Putting Christ back into Christmas is not as simple as getting our neighbors to agree to say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.”
No, it is a daily spiritual discipline: speaking the truth about the incarnate Savior; abstaining from the addictions of materialism, anxiety, family squabbles and a critical spirit, in fact, all the variations of being unloving; and above all, anticipating his Advents, first in Bethlehem and second on the Mount of Olives, as our King.
A special story for the season!
It is a scientific fact: the winters of one’s child years are much colder, darker, snowier and more perilous than the winters served to these same people as adults. Nor is this natural law any respecter of generation. Old-timer, post-war, boomer, post-boomer: each child in every era survives to see winter eventually lose its icy chokehold, become indifferent to the point where the Ice Age rolls back. With added years the terror of wolves prowling the suburbs melts into slush and seeps away. Fellow adults begin to step outside, hatless and scarfless. Those cars that still bobble away the spark of combustion are themselves culpable, their onboard computers stripped of the defense of blaming the environment.
Advent season starts this Sunday. Like many Christians, I’ll be following a plan of Bible readings and prayers in preparation for Christmas and in anticipation of the Second Coming.
I don’t forsee being stressed; in fact, I plan not to be stressed.
I don’t want to gloat or anything, but we have a low-stress Christmas. On Black Friday I watch people on TV, whacking each other with sale items at Big Box stores; I work hard not to roll my eyes.
I hear people talk about Keeping Christ in Christmas, but their actions speak louder than their words. (more…)
May Christians create holidays such as Christmas?
May Christians create holidays? The Bible gives us precedent to say Yes.
First, God’s people have always celebrated holidays that are not mandated in the Bible. To name three, the feast of Purim was established in the 400s BC, when Esther and Mordecai saved the Jews from slaughter. The name Purim is the Hebrew form of a pagan, Babylonian word for “lots”. The feast began when “the Jews of the villages who dwelt in the unwalled towns celebrated the fourteenth day of the month of Adar with gladness and feasting, as a holiday, and for sending presents to one another.” Crucially for us, nowhere does God mandate it as a holy day, as he did Passover or Pentecost – it was a human decision.
Second, the Jews invented the holiday of Chanukah or Hanukkah (more…)
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on December 21, 2012 at 2:24 pm Comments (7)Tags: Bible, Christian, Christmas, holidays, Jim Staley, Purim