ! It cannot be a really happy one.
