Today is Christmas Eve. I do admire people that work so hard at keeping things religious this time of year. I think they are doing what the think is best, but we don’t celebrate Christmas as Christ’s birthday. It’s not that we have anything against the birth of Christ. It was truly a miraculous event that I’ll never grow tired of hearing and reading about.
God doesn’t, anywhere, tell us to celebrate Christ’s birthday. He tells us to remember his death and has given us a simple ceremony to keep the death of Christ in front of us. This we do on the first day of the week, as God instructed.
So why not Christmas? I don’t know why God didn’t choose for us to celebrate Jesus’ birth. Maybe it’s because He knew we’d make a big commercial event out of it. Maybe it’s because it is not the most important thing. Maybe, God wants us to remember Christ’s death above all else.
What is important that we obey God’s word. We do things His way. We are not given the liberty to live and worship according to what makes us feel good. We are told to obey God His way. I find it interesting that God didn’t give us a whole lot of do’s and dont’s. He didn’t give us a lot of ceremonial festivities that had to be done just so so. God did that for the Jews. That’s what the whole Old Testament tells us.
God chose to give us a better law. A law of liberty. It is so simple, in fact, that we just can’t seem to abide by it. We always want to make things complicated — because it makes us feel religious.
1. God gave us a simple plan of salvation that involves us changing our lives and humbly submitting ourselves to God.
2. God gave us a simple plan of worship that involves us individual and collectively singing praises, praying, studying, and partaking of the Lord’s Supper.
3. God gave us a simple institution (the Church) that has a very loose organization — elders oversee those that are among them, deacons take care of the physical needs of those among them, saints work together to build each other up and help each other to Heaven
I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and maybe find some time to dig a little deeper into God’s word to find out what it is He really wants from us.
Hi There,
I came across your blog by pushing the random blog option. I really agree with your comments on Christmas and as a family we have been struggling with this issue for a few years now. We were educated on the history of Christmas about 4 years ago and have struggled with this celebration since. The first year we attempted to focus on the Lord through the traditions, we even decorated our tree in white lights for the purity of Jesus and red ribbon to represent the blood of Christ. Well in the end there was still not a peace in my heart about it. So as the next year approached I really just wanted to skip that time of year all together because I did not know how to handle it. I upset a lot of family and friends with my scrooge attitude and in the end did not have peace with that either. This year, I finally found middle ground that I can live with. We decided that the way Christmas in this country is celebrated is more of an American tradition, and when it is looked at this way we had a peace in participating. We did not try to say it was the Lords birthday and did not believe it is right to put all of our efforts into in celebrating Him in just this one time of year, but explained to our children that God wants us to recognize all that He has done for us daily. At the same time we all agreed that spending time with family and friends and enjoying the breaking of bread together is good, and if the U.S. has allowed us to have more free time to do so …then lets not say no:-)As for the tree, we still put it up and enjoyed the coziness it brought to our home during these cooler days. My kids enjoy the tree and we see it as nothing more then a tree, thats whats in our hearts and the Lord can see that. As for the exchange of gifts we were very modest about it this year. We do enjoy giving gifts to each other, and here again it is a matter of the heart. We tried not to feel obligated, but used gifts as a token of appreciation and of joy in giving, with out going into debt. I'll have to say that I was disgusted with the commercials and the behavior of consumers but I cannot let the way others choose to behave steal my joy (which is what I allowed to happen in the beginning of the season). In addition to this I was struck by the thought of how non-believers may perceive me if I just went through the holidays with out acknowledging Christmas. I think it may have ruined my witness to some, and bringing others to the knowledge of Christ is never a bad thing so why not use what is available. For us, the current Santa has been nothing more that a lie some parents tell their children, and our kids are aware of this. There are so many aspects to this time of year and so many ways to justify our actions. I guess we all have to seek the Lords will in our lives and have Him guide us in the ways that will Glorify Him. Check out my blog, I just got started at this blogging thing and would really like a name to put on my friend list:-) Take Care. Teresa
Stopping by to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas as you celebrate the birth of our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ!!!
Blessings,
Theresa