I was also considering the idea that so many Christians have celebrated this holiday with nothing but Santa as the center. No wonder retailer don’t take Christ seriously anymore. Many Christians don’t. I know that I grew up in a home that didn’t even have a nativity. . .but we believed that Christmas was the celebration of the Saviors birth. I was so confused growing up having Santa in the mix of it. I just didn’t understand how Santa bringing ME presents celebrated Jesus’ birth.

I don’t believe any retailer will take Christmas seriously until Christian begin to take it seriously again (if even then.) When we get rid of the materialism and bring the full gospel back into view, that IS going to cause people to stand up and take notice, retailer or not. It’s not an in your face idea. It’s really just the idea that we love our Savior so much that we’re sacrificing during this time of consumption and giving our holiday away to those who have nothing. We’re giving our holiday away to spread the gospel. We love our Savior so much that He’s important enough to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him. Shouldn’t we be doing that anyway? No amount of “putting Christ back in Christmas” could ever change our minds because we believe that spreading the gospel is more important that buying toys for our children. . .and our children believe it too.

Sorry to ramble. I appreciated the link and was pleased to find others that agreed with me. I thought that maybe I was alone and was very reluctant to post anything even on my own blog.

Different Christians have different convictions on different things (Rom. 14); I have different convictions than you on “Christmas” but respect yours and see where you are coming from.

Here is a thought: If (what partly originated as) a pagan festival gives us a natural opportunity to spread the Gospel, should we not take advantage of that?

=)

Christmas is a great holiday, and many people rightly derive happiness and other blessings from it. I hope you’ll reconsider your position.

The December 25 date seems to have been used by Christians before it was taken up by pagans in the late third century. See here. Keep in mind that December 25 isn’t the only relevant date. Some ancient Christians assigned Jesus’ conception to March 25, and the logical implication is that His birth would be estimated at December 25. Thus, you can’t just look for ancient uses of the December 25 date. You also have to take March 25 into account. And Christmas celebrations were accepted in different parts of the world at different times and under different circumstances. Something done in Rome one year doesn’t necessarily tell us why it was done in Constantinople decades later. Keep in mind, too, that there’s a difference between competing with paganism and accepting it, and keep in mind that not everything pagans do is inherently sinful.

There’s no need for scripture to command us to celebrate Christmas in order for such a celebration to be acceptable. See here.

“Young people were particularly doubtful about the nativity, with 78 per cent of 16-24-year-olds saying they were not convinced of its historical reliability….Almost a quarter of those questioned who described themselves as Christians admitted they did not believe certain aspects of the Bible’s teaching about Jesus….A separate study by Mothers’ Union, a Christian charity, showed that more parents encourage their children to believe in Father Christmas than in the nativity.”

And I suspect that most of those who affirm the historicity of the infancy narratives could be persuaded to abandon that belief without much difficulty. The church should be giving far more attention to Christmas apologetics. We’ve handled Easter apologetics much better, for a variety of reasons, but Christmas is a more popular holiday. Because of the holiday’s greater popularity, it has greater potential (for good and bad) in some ways. If anybody is interested, I’ve written more on this subject in an article here.

Parents, I hope you’ll inform yourselves, then inform your children, about the historicity of the infancy narratives. Pastors, Sunday school teachers, and others in such positions of influence ought to be doing more as well. Sentimentality and cultural traditions only go so far. God doesn’t need our apologetic work in order to bring people to a knowledge of the truth. But if we’re intellectually lazy and careless, sometimes God will allow us to suffer the full natural consequences of those sins (Hosea 4:6).

I also had someone try yesterday to get me to join a boycott against pepsi-co because apparently they had given a very very very tiny portion of their profits to a pro-gay group. These boycotts are getting out of hand. Since they are a private company who earnt their money fairly by producing a legitimate product, should it be their business (and theirs alone) what legal causes they would like to support with the profits? We Christians wonder why the world doesn’t want to hear from us and yet we use the opportunities we get to throw tantrums, meddle in things that are not our business or fight about things that don’t matter. We must look like such spoilt brats to the world, always demanding that things be done our way and that non-believers adopt Christian morality.

Great quote, Stephen, and puts the whole argument in a new light.