I’ve been thinking about Christmas a bunch lately. Here are a few of my thoughts.
My friend Shannon recently posted on Facebook about Christians who get all worked up when people replace “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays.” I have always inwardly cringed at the people who proclaim “Keep the Christ in Christmas,” and “Jesus is the reason for the season,” but I wasn’t always sure why. Shannon stated this so well, it is easier for me to just copy and paste her thoughts:
“Hey Christians involved in the great "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" debate, please stop it. The Christmas season gives us an opportunity to love people. Christ didn't come to earth to give us a holiday. He came to teach us how to love (dare I say love people who don't celebrate Christmas). And ultimately, to die for our sin (like the sin that causes us to argue about words like Christmas and Holidays). Please don't miss the opportunity to love people this Christmas. That's something that Jesus actually cared about.”
It just seems almost hypocritical to me. Why must these people supposedly fight for Jesus in this one situation, yet hardly give Him a second thought the other 11 months of the year?
This brings me to my next big thought. I don’t recall any place in the Bible that we are told to remember and celebrate annually our savior’s birthday. Communion -- definitely commanded. But a big birthday party every year that is often loosely (at best) connected to a baby in a manger? Let alone, how many people truly grasp what Jesus becoming a human really means? Do people really think that God’s intention was that we choose an arbitrary date on the calendar and each year we chop down trees and drag them into our houses, put hundreds of lights all over our houses, eat twice as much food as we need to, and spend BILLIONS of dollars that most of us can’t afford on giving gifts to people who really don’t need anything? Sometimes I just look around at it all and try to see it through God’s eyes. It really gives you a different perspective, and it is a sad one in my opinion.
Please don’t view me as just another Ebenezer Scrooge. I have lots of great Christmas memories both as a child and then with my own children. There are parts of Christmas that I still look forward to. But each year I seem to find myself stepping outside of all the merriment a little further and thinking about all of it and what it has become in our society.
In response, I try my hardest to keep my personal focus on what it means that God put skin on and came to earth in anticipation of me some day being born and needing to be rescued from my sin so that I could spend forever with Him. THAT is why I celebrate.
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