General News
25 December, 2025
It's Christmas Day! Have you been naughty or nice
A Christmas reflection by Patrick Houghton of Boort Baptist Church
Naughty or Nice?
It’s a familiar image every Christmas. Santa in his sleigh, with some elves squished up next to him and the reindeer trotting ahead. Then there’s a whole heap of overflowing sacks in the back.
We know what’s in those sacks, right? They’re all filled with presents, aren’t they? Not so fast. There’s that other part of the Santa story. The naughty kids get coal, don’t they? At least one of those sacks has got to be full of coal!
That’s what I was told when I was a kid, but I never believed it. I always thought my parents were bluffing. Surely Santa isn’t like that! That is, until I heard the story about my uncle.
My Mum is one of eight and one of her brothers was always getting into trouble. I guess one Christmas Santa had enough. So while his seven siblings woke up to discover all their wonderful presents, my uncle found a dirty piece of coal in his stocking. Santa’s not kidding, folks!
I was shocked when I heard that story. It raises all sorts of questions. How naughty do you have to be for Santa to whip out his bag of coal? What’s the standard? Do you need a 2:1 ratio of good deeds to bad? Or is 1:1 enough?
How can you know if you’ve met the criteria? How can you be sure you’ll wake up Christmas morning to delight, not disappointment?
With Santa you’ve got to earn your presents. Christmas, though, tells us that our Creator is different. We don’t have to earn God’s gift. He gives it freely to those who don’t deserve it.
The Bible puts it like this, “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”
That means that eternal life is not something we could earn or deserve. It’s something God gives purely out of his kindness to those who accept Jesus.
I know for myself and the way I have treated God I certainly could not have deserved this gift. But that’s what makes Christmas so special. None of us deserves a present from God, but that didn’t stop him from giving us Jesus, his own Son as his gift to humanity.
And that means that unlike with Santa we don’t have to second guess ourselves. ‘Have I been nice enough to God?’ Well, I know I haven’t been nice to him, but that hasn’t stopped him holding out eternal life with Jesus to us. We just have to accept his gift by trusting him. That’s the beauty of Christmas!