Posts Tagged ‘origins’

Yes, it’s true, I’m a Christian and I LOVE Christmas!

I’ve been running into a good number of Christians who have decided not to celebrate Christmas, and others who are confused on the issue.

For me, there is no confusion whatsoever—I absolutely, unashamedly, unapologetically love the Christmas season! It is my favorite time of the year!

Here are some reasons why I believe we should thoroughly enjoy Christmas:

1. Jesus! The story of Jesus coming into our world is precious and should absolutely be celebrated. It doesn’t matter what the specific date is, we just choose to recognize December 25th as the day we remember this special event. Christmas is a wide open opportunity to celebrate Jesus in our culture, love people and enjoy him together!
2. Presents! Listen, we must stop the assault on the joy of both giving AND receiving gifts! My primary love language is giving and receiving gifts, which is one reason I so value that special Christmas morning tradition. It is joyful! It’s fun! I refuse to apologize for coming alive like a little child when I open gifts. I love the special family member who gave the gift and, yes, I want that present! It doesn’t make you selfish or greedy or less spiritual to enjoy life this way. Certainly, one could become greedy or selfish, but that’s true all 365 days of the year. Over the past month, Amy and I have had so much fun hitting the malls, cruising around Amazon.com and going nuts at a Kmart that was going out of business buying presents for our kids. This is one reason I love Black Friday! There’s a fresh, exciting, festive atmosphere that is all about family togetherness. And, yes, Amy and the kids and I were at the stores on Thanksgiving this year. We were thankful to be together as we enjoyed the kickoff to the Christmas season! We waited in line at Kohl’s for about two hours—a line that literally stretched around the circumference of the entire store! We made friends, and Ella entertained everybody there by dancing and singing loudly, “God’s not dead, he’s surely alive, living on the inside, roaring like a lion!” We were there buying presents and we were doing it because of our love for each other.
3. Childlikeness! It’s OK to get excited and a bit giddy about Christmas morning. It’s not only the kids that have a hard time falling asleep on Christmas Eve! In the Burton family, we always look forward to a special Christmas Eve event such as attending a movie together, going to a Christmas festival or something else to celebrate the season. We all act like kids! When we get home the stockings are ready to be dumped out and we then spend the rest of the night playing a new family game. Then it’s off to bed—all of us, a bunch of children excited about what the next day is about to bring!
4. Santa! Celebrate the life of Saint Nick! The spirit of joyful giving is a wonderful thing to celebrate. Our kids have all of the accurate information. They know the presents they get are from mom and dad, but we all enjoy the selfless innocence that the spirit of Saint Nicholas represents.
5. Memories! Some of my all time great memories growing up were during the Christmas season. I can still remember the gifts that caused me jump up and down in my pajamas! (Based on point #2 above you might have already guessed that I still do this at age 44) I want my family to have memories of joy and family togetherness for the rest of their lives. The Christmas season makes this easy—there’s just something about it.

One of the primary arguments I hear against the celebration of Christmas is that it has pagan origins.

My answer to that is simple—don’t be concerned about origin, be concerned with current status. Today Christmas is about Jesus. Consider Halloween. It’s origins were occultic, and it’s current status is occultic, so we do not celebrate it. Both Christmas and Easter are about Jesus today, and that is glorious.

In fact, consider other holidays that have nothing to do with Jesus. Do you still celebrate those? What about Thanksgiving? Do you take off work for Independence Day? How about your birthday? If we can celebrate those holidays, then we can certainly celebrate Christmas.

If we eliminated everything from our lives that had pagan origins, we’d have a hard time functioning.

Did you know that the following have pagan origins?

• Wedding rings
• Wedding ceremonies
• Funerals
• New Year’s/New Year’s Eve
• Statues of people and animals
• Money has pagan designs on it
• The days of the week
• The months of the year
• Eye makeup
• Wind chimes
• Saying “Amen”
• Baby showers
• Making your bed
• Birthdays

In the first-century Church, gentile Christians were told to avoid meat that had been sacrificed to pagan idols (Acts 15:29). However, Paul told the Corinthians that they could eat meat sold in the public market even though that meat may have been sacrificed to an idol (1 Cor. 10:25). He told them not to eat in the pagan temple. In other words, he told them to avoid blatant paganism, but they did not have to superstitiously avoid everything that paganism might have touched at some time in the past. ~gci.org

There’s no way I’m going to give in to anti-Christmas zealots…I’m having too much good, clean fun! In fact, I’d love to see Christmas extended throughout the year!

Let’s break off the humbug spirit that’s invading Christianity, enjoy the season and celebrate Jesus together!

Now repeat after me, “Ho, ho, ho.” Again, “Ho, ho, ho.”

There you go.