Hi welcome to Share Your Heart Tuesday!

Today I'm talking about the reason we give gifts at Christmas, but first, one of our favorite Christmas DVDs:

For the last two or three years our family has watched The Star of Bethlehem, a fascinating documentary, at least once each Christmas season. I highly recommend it. And each time we see it I am struck anew with the sovereignty of God, who from the moment he hung the stars in space and set the planets in their orbits knew exactly when his Son would come to earth as a human baby, when he would die for the sins of mankind and when he would arise to life again gaining victory over sin, death and the grave for all who believe forever! The Star of Bethlehem is an amazing study!

One of the things though that Mr. Larson points out in the study of the Star is that with today's mathematical and technological advances we can know what the skies looked like on any given day in history by calculating their movements. And it just so happened that on (our calendar) December 25, 3 BC the Star appeared to stop over Bethlehem (Luke ). We believe this to be when the magi (wise men from the East) visited the young child Jesus and presented him with gifts – the First Christmas (Matthew 2:11).

So why do we give gifts at Christmas?

We don't have the Christ child with us in body, but in the tradition of the wise men we give gifts to our loved ones and to those we want to honor in remembrance of their giving gifts to the young Jesus. There's was an act of worship in that they were some of the first to acknowledge that the child Jesus was the King of Kings, the Messiah for whom they had been waiting.

And as Jesus' earthly parents would soon find out, it was the way God had chosen to provide for his Son, as Mary and Joseph would soon have to undertake the dangerous and expensive journey of fleeing with Jesus to Egypt to escape King Herod's selfish wrath (Matthew 2:13).

So why do you give gifts at Christmas? Have you seen The Star of Bethlehem? What did you think?

We have lots of ideas for homemade gift giving here or here and our new book Little Book of Ultimate Christmas Lists is a great resource.