What Does Christmas mean to You?

[oscarsiziba]

God is not desperate for holidays such that we confiscate paganism to give it to Him.He has the weekly Sabbath day and the communion.Funny how we rush to secure holidays,forsaking holy days,forgetting what God reiterated we should remember and playing good to thinks that have not been made obligation by God.
A student who correctly answers a whole exam that does not belong to the school he attends will find his report does not bear those marks at the end of the term,why?Because he correctly and unnecessarily attended and spent his energies to a non-event(things that he was not called to attend to)!
That God may help us live within His parameters and have enthusiasm for things only He has sanctioned and called us to.

[Byblos]

Good grief!! Why in the world are we still fussing about this....!??!!

Whether or not these holidays CAME originally from pagan or Catholic (gasp!) traditions, why does this invalidate their meaning to us now?!?!?!?

Just imagine where the reformation would be without the RCC .

[Canuckster1127]

Just imagine where the reformation would be without the RCC .

Oh, go back to your counter-reformation and be quiet!

[Byblos]

Just imagine where the reformation would be without the RCC .

Oh, go back to your counter-reformation and be quiet!

counter-reformation .

[Cross.eyed]

Christmas is the best time of the year for me and I do mean time of year as I start celebrating at about Thanksgiving and it lasts intensly until sometime in late January.

First and foremost of course is the birth of our savior Jesus our Christ who changed world history more than any other human ever and for the betterment for all of mankind. Just being reminded every day for several weeks about His humble beginnings and what it came to be keeps me high for the entire time.

Now maybe this is just me, but have any of you noticed that even secular family members and friends are (at least a little) more tolerable toward others during this time? I'm not making light of their better side here as I believe it is possible that some of them actually get a ray of the hope that we Christians experience year round.

My natural high doesn't stop there by any means. Even though Christmas and Easter came from paganism, I do enjoy the decorations, the greeting cards, and driving through the streets looking at the array of lights and I always have an irresistable urge to walk into the yards to look at the Nativity scenes, but I don't for fear of getting arrested or worse, so I drive slower and stretch my neck to see as much as I can. I think the conversion of pagan holidays to Christian Holidays is a good thing. I've never witnessed a pagan celebrate Christmas with the love or the hope or the goodwill that Christian believers do. A Christmas Tree? You betcha! When I was preteen I lived with my Grandparents on a farm about a quarter mile from my Uncle and Aunt who with ten children lived in a three room house. There wasn't much money then, but in that little house there was every year a Christmas Tree cut from Grandpaw's farm and decorated with carefully cut scrap pieces of paper, some drawings from the kids, some soda bottle caps, some popcorn strung with care by my older more talented cousins, some strips from colorful rags for the little'uns to hang,all topped off with twigs fashioned into a star. Every year's tree was the grandest one yet! I still yearn for a never taken picture of our dirty little faces staring up at that tree after it was finished, but nobody owned a camera except for the images flashed permanently into our minds.

I really do think that GOD took the evils of pagan worship and turned it to His and our good by giving us a Holiday set aside to worship our Lord and Savior for a period of time each year much in the same way that He has taken many other evils and turned them to good things.

Although I don't get to see my cousins very much anymore, when I do, it's Christmas again no matter what time of the year.

I told you earlier that I started celebrating Christmas at about Thanksgiving and that it lasts into January but I'm thinking I should revise that to a longer time. Now that my children are becoming more mature, they are thankfully coming closer to GOD and to their Mother and I every day it seems. With the addition of our one year old Grandson and another Grandson on the way, Christmas has lasted a while longer and I'm thinking it just might get started sooner this year. I can't wait.
This year's Christmas Season could happen any time.