A Look at Christmas

Any educated Christian will agree with you that the 25th of December is not the actual birthday of Jesus. Pope Julius I, in the fourth century set the date for Christmas in an effort to Christianise pagan celebrations.
The Puritans in England banned the celebration of Christmas from the time of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) to the middle of the 1800's.
They believed in a strict moral code consisting of prayer and close adherence to the New Testament scriptures.
They believed that since the actual date of Jesus’s birth is not known it should not be celebrated. Especially since the celebration closely resembled the drunken celebration of the Saturnalia of the Romans. The very thing Pope Julius I had tried to change by fixing the date of Christmas on December 25th.
The result was to ban all celebratory activities including decorating houses with evergreens and even the eating of mince pies.
Banning something never works. The result was that when the Victorian era broke Christmas as we know it today came with it.
The Victorians saw the rise of the middle class who had money to spare and at first made it a time of family events with presents and feasting.
They were inspired by the writings of Dickens and his ideals.
Today in the twenty-first century admittedly Christmas celebrations have started to move far away from what the Victorians envisioned Christmas to be. Back some would say to the Saturnalia.
Let’s face it when stores can make forty percent of their years profits in the weeks leading up to Christmas it should tell us we are moving far away from that birth in a Bethlehem stable.
Do people really need an extra gadget. Do they have to spend two hundred, three hundred, a thousand dollars on Christmas gifts?
I like celebrating Christmas. I like my family around me. I even like getting gifts, who doesn’t. But I’m content with what I have.
To me Christmas is sharing and listening to the Christmas story all over again.
In our house we have a tradition. Christmas day morning we get up and read the Christmas story from Luke. It’s a tradition we’ve had since our children were young.
Today my youngest is in his late twenties and still we read the story.
The story means a lot to us. It is the day when God the creator of heaven and earth chose to come into his creation and experience all that it is to be human.
To present us personally with a choice. A choice Jesus spoke of in John 3:16-17 when He is recorded as saying,

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,

 that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,

 but to save the world through him.  

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, 

but whoever does not believe stands condemned already 

because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”  

The choice is yours dear reader. Do you believe that Jesus truly in the one and only Son of God?
That he came to earth to die for your sins?
Think about it.
Email me with what you think at nealsbeliefs@gmail.com.