I don’t know about you guys, but Christmas has become a “thing I dread”  throughout the years.  Becoming a parent, having kids can set up expectations by virtue of amped up ads and the bragging of other kids, etc, and of course the societal pressure to “gift” others who gift you.

I hate that it has gotten to be that way, and the appearance of Christmas “stuff” right alongside Halloween and Thanksgiving stuff on the first of October this year was “a bridge too far”.   We have always done some sort of anonymous giving for someone in need at Christmas, but a few years back, we curtailed the giving of “gratuitous” gifts that we scarce could afford, and of things of which the receiver doubtless had no need, and instead, gave more to those in need in honor of those we usually exchanged gifts with.  We then let the folks who usually got gifts, know a gift was given in their honor to such and such charitable endeavor (via their Christmas cards).  The following year many of those same people followed suit and gave in our honor to someone needy. It did away with the gift-exchanges.  It’s as if they were just as relieved to be free of the expectation as we were!!!  And I am sure they were!

That, to me, is much better.  To me, “stuff” is just clutter.  I can’t tell you how great it feels to get rid of stuff.  I don’t come from a family of hoarders or anything like that, but I did grow up in a family that tend to attach sentimental value to things and want to keep them, sometimes even trading stuff amongst ourselves and between generations.

Not too many years ago, I watched a t.v. program where a “professional” came in to help a couple get rid of some of their sentimental stuff in trade for a less stressful, clutter-free and organized living environment, and they made it into a competition by putting their extraneous things in a yard sale, so the one who made the most money got to keep the favorite thing that the other one really wanted them to get rid of.

The “professional” (show hostess) was looking at all of the little trinket boxes this one lady had, and asked her why she had so many.  The lady’s mom had given them all to her over the years, and she just felt like she couldn’t part with them.  The point was made, that she had already gotten the benefit of enjoying them and now that there were so many, did she realize that she could choose her favorite among them as a momento, and why not let someone else, or several someones, get some enjoyment out of the rest.  “The boxes are not your Mom, and one can represent her generosity just as well as all the others that you kept all these years, plus you get the added bonus of a clutter-free dresser top”!

That made a lot of sense to me!! And believe me, as a young(ish) mom back in the day, with little kids and too much clutter, it was an awesome feeling to get rid of stuff.  With growing  kids, and Christmas and Birthdays and school “arts and crafts”, Vacation Bible School, and what have you, there was always more stuff coming in the door.  And every year I would tote literally dozens of boxes or bags of stuff to Goodwill (or trash if it was just papers or things not reusable).  It was so liberating!! Such a relief!!  I started getting really unyielding whenever my Mom or a friend or neighbor asked if I would like this or that.   NO, NO, NO!  People feel guilty not keeping their stuff, or giving it to Goodwill or tossing it out, so they feel better if they give it to someone, and the thing is, when it is your own Mom or other family members, they tend to want someone to keep, care for, and protect the stuff they have presided over their whole lives.  It is all going to burn up one day. Matter is neither created nor destroyed, (other than in the beginning when God created it, and in the future when He will destroy it all with fire and create a new Earth).

Don’t get me wrong.  I believe very much in being a good steward of everything we have.  That is why I don’t throw things in the trash that still have some use, and go out of my way to find places that will receive used stuff for resale or donation, that can benefit someone else somehow.

Most people don’t even realize that they don’t have their things, but their things have them.  If you buy it, you have to clean it, maintain it, repair it, store it, and eventually dispose of it if it is something that wears out or breaks down eventually.  In America we have been so blessed but we have buried ourselves with our stuff.  Our local WalMart sits not too far from the landfill, and in the last twenty-some years since the Walmart was built, the landfill has risen above and behind it like Mt. Everest.  That is a statement in and of itself.  Why not skip the middle man and just buy the stuff and take it on around the back and dump it on the landfill because that is where it is going to eventually end up.  And that’s really sad considering much of it was created by means of literal slave labor in other countries.

So, yeah,  that’s why you haven’t heard much from me about Christmas.  Give me a bunch of rowdy kids in white smocks with tinsel sewed on and cardboard wings, a baby doll in a “manger” and little Mary and Joseph and the Wise men in bath robes, sweetly singing Silent Night.

Like everything America does these days, this “Christmas” thing has gotten completely out of hand.  Most stores do fifty to sixty percent or more of their sales at Christmas.  I would be happy to outlaw “Christmas” altogether!

The twelve days of Yule is a celebration of the winter solstice by the pagans. The Norsemen of Scandinavia honored the fertility god Yule for twelve days, by burning a large yule log (a phallic symbol) and making animal and human sacrifice offerings in the fire, making contact with the dead.  In Rome during the solstice, pagans paid homage to Baal, Dionysis, Mithra, a Persian God, was said to be born on December 25th.  He was the “god of the unconquerable sun”.   For this month-long celebration, all “sins” were allowed.  All courts were closed.  Homosexuality, cross-dressing, and debauchery of every kind were practiced.  Even children participated in the drinking and orgies, with gifts being exchanged on the 25th to celebrate the birthday of the sun-god, Mithra.   This celebration eventually became an official week-long celebration and came to be known as Saturnalia, honoring Saturn, the god of excess.  Roman soldiers brought the tradition to England, and later it came to America from there.  By the fourth century, the government-sanctioned church of Rome adopted these practices into their church tradition.  Up until then the birth of Christ was not celebrated by the church, but was believed not to have occurred in winter anyway, but rather in the spring.  But the church of Rome arbitrarily designated the birthdate of Mithra, as the “birthday of Christ”.  By the seventh century, all pagan celebrations, rituals and customs were merged with, and made part of the legally sanctioned Roman church, by order of Pope Gregory the 1st.   The debauchery reached new lows by the middle ages, with Mardi Gras-type atmosphere and every sort of reprobate behavior, sex, murder, and blood right in the streets.  The “Christ’s Mass” celebration was finally outlawed in England in 1652, with a Christian Purity cleansing movement led by Oliver Cromwell.  The pagan aspects of the celebration just went underground for a while, and by 1656 the public demand for an overthrow of the ban, won out under Charles II.

In the New World the Puritans came to America to serve and worship God without the oppression of the sanctioned Roman church back in England.  Christmas was outlawed in the Colonies in 1659, and the Puritans kept the pagan practices from infiltrating the church for 200 years.  But in 1828 rioting in those who illegally embraced the pagan celebration, forced some states to form police forces for the first time,  to control the savagery. By the mid-19th century, American churches were the only hold-out remaining against this pagan “holy” day, but then the American Sunday School Society began advocating Christmas programs for children, to bring more people into the church. (Does any of this “compromise” and “mission creep” sound a little familiar?)  They actually were the ones who started the little children’s “Nativity” plays!  Yeah, the cute angels with glitter and tinsel wings, and Mary and Joseph mentioned above.  And started the tradition of handing out treats, which practice would also make popular that other (now more celebrated than “Christmas) holiday, Halloween.   Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” did the rest, in making “Christmas” the warm, hearth and home holiday we see it as today.  By 1890 all states had made Christmas a legal holiday.  Holly, Mistletoe, Yule logs and “Yuletide greetings”, you name it, there is a pagan origin to it.  During the solstice, evergreen trees were brought in, set up, decorated and lighted, and then worshipped.  Trees and groves were sacred.  The Old Testament has much to say about groves!  The ancient pagans believed sprits resided in the trees.  That’s where the “knock on wood” saying comes from.  You’d make a wish, and knock on wood so that the spirits would hear you and grant your wish or “answer your prayer”.

Have you ever read this Bible verse?  If so, did it register what it is talking about?

Jeremiah 10King James Version (KJV)

10 Hear ye the word which the Lord speaketh unto you, O house of Israel:

² Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.

³ For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.

⁴ They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.

⁵ They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.

The Christmas tree came to popularity in Germany, and German immigrants brought it to America.  By 1900, one in five homes had adopted the Christmas tree tradition.  Santa started as Odin, the Norse Pagan god of Thunder.  He would fly in the sky at night during the solstice and determine who would die and who would prosper.  Later in England, in the period called the Festival of Fools, Father Christmas would get drunk and go about accompanied by a horned goat. (Baphomet, goats are a symbol of those whom Jesus will “know not” on judgment day.)  The Roman Church in England had a patron saint (a Turkish Bishop in Asia Minor in the 4th century) of sea-faring men, named Nickolas.   Tradition says St. Nikolas captured the devil and made him his personal servant.  This captured Satan went by many names:  Zwarte Piet or Black Peter, Knecht Ruprecht, Korvatunturi, Krampus. These characters act counter to the gift-giving “Santa” figure, threatening to spank or kidnap naughty children.  In the Czech Republic, St. Nick is accompanied by a devil and an angel.  (Bring to mind the kid’s cartoons again?  One on each shoulder!)

Black Peter looks just like the Hindu Kali, by the way! That image projected on the Empire State Building recently.

Black Peter:

 

Kali:

 

So, if you are like me, and you really hate Christmas, maybe its not actually because it has “turned into something other than what it was meant to be”.  Unfortunately, it is becoming more and more exactly what it was meant (by the forces of evil) to be. Come out of her my people!

Video H/T: E. Prata

This “Christmas story” by John MacArthur is what true Christians should celebrate, but on every single day of the year, and not just December 25th.

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sources:

“The Real Christmas Story” video YouTube

Wikipedia