The very best Christmas sermon I ever heard, was on one of those Christmas days, that happen to fall on Sunday...
I got to church early, to practice, as I was the organ player...the church janitor always was there before me, getting the heat turned up, and comfy for Sunday School and Church...but I noticed on this particular Sunday Christmas morn, it was amazingly cold in the church, and the janitor lamented to me, that the furnace had gone KAPUT....now this was in Chicago, so you know it was just really cold in the church....
Yet Sunday School went on, with everyone remaining in their hats and coats and mittens and boots...
And when time for church came, our Pastor, apologize to the congregation for the cold, and explained that the church would be needing a new furnace..everyone, clad in their outerwear for warmth, smiled...
I, ,myself was frozen, at least my feet were...because I always played the foot pedals of the organ with my shoes off, always needing to feel those pedals...
When it was time for the sermon, our Pastor, decided not to preach the sermon he had prepared, but rather decided to give a completely different sermon, related to the cold we were all feeling...He asked us to just imagine that cold,(we did not have to imagine) and being a mom, about to deliver a baby in the out of doors, and imagine the moms concerns over her new baby in the cold...being that we were all so cold, his sermon just had so much more meaning...
It may have been freezing in that church according to the thermometer, but the warm fellowship, that we all felt that day, and the warmth of Gods love for us, in sending His Son, made all of us forget the cold...
European cathedrals have no heat - period. I've sung in them in winter with steam coming out of my mouth. The sound in that pure air is wonderful - it just "spins".