Jesus came not to be just to be the cute cuddly baby in the manger, but the Christ of the Cross.  I heard a sermon preached by one of my colleagues years ago, I guess it was not a terribly popular sermon, it certainly wasn’t a warm fuzzy one, where he said, “On Christmas day, when you look out at all this white snow, I want you to see the snow as red.  Red with the blood of Jesus Christ, because Jesus came at Christmas in order to die on the cross.  So forget about the cute cuddly baby in the manger.  Focus on Jesus Christ and all the gore and all the blood on the cross because that is God for you.”  And so we can never separate Good Friday from Christmas or Easter or anything else.  Christ comes to do it all, focused on the Cross and the empty tomb.

–Pastor Kirk Clayton on Issues, Etc., November 30, 2012.