Tis the season to be jolly … the Christmas Season is here! Peace on earth and good will toward men. Let the secularization of the holiday season continue. There’s a heavy dose of happy holiday songs on the radio that make no mention of Christ. The frenzy to buy Tommy or Susie the latest whatchamacallit has begun. Money rules, tradition drools as we race half-crazed towards December 25th. Will Santa come? Should I say Merry Christmas to someone or will I offend them. I decided it was politically correct to say “Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy Holidays” in one breath when greeting someone to cover all the bases. We wouldn’t want to offend anyone, goodness gracious no.
Society, with all their good cheer is trying its best to take Christ out of Christmas. No, Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th, but it is the date that Christians assigned to Christ’s birth as a means of drawing Roman pagans to Christianity in the 4th Century. The Romans celebrated Saturnalia, a week-long festival of lawlessness from December 17-25.* The Christians of the day decided it was good to incorporate the two celebrations. Their mistake was to allow the newly converted pagans to continue their celebration without altering its content. So the new believers continued with their hedonistic revelry. Eventually all that changed, but it would seem that we may have come full circle. There are no longer drunken orgies or naked singing in the streets and they certainly don’t end the holiday by murdering a bad man or woman, but the seeds for taking Christ completely out of Christmas have been planted. We must return to our roots. We must understand what the celebration of this special holiday truly means. Without Christ there is no forgiveness of sins. Without Christ there is no hope for mankind. Let Isaiah 22:13 (“Let us eat and drink,” you say, “for tomorrow we die!”) not be our epitaph. As Christians we mustn’t fall prey to the secularization of Christmas. We need to sing out praises to our God for the coming of His Son. Without His birth there can be no resurrection and without that we have no hope. rlk
* The Origin of Christmas; Simple to Remember: Judaism Online; www.simpletoremember.com
