In my mentary this week, “Gratification and Civilization,” I examine the connection between making your kids wait until Christmas morning to open their presents and the development of civilization.

Self-denial and self-sacrifice form the basis of human life together. As Matthew Cochran puts it in a piece last week at The Federalist, “Civilization depends on the tendency of men to produce more than they consume for themselves.”

A key factor of driving forward the development of civilization, then, is the family unit. For Cochran rightly warns that civilization “depends on masculine ambition.” The ambition to grow a business for someone “could mean feeding himself & his workers, along with any family they might have. His ambition could be a huge boon to society. Take that away, and you have a bunch of men doing what they need to do to fortable, but nothing more—nothing for any women or any increasingly hypothetical children.”

The Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck explores the link between family and civilization in his study ofThe Christian Family. Bavinck describes the triad of father-mother-child:

The two-in-oneness of husband and wife expandswith a child into a three-in-oneness. Father, mother, and child areone soul and one flesh, expanding and unfolding the one imageof God, united within threefold diversity and diverse within harmonicunity.

These relationships are of civilizational significance:

This three-in-oneness of relationships and functions, of qualitiesand gifts, constitutes the foundation of all of civilized society.The authority of the father, the love of the mother, and theobedience of the child form in their unity the threefold cord thatbinds together and sustains all relationships within human society.Within the psychological life of every integrated personalitythis triple cord forms the motif and melody. No man pletewithout some feminine qualities, no woman plete withoutsome masculine qualities, and to both man and woman, the childis held up as an example (Matt. 18:3). These three characteristicsand gifts are always needed in every society and in every civilization,in the church and in the state. Authority, love, and obedienceare the pillars of all human society.

One can hardly discuss the family during this season of the year without also reflecting on the holy family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Bavinck describes them as “the divine counterpart” to Adam, Eve, and their children. “The holy family is the example of the Christian home,” writes Bavinck.

And on this Christmas let us remember and be thankful for the greatest gift of all, the birth of Jesus Christ!