| Okay, now that I have your full attention (that title just about did it), I will now explain why I absolutely despise X-mas. It is not that I do not like Christmas, oh no, far from that; the fact is that I hate that name (along with “Happy Holidays” and other such stuff). I mean, who wants to take Christ out of Christmas? Not me.
Being someone who is subscribed to the Answers Magazine that is put out by Answers in Genesis, I really enjoy reading their magazine. So, while reading this month’s issue, I got this really great idea for a post. I’m going to let you read the section of the article about all the Christian holidays that have been made not so Christian. Here it is:*
As Christians, we don’t know whether to be sad, angry, or indifferent. The frustrating reality is that, for most in our culture today, secularism has almost fully obscured the roots of many holidays. In many cases religious tradition has overgrown its original intent—so much so that we must ask ourselves a few very important questions: What are the foundational origins of the holidays? How are Christians to correctly lead their families as they seek to worship the Lord during these special seasons of the year?
Answering these questions is not as simple as it might seem. Every Christian holiday has become a mixture of the secular and the sacred—a smearing of the historical and the fable, and often it’s hard to tell which is which.
Christmas
96% of all U.S. adults celebrate Christmas. Amazingly, even 84% of those who claim to be non-Christians celebrate this religious holiday.1
During the Christmas season, believers in Christ commemorate the coming of Immanuel, which means “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). This miraculous and holy event is illuminated in the beautiful words of Scripture that detail the events surrounding Christ’s amazing birth.
The Christmas season has long been a mixture of both the secular and sacred. During the church’s first three centuries, Christmas wasn’t even on the calendar yet. Initially, the celebration of Christ’s birth was lumped in with Epiphany on January 6, one of the church’s earliest feasts. Some thought that it would be wrong to honor Christ’s birthday since birthday celebrations were for pagan gods. The date December 25 places Christmas in the middle of a significant pagan winter festival that celebrates the rebirth of the sun using bonfires and evergreen trees. The mixture of traditions between the pagan holiday and the Christian holiday is seen today in everything from snowy nativity scenes to stars on decorated pine trees.2
For hundreds of years, Christmas has also been the flashpoint of bitter legal and social battles. During the 1500s and 1600s, the celebration of Christmas was banned for a time in Scotland, England, and Massachusetts, but not for reasons you might expect. Many Puritans and Protestants believed that the holiday was so secularized that it had become a blasphemy against God. The opposite is the case today as Christian aspects of the holiday are brought under attack by liberal government and special interest groups.
Something that I might add to this is that the word “Christmas” and/or the phrase “Merry Christmas” are being replaced almost everywhere with “X-mas” and “Happy Holidays”. I mean, come on, you have to admit that all most everywhere you go, stores and restaurants have the ever popular “Happy Holidays!” sign in the door or window or hanging from the ceilings. Oy. It makes you feel sick, doesn’t it? Think about it: to take Christ out of Christmas is like taking the writing of the Constitution out of American history or turkey out of Thanksgiving or something like that – it just doesn’t work. And it can’t happen: we, teens, as the next generation, should try to do everything we can to put Christ back into the holiday of Christmas. I, who am planning to be a lawyer one day, am certainly going to fight for things like this and believe other teens should plan to also.
In Christ,
HRTF
*to view the full article go to http://answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v1/n2/happy-holidays.
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