Last night – November the 5th – we were driving home from the airport when about 10pm we stopped at Asda. Annabel came out shaking her head – they had a Christmas tree up and were playing a Christmas song….50 days to go said the banner. SHOP NOW!
This is not the usual grumpy rant about the commercial exploitation of Christmas….it is a heart felt cry for all of us (but especially Christians) not to be sucked into the lie of the devil – that life is only about what you can buy. And that your whole personal, family, church and business calendar should be focused around different commercial seasons.
The big stores go from Halloween, to November the 5th, to Thanksgiving (black Friday) to Christmas. to New Year, to Easter….doubtless the gods of Mammon will find a way to add more such commercial holy days to entice us all to give them money for their cheap (and not so cheap) commercialised glitz. Let’s not give into that. Yes prepare the Pressies for the kids….but if I walk into a shop in November and they have Christmas music playing and Christmas trees etc….then I’m turning round and walking right back out. I value both my sanity, my people and above all my Lord to play along with this sick greed and exploitation! And the following will be my only posting of a Christmas song until it is actually Christmastime! You deserve it…
Hi David
Thoroughly understood—got my first Christmas card today … from a Christian organisation to boot.
Keep up the good work.
David Cassells
That’s jolly, but this is even better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBluZlErcIQ
As is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyUCXkHrK4M
Apart. From the devil bit (you lost me there) I can’t agree more.
To cap it all, last year, Sainsbury’s took down their decorations on Boxing Day, where were the 12 days of Xmas?
Tom Lehrer’s ditty comes to mind:
Angels we have heard on high-telling us to go out and buy!
Deejay
I got my first Christmas catalog in August!
I am with Oliver Cromwell on Christmas!
Well I think we have to see our view of the event in the light of scripture -we are only to celebrate one day, the Lord’s Day – and nothing else matches that. It’s such a shame that this particular event “Christmas” leaves so many people deceived, thinking of Jesus only as the babe in the manger and they are naieve or ignorant enough to leave Him there, not seeing the road ahead for Him, or why He even came into the world at all. And if they seriously don’t believe any of it, they are simply at liberty to do so because God still imprinted free will on them and surely they have their reward, with all that we see around us screaming out Godlessness, the Godlessness that makes this the most awful, stressful, crass, heartless, deceptive time of the year.
We can opt out of the Christmas circus or opt in, providing we know Jesus, the gift whom God lovingly sent to rescue us from the vile state we are living in and we strive to let His spirit work within us, so we can be His hands and feet. Choosing between that and a long haul round the shops and deaving myself gyte with all the saccharine trash, I know which one I prefer to celebrate.
Perhaps I should say “observe” regarding the Lord’s Day, rather than “celebrate”.
What’s wrong with celebrate?
Right enough!
David–When I was at university many years ago, His magazine (InterVarsity’s old print magazine, long defunct) ran a cover where a classic painting of Jesus throwing the moneychangers out of the temple. But they added strings of colored lights and a furtive Santa Claus exiting with the moneychangers. I wish I had a copy of that now…
There’s no instruction from God in Scripture to celebrate annually the incarnation of the Lord Jesus. If God had wanted us to do it, He would have told us so. There’s plenty that He has told us to do. We should spend our time on that.