A few Facebook years ago, the top Christmas morning posts were happy families in matching pajamas of red, green, candy cane stripes, evergreens and holly or red and black plaid.

That year, the non-conformist in me sniffed, “I would never wear matching Christmas pajamas.”

My inner child whispered, “Oh, but you did. Remember all those Christmas Eve pajamas you and your sisters donned?”

The realist replied, “Yeah, all before FB so it doesn’t count.”

Though not intentional, my husband and I now own matching Christmas pajamas. “We have matching jammies too,” I gloated, even though we purchased our pajamas months apart and they weren’t a family set, butthey matched. (No one will ever see us in our jammies on social media, and you can thank us later.)

Who knew that all it would take to belong to the world of happy Christmas morning families was pajamas, and the sting of an unfair job severance or the fear of a pathology report or the pain of bullying or rejection would simply disappear. Wait a minute. What? The realist in us knows better when we celebrate a mis-match Christmas, even while longing for matching pajama perfection.

The birth narrative in the gospels reveal more Christmas mismatches than our sought-after superficial Christmas perfection.

There’s the mismatch of Joseph’s resolve not to shame Mary and divorce her quietly and the angel of the Lord’s instruction not to fear and take Mary as his wife. Joseph chose the mismatch and called his name Jesus.

There’s the mismatch pairings of wisdom and foolishness, of life and death. The mismatch of wise men who, sight unseen, came to worship “he who has been born king of the Jews” and a foolish Herod who became furious enough to kill all the male children in Bethlehem and the region who were two years old or under. This mismatch pair of life and death would follow Jesus throughout his life.

Then there’s the most incredible mismatch of all: the Incarnation. In his bookLove Came Down at Christmas, Sinclair Ferguson wrote, “Here is a neat little summary of what happened at that first Christmas from the early fathers of the Christian church: ‘Christ became what he was not in order that we might become what we were not.’”

Let’s celebrate the mismatch of the Creator becoming part of his creation; of wounds that heal; of punishment that brings peace; of death that brings life; of the Father who “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Let’s celebrate mismatch Christmases, because one day we will wear something far better than matching pajamas to a matchless celebration where we will be clothed “with fine linen, bright and pure—for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.” (Revelation 19:8)