Then there are those that believe it is a sin for them to celebrate Christmas. I respect this view and do all I can to support those who take this position but I’ve had some pretty sassy comments from others over the years as to why I am a wrong. I believe that the Scripture teaches us that we all need to work harder at being gracious one toward another and we are to work at loving the weaker brethren more than biting at others about a subject such as this.
Books have been written on the controversy of the Christmas celebration. Protestants claim that the reformers rejected the Christ Mass, and they did, yet even John Calvin—known as the father of the protestant reformation-endorsed the Celebration of the Nativity, while rejecting the Mass. When one delves deeper than the protestant reformation and goes back to the early Church history, (before the Roman Christ Mass) there is strong evidence that supports the fact that the Nativity was celebrated by the early Church and it was the Church that actually brought in the gift giving to the pagan Saturnalia and not the other way around. Btw, I love the study of history and I have formed some of my own opinions that are not normally giving, based on ancient history.
And I have had those people in my life that simply do not do Christmas because they are not Christian and practice another religion. Since Christmas is rooted in the Christian faith, it really makes no sense to include those of other faiths into the celebration of the Nativity of Christ. Why would they want to be included anyway?
Except for decades, communists have been working to subvert the teachings of Christianity in this country. The end result, making the focus of Christmas as some kind of sappy PC thing, mostly about the glitter of the lights and gift giving. (Do any of us remember those AVC classes we took back in high school teaching us that a couple of the goals of the communists was to indoctrinate the seminaries and the educational system? Perhaps the banning of Christmas hymns in place of every other kind of PC song in the government schools proves they have succeeded on one front.)
And if we look at the introduction of Star Wars as part of the celebration of the birth of Christ I’d say they have succeeded on the other one. Perhaps parents need to be a bit more concerned about the virgin birth of Darth Vader (in Episode One) being confused with the virgin birth of Christ (in the Bible).
The past few years it has been all about making it as happy as possible for Mom and Dad. For years, Mom and Dad went to my brother’s for Christmas and my sister-in-law always had everything so wonderful and thoughtful for everyone. I know that Mom misses that. We cannot walk back into time but I do focus on making Christmas Day as nice as possible for my parents because truthfully, each year we know might be the last with them.
For the past 10 years since our retirement, my family has had to rearrange our own traditions in order to keep up with them. Often our Christmas Eve traditions have had to be shifted to Epiphany—as will be the case this year. We are malleable about stuff like that, the military taught us to be flexible. Behind the scenes of it all we have held onto “us” and I think all of those that believe we are stuffed shirts might be surprised if they really glimpsed into who we are as a family.
My kids really were not abused because they didn’t have Santa Claus in their childhood….