Ninety years ago, a new song filled the airwaves during the 1934 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade broadcast: 

You better watch out,
You better not cry,
You better not pout,
I’m telling you why

The tune was an instant hit. The next day, more than 30,000 records and 100,000 copies of sheet music had been sold. Since then, the song has been recorded hundreds of times, selling millions of copies.

“Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” is undoubtedly a holiday classic. It’s also terrifying. 

He’s making a list,
And checking it twice,
Gonna find out,
Who’s naughty or nice.

The visitor from the North Pole is grading the moral performance of every kid. He is as determined as he is meticulous, double-checking his list for accuracy. No one will be overlooked. He’s practically omniscient:

He sees you when you’re sleeping,
He knows when you’re awake.
He knows if you’ve been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake!

The threat is ominous. We’re not told exactly what will happen if we’re bad. “Santa Claus is comin’ to town” — and that is warning enough.

So, yes, the Jolly Old Elf is bringing joy.

The kids in girl and boy land
Will have a jubilee.
They’re gonna build a toyland town
All around the Christmas tree.

That’s good news — but only for the good. It’s glad tidings for the nice kids. The ones who watched out. The ones who never cried. The ones who never pouted. 

In other words, Santa doesn’t love us — he repays us. Yikes.

“There is no one righteous, not even one” (Rom 3:10). We all know it, and we can’t hide it from the all-seeing gaze of the list-keeping elf who stalks us in our sleep. 

Santa’s advent (insofar as this song portrays it) is not good news. It is fear-inducing.

But 2,000 years ago, a better song filled the air:

Don’t be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people: Today in the city of David a Savior was born for you, who is the Messiah, the Lord. (Luke 2:10–11)

Jesus was not sent to repay us but to save us.

For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (John 3:16–17)

Our sin deserves condemnation and death. Jesus endured that death by being condemned on the cross. Jesus conquered that death in his resurrection. Jesus saves us from that death when we believe in him. That is how God loves us — not by repaying us but by giving Christ to save us.

We ask, Who is that love for? The heavenly host replies:

Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people he favors! (Luke 2:14)

“Favor” refers to the “good pleasure” of God that reveals the Son as Savior (Luke 10:21–22). It is the grace of God — unmerited, unearned, undeserved — through which he saves sinners: 

For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift ​— ​not from works, so that no one can boast. (Eph 2:8–9)

Moses reminded Israel that God’s love for them was because of who God was — and not in any way because of who they were: 

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. (Deut 7:7–8)

That message is astonishing — “the Lord set his love on you … because the Lord loves you.” The Lord loves you because he loves you.

The heavenly host sang the same message. There is nothing under God’s love other than God’s choice to love us — “Peace on earth to people he favors!”

Jesus didn’t come so that God could love us — God loved us and sent his Son. 

Jesus didn’t die so that he could love us, but “Christ loved us and gave himself for us” (Eph 5:2).

God loves us when we’re sleeping, loves us when we’re awake. It’s not because we’re bad or good — no, he loves for his own sake.

On this final Sunday of Advent, let’s remember the glorious good news of great joy: 

Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:10)

Love is God’s gift, wrapped in swaddling clothes and delivered to us in the birth of Jesus Christ, the Lord. Hope in it. Find peace in it. Rejoice in it forever.