Reason #1 Why we're done with Christmas...
Some of what I'll share here may be hard for some people to read. I'll keep reminding you to remember to hear my heart and to keep yours open to the Holy Spirit. I'll start with something easy (and pretty obvious).
Although it's not the only holiday to be so, Christmas is probably the most commercialized event during the entire year. Decorations start going up before Halloween. We celebrate everything we're thankful for the day before immediately going out and trying to hoard more stuff we don't need.
Black Friday kicks it all off because that's when many retailers go back "into the black" if they haven't had a very profitable year. But by doing so, millions of Americans go further into debt. Excuses are made that so much money was saved on a sale that no one seems to care that hundreds (or thousands) of dollars were still spent! Families who struggle throughout the year to pay regular bills suddenly feel the need to buy new TVs simply because they're marked down. But we miss the point that we're buying into the advertising ploy.
Then we have all of the expectations: we can't let our children be disappointed so we buy more than we should; company parties and gift exchanges add expenses; our child can't be the only one who doesn't have something for *every* teacher; last minute gifts for anyone who drops by....The expectations placed upon us are ridiculous! But again, the pressure to participate is overwhelming. And the subliminal signals to keep "giving" keep coming at us.
And while all this is being done in the name of "giving," it's also done with such a horrible attitude to everyone we come across. We're under so much financial and emotional stress that we take it out on everyone. The weary cashier who can't move fast enough, the person who got the last item that we wanted, the elderly lady who took the prime parking place. But let's put that quarter in the Salvation Army pot so we can feel good about ourselves! And let's not forget to get defensive to anyone who will listen that it is NOT "Happy Holidays," but "Merry Christmas." As if the words and the presents matter more than the attitude in our hearts.
The enemy's tactic is to take the focus off of anything that is holy and put it squarely on ourselves. And that is what commercialism has done. We are so concerned with keeping up appearances that we go into debt to be the cool parent instead of teaching our kids about gratitude and contentment. We worry about what others will think if we don't have as many decorations, the biggest tree, the newest, shiniest things to brag about. We become wrapped up in making ourselves look good and the pride of pleasing others rather than attempting to keep the focus on the cliche "reason for the season."
The bible offers advice against the trappings of commercialism. Jesus said, "Watch out! Be on guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions." (Luke 12:15) Paul said that as humanity continues, our hearts would become more cold toward godly things and focus more on the flesh that on the Father. "People will be lovers of themselves...lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God." (2 Timothy 3:2,4).
My first reason for no longer suffering under this Christmas season is because I will not be forced to participate in the retail scheme of incurring debt under the guise of "Jesus." Christians need to take authority over their lives in the areas of debt and possessions and showing their children that having more is not the same as having what is necessary.
"But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that." (1 Timothy 6:8)
Please remember I am sharing all of this because I feel a burden on my heart to do so. I'm asking you to turn the box and look at it from a different perspective. It by no means is meant to hurt anyone. But I feel very strongly that it's important. These things need to be discussed. These things need to be brought out into the light and considered. So please stick with me and let me encourage you, even as I may make you uncomfortable.
Santa Clause. The second reason Christmas bothers me so much is the fat man in the red suit. Yes, I know there was a good man named Kris Kringle, Saint Nick, toys to the poor, etc. But he isn't who we honor this time of year.
The popular image of the Santa we know today was the creation of an artist who created an image for a coca cola ad in 1931. Before then, many images of Santa existed, but this one was well received and has remained through the decades. In true commercialized fashion, he grew to become larger than life, taking over a massive part of the Christmas season we now know.
So what's my issue? I have several. The first is that he gets credit for EVERYTHING. I feel bad for the parents who scrap and scrimp to save enough money to get the one thing their child wants - only to put "From Santa" on the tag. The child who sees his family struggling on a daily basis doesn't understand the awesome sacrifice it took for his parents to provide that gift. An opportunity for great gratitude is lost.
And then there's the fact that Santa is not an equal opportunity giver. Some kids get the really expensive gifts from Santa - "It's just what I wanted!" Other kids get the knock off brand of what they asked for and they don't know why. "Billy asked Santa for a hover board and got one, why didn't Santa bring me one too?" Yeah, explain that. Why does Santa love some kids more?
But my biggest issue with Santa is the lying. I'm sorry, really I am, I know it's supposed to be "magical and harmless and fun and in the spirit of Christmas." Except it's not. I have watched children be devastated when they finally realize Santa isn't real. I have heard them ask their parents, "so you lied to me?" These same parents who told their children they would *never* lie to them - and better yet, expect their kids not to lie to them in return.
And the lies just build upon each other. Why is that Santa in the store when we just saw him on the street corner? Why does he need helpers if he has elves? How does one man get around the world in one night? In the "spirit and magic of Christmas," we LIE and call it fun - the total opposite of behavior we are to have as Christians.
And the fear tactics! "Santa is watching you! You better be good!" And now we have the Elf on the Shelf to keep kids in line. Because it's an imaginary man who should prompt our kids to choose to do the right thing? We've turned over our parental responsibilities to a character who only comes around once a year?
And that brings me to the crux of the problem: Who sees us when we're sleeping and knows when we're awake? Who also knows every hair on our heads? Who knows when we've been bad or good - and knows every sin in our hearts? Who wants us to be good for HIS sake? Who says, "You better watch out" because there is an enemy that wants to take our minds off of our Lord? Who's impending arrival are we to await with anticipation?!? Songs are sung about an imaginary man that fits the description of the One True God - and we join in. A holiday sold to us as the birthday of our Savior and we make Him share the celebration with a storybook character with Jesus' own attributes.
When my girls were still very young, I was living off very little. I had less than $500 a month, I was in low income housing, and I was on food stamps. I was a single, disabled mom who just wanted to take care of her children as best I could. A dear, sweet friend and neighbor bought my daughters several small gifts to put under the tree I had been given. Sandy didn't want me to tell the girls who the gifts were from and told me to tell them they were "From Santa." I smiled and said, "I cant' do that. I will not give the credit of your blessing to an imaginary man. But I *will* tell my girls the gifts are 'From Jesus.' Because He's using you to bless us."
If I've stepped on any toes, I'm sorry for the hurt. But I implore you to pray about these things. I know we get defensive about the things that we don't agree with. I do it all the time! But we are also to be teachable. We are to be open to the Holy Spirit when He brings us a new light in which to view a subject. This is not an easy conversation to have, but I hope you're willing to have it with the only One that matters.
Would it surprise you to know that traditionally, Jews do not spend a lot of time commemorating births? In Ecclesiastes 7:1, King Solomon said, “The day of death is better than the day of birth.” “The Encyclopedia Judaica could not be more blunt: ‘The celebration of birthdays is unknown in traditional Jewish ritual.’ When a person is born, it is not known what he will be like when grown and what his deeds will be – whether righteous or wicked, good, or evil. When he dies, however, if he departs with a good name and leaves the world in peace, people should rejoice.” (http://ritualwell.org/ritual/birthdays-jewishly) Isn’t that interesting?
That helps explain why scripture gives many more details about the time of Christ’s death (Passover, which is widely accepted as being April 3, 33AD) and no information about the date of His birth. With our technology, scientists and evangelicals have been able to go backwards with the scriptural clues and deduct that Christ was more likely born in the fall, specifically around the Feast of Tabernacles/Sukkot which occurs in either September or October (depending on the lunar calendar). “John 1:14 tells us that the Word became flesh and ‘dwelt’ among us.” In Hebrew, the word “dwelt” can be translated “tabernacled.” If you’ve done any studies on the feasts, you know that God works mighty things on His feast days. It would make perfect sense that Christ was both born and died on feast days. (And if it’s correct, he was born on the last feast day and died on the first feast day! Fascinating, isn’t it?!)
So we have a Savior born in the fall. But His birth is celebrated in December.
I have a problem with this.
A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine on social media had another friend send her “Happy Birthday” wishes. My friend said, “Thank you, but my birthday was in September.” This is what we’re doing with Jesus! “Yes, Lord, I want to celebrate the wonderful gift of Your birth, but I don’t really care about when You were born. I only care about the date on the calendar that was decided long ago would be Your birthday.”
How many of us would be perfectly alright if our birthday arrived and every single family member and friend ignored it? No gifts, no cake, no special wishes. No song, no extra love, no acknowledgement at all. And then, almost three months later – “HAPPY BIRTHDAY! We love you! We want to celebrate you!” But wait, it was three months ago. “Oh, we don’t care when it really was, we want to celebrate NOW because that’s what everyone else wants to do.” Soooo, it’s about what everyone else wants….it has nothing to do with you.
But the absurdity doesn’t stop there. Instead of celebrating your birthday – like they say they are – each person has provided everyone else a list of things they’d like to be given and now they are all exchanging gifts with one another! And what do you get? “Oh, *you’re* the REASON for this celebration! So thank you!” Soooo, again, it’s all about everyone else, and it has nothing to do with you.
Does anyone else see how backwards this is?
There are many, many clichés and mantras surrounding the explanations for this behavior:
*“We give presents to represent the gifts brought to Jesus by the wise men.” Except the wise men didn’t show up at Christ’s birth. They showed up 18-24 months later.
*“Christmas presents bring us Christ’s presence.” Except they don’t – they take our focus off of Christ and keep it squarely on our own wants and desires.
*“Jesus is the reason for the season.” Except He wasn’t born in this season. He is “celebrated” months later, by giving other people the things that they want, and He is then praised for providing the opportunity to focus on ourselves!
Christmas has evolved into what we see today – chaos and consumerism. And I know that there are many of you reading this who will say that you *do* focus on the real reason of the holiday. So this is where I challenge you: I think it is vital that we remember the birth of our Lord. We need to meditate on the greatest gift ever given to mankind. But we need to do it at the correct time of the year. And we need to do it in such a way that it honors Him, and not ourselves. To do that, it is necessary to look to the Feast of Tabernacles. There is much more to this feast day (and much more to come with Christ’s return!); but in terms of remembering the birth of our Savior, it is a beautiful feast of Emmanuel, “God with us,” coming to a virgin, laid in a manger, worshipped by shepherds, tabnernacling/dwelling with His creation. It was holy and quiet and unpretentious. It was the total opposite of this Christmas season that is thrust upon us.
If you are truly wanting to honor Jesus during this season, I hope you are beginning to see that there IS a way to honor Him correctly. And don’t give up on me yet. I know I’m offering a lot of information, but there is something special still to come. Stick with me! I promise it’s worth it!
(This article is EXCELLENT. I hope you’ll read it. http://hethathasanear.com/Birth.html)
Did you know that the Puritans, the first to settle in this New World, the colonists of 1620, banned and made illegal the celebration of Christmas? It’s true!
Besides believing that scripture was very clear that Jesus was born in September (hmmm…interesting that even the Puritans were aware of that!), they had left an England that promoted chaos at Christmas.
There was a tradition of spending the twelve days of Christmas eating, drinking, and being merry in excess. Among this excess, was “the concept of 'misrule', or a ritualized reversal of traditional social norms, [which] was an important element of Christmas. It was precisely this face of Christmas, however, that the Puritans of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England found so objectionable. In the 1580s, Philip Stubbes, the author of The Anatomie of Abuses, complained ‘That more mischief is that time committed than in all the year besides, what masking and mumming, whereby robbery whoredom, murder and what not is committed? What dicing and carding, what eating and drinking, what banqueting and feasting is then used, more than in all the year besides, to the great dishonour of God and impoverishing of the realm.’”
"Men dishonor Christ more in the 12 days of Christmas," wrote the 16th-century clergyman Hugh Latimer, "than in all the 12 months besides."
Many among England began to reflect that perhaps the tradition of exorbitant sins during the yuletide season should be done away with. Speakers came forward, chastising the public, “With the more solemn humiliation because it may call to remembrance our sins, and the sins of our forefathers who have turned this Feast, pretending the memory of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights...” But it was to no avail.
“Dismissing all alternative datings of Christ's nativity [despite evidence to the contrary], Edward Fisher, a Royalist clergyman, asserted that 'the 25th day of December is the just, true and exact day of our Saviour's birth', and concluded with an exhortation to his readers to: Stand fast and hold the traditions which we have been taught, let us make them known to our children that the generations to come may know them.’”
Even as our nation was in its early years of birth, December 25th was still considered a normal work day. It wasn’t until the publishing of the poem “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” that states began to introduce Christmas festivities among their normal December month. The state of Alabama was the first to declare Christmas a public holiday in 1836. However, even as other states in the south followed suit, Northern and New England states continued to treat December 25th as any regular day as late as 1850. It was a full 250 years from the time the Puritans arrived until President Ulysses S. Grant deemed Christmas a federal holiday in 1870.
The banned Christmas of the Puritans was one of greed, excessive debauchery, and man-made traditions that ignored any association of Christ. I find it interesting that it appears to bear such a close resemblance to the Christmas of today. The colonists left England and the monarchy to escape persecution of religion and seek to live free under republic rule. And yet so many of the things those first Americans sought to leave behind them have crept up and made themselves at home in society today.
If those same people recognized the need to leave England and start fresh without the traditions and expectations of their previous country, I have to believe they also knew what they were doing when they made Christmas illegal in their new land.
(Quotes from http://www.historytoday.com/chris-dur…/puritan-war-christmas and http://theweek.com/articl…/…/when-americans-banned-christmas)
If you're still reading and still interested, click here for Part 2 of Why We're Done with Christmas.
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