So, when I became a parent I would have the Puritans – who did so many other good things for our country – as an example.

I could go as far as I wanted in my stand for the spiritual over the material at Christmas time and then... then, not only did I have children, but I read the Bible again.

• A pregnant, unwed teenager
• A bewildered and anxious fiancé
• A long, exhausting journey
• Arrival at the inn crowded with guests, drinking and eating and laughing - but no room
• The barn out back; the animals, the cows, the sheep, the doves in the rafters
• The beginning of labor; the pain, and then a newborn, a first cry, swaddling clothes
• A lullaby
• The shepherds

Nothing could be more material, more human, more worldly, earthly, more fleshy than the Christmas story.

And that is exactly the point.

Incarnation, God with us, means God with us in the world – not pulled out of it. It's the sacred in the secular, the holy in the profane.

See I came from a church tradition that embraced something of a Puritan worldview, in which good and evil are locked in battle, and the world is a corrupt and fallen place full of temptations.

Faithful Christianity meant distancing oneself from everything that is worldly.

Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book An Altar in the World, says that she grew up with the same world view as mine, but then she also began to read and think about the Bible.

She discovered that in the Bible the world is also God's home, God's beloved creation, God's very good creation.

"In the Bible," she says, "people encounter God not so much in church, but under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, on mountains and in long stretches of barren wilderness."

"God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies and burning bushes."

"When people want to know more about God, the Son of God tells them to pay attention to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, to women kneading bread and workers lining up for their pay."

In other words, God shows up in the most earthly and fleshly of ways.

So before I become too exercised about all the commercial excesses of Christmas, it may be good to remember that incarnation happens not only in the church but also in the world.

That's what incarnation, the very foundation of Christian faith, means: God with us; the Word made flesh; God coming to be with us in the birth of a child.

The miracle of Christmas, which I could have missed as a young parent, is that when God enters the world, the secular becomes sacred, the Word becomes flesh, and God comes to be with us.

The holy enters and blesses the world, and all of it is represented in that one small story: journey, birth, young unmarried woman, heavily pregnant; faithful, steadfast man.

All of it – all nature, cattle and sheep and shepherds and night sky full of stars, all of it, all the earth and earthiness, all humanity – is blessed and made holy by His being born into it.

And so I guess you could say that Christmas has been resurrected for me. Or maybe better yet, Christmas has resurrected me.

For what is going on out there is not a contradiction of the true meaning of Christmas, because He was born into the very middle of it.

God comes into it and blesses it – all the happiness, all the re-energized hope for peace on earth and justice for all God's children.

All the love shared with family and friends, all the generosity and impulses to give, all the color and music and bells and joy and singing and laughter.

Christmas is being born into our world. Christmas is being born into us. He is Emmanuel. God with us!

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Brent Barry is the Pastor and Head of Staff at NorthPark Presbyterian Church in Dallas.

He received the Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and Master of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary.

Brent is a Lake Highlands resident, husband and father of two.