"Today, shoppers spend more than $4 billion per Christmas shopping day, about $2.8 million each minute, during the holiday season in the United States alone. The average person in the United States spent more than $1000 on Christmas gifts in 2002.
Even Christmas songs have started to take on our worldly perception of Christmas. Songs like Silent Night and Angels We Have Heard on High have been replaced with songs with lyrics like "Candles burning low, lots of mistletoe, lots of snow and ice everywhere we go... all these things and more ~that's what Christmas means to me, my love" and "This Christmas will be a very special Christmas for me!"
Redeeming the Day?
In trying to celebrate Christmas in a Christ-exalting fashion, it is very important to reexamine some of our Christmas rituals, as some point us directly back to Christ, and other point us back to pagan beginnings. Christmas trees point back to an ancient Viking custom of putting evergreens in homes during winters to incur good luck; mistletoe was though to ward off evil spirits during the Middle Ages; our caroling tradition sprung up during the time when Christmas was seen as a drunken free-for-all."
Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas by Ace Collins
hOWEVER..
"Though, in part through the myths and fables surrounding it, it can be difficult to dig past presuppositions when examining the birth of our Savior, we can always trust the biblical account of His coming. It is interesting to note, however, that throughout the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, and in the spreading of the gospel thereafter, though Christians are commanded to remember Christ's death, and to look forward to his coming, they are not commanded, or even encouraged to celebrate his birth."
info@voddiebaucham.org
just sayin'.
Col 3:17
And [whatever] you do in word or deed, [do] all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.(NKJV)
Exodus 20:3-6, "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments." (NIV)
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