Christmas

First of all, if you’ve tried to email me lately, my email is screwed up….theyre working on it. If you need to get me, my old msn address (sunraven0@msn.com) still works. Anyone have satellite internet? I’m thinking of going for it. Cable, in general, pisses me off and isn’t worth the $. That’s my humble opinion. My computer at home doesn’t work & now my email is screwed up :(

I am due a Christmas post, so here goes....

Something we don’t really celebrate anymore is Advent, anticipating the coming of the baby Jesus & some people celebrate the second coming of Christ during this time. It’s a time for prayer, fasting, and reflection. I don’t really know why we don’t take part in Advent. Anyone know? I think it’s a Catholic thing now & I’m not Catholic.

I’ve read a lot lately about Christians celebrated Christ’s birth on the 25th of December as a response to the pagan winter solstice. Actually, Jesus was crucified on March 25th and a long time ago Christians thought that the prophets of Israel died on the same date as their birth or conception. 9 months after March 25 is December 25, and that would be Jesus’ birthday according to ancient calculations. So, the date does have Christian origin.

The gift giving thing: St. Nicholas Day is actually the 6th of December & Epiphany (when the wise men gave baby Jesus presents) is January 6th. St. Nicholas was a Turkish dude. known for his kindness to children and was an admired saint in eastern and western churches. Gift-giving on Christmas day is sort of a compromise of gift giving customs of different settlers in the U.S. The Christmas tree was a German pagan custom that somehow ended up being Christianized. Basically, in the U.S., we’ve mixed traditions of the many settlers that ended up here as far as gift-giving goes.

I celebrate the birth of Christ on Christmas. Whether or not the date is correct seems irrelevant to me…Christians should celebrate it sometime! I don’t get the “taking Christ out of Christmas” thing. I’ve read a lot about it lately too….The X in Xmas was actually started by the church. X is the Greek letter chi, and was used as an abbreviation by the church because it is the first letter of Jesus’ name in Greek.

I think Christmas is a time to be thankful, to celebrate that the Son of God came to live among us to save us. That’s it. It’s Jesus’ birthday! I like the idea of making a birthday cake for Jesus and spending the day in prayer. Simplify things.

But – the traditions are also important….to celebrate with your family and to celebrate friendships. The traditions also can be used as a tool for Christians to bring others to the Lord.

Christmas has been turned into a money making extravaganza, and that saddens me. While its nice to give gifts to others, I think its most important to give a gift to Jesus…something that only the 2 of you know about…it may be that you need to spend more time in prayer or reading the Bible, or that you need to forgive someone of something you’ve been holding on to.

Its hard not to get caught up in the craziness. I think we all get caught up in traditions at times, but I think that as Christians we have to take time out to let Jesus be a part of the celebration.