I’m looking at my tree and my decorated mantel right now....they’re beautiful. I really doubt the Lord is angered by these harmless, pretty things.
I find it interesting that you seem to use the testimony of atheists to build your case. Seems rather incongruent for a Christian to do that.
Early Christians developed the idea of a calendar that holds up the life of Christ through out each year. This calendar is a teaching and worship tool for communicating the gospel to an illiterate peoples.
PARTY POOP!
All you say about Christmas is true. It is rooted in pagan tradition. But who cares about that? Christians have co-opted it for their own purposes and pagans can go on celebrating the solstice if they like.
I don’t celebrate Xmas either. When I review Scripture, history and current custom, what I find is a syncretic holiday even if you put aside the fact that Jesus was born in the fall of the year and not near the winter Solstice.
Of course people are free to do what they want and to justify it on any grounds, but that does not make it right. Jesus Himself rejected religiosity that was based on human traditions, and many Xmas traditions predate the birth of Our Savior.
I will not teach my children syncretism when I can teach them the truth.
I celebrate the whole of Christmas! It blows me away! His advent into this world is so overwhelming, that there are no words to describe this wonderful event!
Please do not take the great joy from our hearts! There is enough stress and sadness. Let love be your aim.
You are not alone in all this. Many of us have stepped outside the box of this world and have started to take a good look at what we do here, and why do we do it.
I have questioned many things over my lifetime as to where did all these traditions and rituals came from as they approached each season, whether it be the spring, the fall, or the winter.
It soon becomes a personal revelation that you wish to share with others. But some others will take it so personal that they will revile and attack your character, your lifestyle, and even your upbringing. It comes with the territory, so to speak.
Many have asked me, what the heck is wrong with you. It’s for the kids, can’t the kids have some fun for “Gods sake”?
Then I ask, what is “Gods sake”?
Is it to put His New Wine into this old wineskin of the world, or is it to separate ourselves from the ways of this world?
Many have made up their minds on what they are going to do, and no matter how hard you try to open up another little window in their mind to perhaps look at these things in another light, they will still insist that it is you that has the problem.
But keep in mind, that we can sing and bring good tidings of joy and goodwill towards mankind everyday of the year, and most of my favorite carols are sung throughout the whole year ... smiles
Best wishes to you all, and may everyday be sacred and holy as you rise for the occasion.
Remember. Keep the MASS in Christ Mass
I conclude that whether it's celebrating the birth of Christ or wearing a cross where it is visible to others, if the Humanist pagans want to banish some acknowledgment of Christ from society there are always "Christians" around who can explain how their retreating without a fight is proof they're much more Holy than others.
Nice job..I stopped observing Christmas 12 years ago...never looked back and never regret it. Our modern Christmas is an invention of the media of the 1800’s and early 1900’s and has nothing to do with Christ.
XMAS can be about Christ, if like all things in life, we have faith in Him in all things and focus through faith in Him, instead of focusing on anything else, such as placing sin before Him.
Why would He choose to be born on a Pagan holiday ? More likely born on the Feast of Tabernacles. John 1:14 Yah'shua was/is/and will always be a Torah observant Jew
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
as well as creator of the universe.14 And the Word became flesh, and tabernacled
among us, and we saw His glory,
glory as of the only begotten
from the Father, full of grace and truth.
I haven’t read the comments yet but I’m guessing I’ll see vitriol and snark. Not once will we see scriptural support or teaching from the apostles to celebrate the same day pagans do or even celebrate the birth of Christ at all.
“Christmas has become completely distorted and perverted and what is supposed to be a day to honor Jesus has become a two-month long season of out-of-control shopping and spending, overindulgence of food and drink, massive debt and spoiled children.
Christmas, without a doubt, belongs to retailers, not to Jesus. The season begins around late October, and is in full swing right before Thanksgiving, and goes on til New Years.”
I go to Taco Bell now and then. The music recently was Christmas carols. Not songs about Santa and sleigh bells, but actual songs about Jesus Christ. Amazing.
It all depends on how you celebrate. Being a Catholic, I celebrate the Season of Advent. Christmas begins with the Vigil of the Nativity, the night of December 24th, and continues for 12 days.
Since Advent and Christmas are part of the Church’s liturgical year, I obviously don’t believe I have the option of not celebrating these. But each person has the power to overthrow the domination of the whole season by profiteers.
While it will be protested that observing the season and day of Christmass is not obligatory, the reality is that Christmas is basically overall treated and defended by even Protestants as such.
A pastor may pray about what ot preach 11 months out the year, but come December it is a given that he must preach Christmas, else the people will stone him. Well, not quite, however, hardly any member of any church can expect to go anywhere in ministry if he does not join in the yearly observance of Christmas, and will be suspiciously looked upon and often maligned as a fringe Christian if he does not, and as likely being some sort of legalist and or a Scrooge.
Yet it is actually those who basically make the yearly observance of Christ obligatory that are engaging in legalism, as this yearly observance certainly is not seen or commanded in Scripture, and which even censures the ritualistic religious observance of "days, months, times and years," (Gal. 4:10) as concomitant with religion under the Old covenant.
And rather than an anti-celebratory Scrooge, not celebrating Christmas means one is set free from basically having to observe this Roman holyday in order to worship God as the Spirit leads, which can include celebrating the birth of Christ anything, such as in the Fall or Spring when He likely was born. But how radical that would be!
It simply is not the nature of the New Covenant to fall into annual feast days, nor fall into religious syncretism.
We wonder why the world loves Christmas, and how hard it is put Christ back into it, but the answer is that He did not belong in it in the first place, but while this yearly winter feast was not seen in Scripture, a distinctly pagan feast was partly "Christianized" as part of the religious syncretism of Rome.
While we (sadly) do recognize pagan deities as marks of references as in the days of the week (and which i am sure will not be used during the Millennium), this is not that of Christianizing uniquely pagan celebrations. And in making worship in spirit and in truth, God does not need help from distinctively pagan celebrations, and thus does not engage in reforming paganism but in making new creations. And in which that which is religiously of the world is to be crucified.
And if it is not, then it was reemerge even if in religious form. And which was was occurred with Christmas. Rather than being left to die, it was Christianized, like as the high places of the OT were, and thus they were perpetuated to more easily revert back to their pagan forms.
Instead, make we seek to be led of the Lord in our worship, not in annual days and set liturgical feasts, the 1st day of the week being the only specific day the NT church worshiped one (not there's a debate). Even how often the commemoration of the Lord's death is to take place is not commanded, but is "as often as you do this." Want to celebrate the Lord's birth, do it as the Lord leads anytime, but do not try to convince me it is on the same day every year as a pagan feast you are Christianizing.
But this extends into other areas. Is your liturgy the same predictable ritual every week, fostering perfunctory professions? Or so the clock is the supreme authority? Did you ever take part in a Christian service (outside of the business meeting) in which every one could have something edifying to share from the Lord, as in 1Cor. 14?
Would your evangelical church (the only kind that is a church) even consider changing the place or time of meeting in order to outreach at a parade or event? Or is it so sacrosanct that hardly anything could change it?
Okay. So you chose not to celebrate Christmas. Why beat your chest and show your pride about it. I feel there is a lot less humility in your post than there is pride. You’re kind of like those guys who decide to not visit Free Republic anymore, then write a long vanity about how stupid we are for not appreciating him, or her.
Christmas is that one day of the Church Year when Christians focus upon the fact that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The particular date of the Savior’s birth is far less important than the fact. We are perfectly free to coopt every pagan tradition and every substance in honor and celebration of the Christ, the crucified and risen One, who for our sakes came down to redeem all flesh from sin and death, because it is the Creator of all Who saw fit to make peace though the atoning blood of this Flesh like ours.
Far be it from me to let atheists and pagans tell me how to celebrate Christmas, whether it means spending or not. Rudolph, Santa Claus, Christmas trees, lights, mistletoe, joy, feasting: bring it! Bring it all!!
At the same time, I happily respect another Christian’s decision to treat they day like any other, because in Christ all of creation and all of history is made right despite ourselves, and the devil’s hoards are sent fleeing while all believers rejoice in sweet, eternal victory.
Perspective, perspective, perspective... All good gifts come down from the Father of Lights. Light is what we crave... living, dazzling, wondrous light. Even for the none believer, the lights of Christmas spark a sense yearning for real living light. Some will argue that Christmas was a pagan holiday. Well, it has been redeemed, just as all pagans, when they believe, are redeemed. The believer who is free to see Christmas as a high holy day, in celebration to the king of kings, is not wrong, for his motivation is to praise God and to enjoy the good gifts from above. Rejoice, and again rejoice, for the Son of God was born in a world of darkness, to be a light to the world. I will celebrate Christmas, no matter the humbugs.