12.24.2007

Wake Up, It's Christmas!

How did we let things get in this kind of shape? Christmas has become almost unrecognizable! The celebration of Jesus' birth that should bring peace and joy to all mankind has become a season of dread, despair and depression for many and overspending and overindulgence for almost everyone.
I know that Christmas has it's origins in pagan history as the celebration of winter and the "church" adopted it as a celebration of Jesus' birth to keep Christians from being wooed into paganistic revelry by giving them something "Christian" to celebrate. I don't have a problem with that. I think most Christians today know that Jesus wasn't born in December. When we celebrate is not what is important, it's what we are celebrating that is important! We celebrate the greatest gift ever given; God gave His son Jesus as a sacrifice for the sin of the entire world!
Instead of celebrating that gift that was given to us, we decided somewhere along the way that we should give gifts to each other. That decision has led to a perversion of the holiday. Christmas has become a pressure-filled excuse to overspend and overindulge. The only real winners these days are the stores and credit card companies. People who don't have money to spend go into debt that takes them the rest of the year to pay off and those who don't have the luxury of a credit card and can't buy gifts often go into a deep depression. Is it any wonder that the suicide rates soar during the holidays? The season when we should be resting and spending time with our families has become the most busy and stressful of the entire year!
It will never change unless we change it. We need to get back to the true reason for the season. We need to stop spending money and start spending time. We need to stop going to WalMart and start going to Church. We need to start showing our love for each other all year long in acts of kindness instead of one day a year with an expensive gift.



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