When Pope Julius I authorized December 25 to be celebrated as the birthday of Jesus in A.D. 353, who would have ever thought that it would become what it is today.

When Professor Charles Follen lit candles on the first Christmas tree in America in 1832, who would have ever thought that the decorations would become as elaborate as they are today.

It is a long time since 1832, longer still from 353, longer still from that dark night brightened by a special star in which Jesus the king was born.

Yet, as we approach December 25 again, it gives us yet another opportunity to pause, and in the midst of all the excitement and elaborate decorations and expensive commercialization which surround Christmas today, to consider again the event of Christmas and the person whose birth we celebrate.

Luke 2:11 "Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord." Amen. Jesus is Alive and the reason for the Season. He is the reason for Christmas and let us not forget or get distracted by the glitter of the lights, decorations or be more focused on giving or receiving gifts than we are of celebrating the life of Christ in us.

Jesus was born and is Christ the Lord and became the solution to sin and hopelessness. He is the light of the world and He alone is the way to truth and life.

My family have always enjoyed the Christmas season and over the years developed Christmas traditions. For instance, the day after Thanksgiving (around November 26^th or 27^th -- American Holiday) our family would decorate a Christmas tree and put decorations on the inside and many times on the outside of the house.

While we decorate the tree Libby makes cookies, chocolate treats and all kinds of wonderful food for celebrating as a family. At dark we come together around the Christmas tree and turn on the lights. The whole house is dark, except for the Christmas lights on the tree. We take time to enjoy the great food, laughs, and share the things we are thankful for over the past year. Our family celebrates the birth of our Lord.

One tradition in our family is quite funny. A few years ago we had bought our daughter a surfboard and we had no way to hide that under the tree. I thought about it and decided I would wrap her a note to tell her where to look in the house to find her gift. Well, the only thing I could find to wrap the gift in was a toilet paper roll and so that is how the note came to her for where to go and find her gift. We all laughed when she opened the gift on Christmas day and it was a toilet paper roll. Until she read the note and went to get her gift.

The next year I bought a large gift for another one of my children and we put a note into another toilet paper roll and the gift was wonderful.

Our kids now start looking under the tree to see if their gift is wrapped in a toilet paper roll, because they know it will be a good gift and not under the tree. We now have grand kids who will soon be old enough to learn this tradition.

Christmas is a time for you and your family to develop memories that will last a lifetime. It is up to you as the leader in your home to do your part to make this time of celebrating the birth of our Lord a special time for you and your family.

The Global Teen Challenge staff want to wish you a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year. We love you and our prayers are with you as we all move toward 2011.

Jerry Nance

How do you honor the achievements of your staff? On the website iTeenChallenge.org we have added certificates that you can award to your staff when they complete a certain number of staff training courses.

On the home page of the website there is a link to the page "Setting up your Staff Training Schedule." You will see information on setting up a staff training plan for your center. We now have 11 different staff training schedules for you to use in training your staff. With each of these schedules we link you to the courses that are available on our website. At the end of each training schedule we have added a link to the certificate which you can award to the staff after they have completed this training.

You can also go to the Staff Training Track T1-Organizational Leadership, Topic 108-Staff Development and Training, and then select Course T108.04-Staff Training Plans and Certificates  where you will find all the training plans and certificate downloads currently available.

The certificates can be personalized for your center. We have included the Global Teen Challenge logo as well as a generic Teen Challenge logo. You can replace this with the logo for your own ministry, and then personalize each certificate with the name of the staff and other details.

Back to the training for just one minute. The courses that are available for each of these staff training schedules have training materials available in English and some courses are in a variety of other languages. However, these are not set up as self-study courses. You will need to have someone at your ministry actually teach these courses. You will need to go through the available materials for each course and determine what needs to be done to personalize them to your ministry.

If the materials for one of the courses you want to use are not available in your language, and you decide to translate these materials, please send a copy of the translated materials to Global Teen Challenge so we can add these to the website.

Our long range goal is to develop each course into a complete set of materials so it can be taught in a variety of settings, including self-study. If this is something you would like to help with, please contact us for more details.