Should we all wsih everyone a Merry Christmas or a Happy Holidays? Does it matter? I have recently read a few blogs and their opinions. The first one is from Ethos and he basically says that culture has had an influence on what days are (Thursday after Thor, for example) and we can’t really deny that. I completely agree. Christmas is now a day in our culture, regardless to if you actually celebrate it. I think of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. We all recognize that day but we don’t all celebrate it. Work isn’t off for everyone and we don’t all have a big celebration(or for that matter really any celebration). No one is offended at it though.
The other 2 posts are refering to the old Christian movement to not recognize Christmas. Christmas was a day picked to celebrate Christ’s birth. This was to battle for the pagan winter solstice celebrations. Many of our current Christmas traditions were even taken from these pagan celebrations like the yule log and mistletoe. Pat over at 2 Blond Boys has a portion of a speech by Charles Spurgeon saying that we shouldn’t celebrate this day due to its pagan roots and Reckless Abandon has some great comments on it too. To take this a little further. The Round Heads under Oliver Cromwell banned Christmas for a few years in England.
I guess this all just really stuck a chord with me because of my own issues I worked through about 10 years ago. I starting researching Easter in High School and that led to a little trouble(at least in my stepdad’s eyes;). I belive in keeping Passover and as I studied I found that Easter was really a paganized Feast of First Fruits. The rabbit, the name they are all from the Roman goddess of fertility. It was formed to coincede with other pagan feasts at the time and to seperate Christians from Judaism. So I was faced with a dilema…Do I celebrate or call it Easter. Well, being me, I was very legalistic and for a long time I would correct anyone in my house who called it Easter. The God moved my heart and made me realize that it is more than the name. (And this is similar to Reckless Abandon’s comment) We are celebrating Christ and HIS death and HIS resurrection nothing more. This is what society calls it and is it really a big deal? What matters is the state of your heart and your relationship with Christ.