america vs. Christmas

Liberals, liberals, liberals. Are they the reason we have chicken pox and rush hour traffic too?

 

The spelling "X-mas" is very much a religious referrence. The "X" referrs to the broken body of Christ.

IMO, it's often Christians who do more of a disservice to the Lord during the Christmas season. We forget that the Christmas season was very much a secular observance before Christianity. By attempting to monopolize it, we've become fo hypersensitive that we literally jump on any secular presence during the season. We Christians look for satan under every rock too much, thus often giving more recognition to Satan than to Christ.

 

Not necessarily so.
However, i am willing to blame liberals
for zits on teens and auto accidents.

 

I recently heard a local radio announcement for a "multicultural celebration of diversity" (instead of Christmas). Who else would be responsible for that but the liberal PC crowd?

 

The celebration of Christmas has given America her own Budda -- Santa.

Thanks Bart "the dueling society was a polite society".

 

The "X" is Christ's broken body? My understanding was the X was really the Greek letter Chi (which looks like an English X). It is the first letter of the name Christ in Greek.

 

I am glad that no one actually pronounces it that way.

Hi Dave, have a merry "ex-mis". That would be silly.

Dave

 

Why would we expect a secular society to observe a holiday commemorating the birth of our Lord?

 

Now massdak, that hurt.
Is everyone who is critical of Christmas a liberal?
Paul writes:
He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it.
Romans 14:6a
Now, I know, considering Paul's battles with the Jewish legalists, he was, no doubt, referring to the Jewish (Saturday) sabbath. But cannot, THE day, refer to any special day a Christian may, or may not observe?
I have followed your posts here on this board and I find that I am in agreement with all of your posts, until now. Please don't cast me to the liberal heep, so to speak, over one disagreement. There are reasons that I am critical of Christmas that I would be very happy to share with you.
Love in Christ,
Charles

 

I would be interested in hearing these reasons.

 

I can!

 

Walls, massdak:
Let me try to explain myself while being as brief as I can.
This is by no means a critical issue. Somewhere I read something that observing Sunday as the special day for worship was the mark of the beast; what nonsense! So also, I will not be critical of anyone who firmly honors this day. In fact, if you were to observe me this week you would say, "What a hypocrite!" While I am critical of the day, I will not break the hearts of my grandchildren by not giving gifts to them.
That said, here are some concerns I have with it:
You two are very well versed in the scriptures, so you know as well as I what they say about observing His birthday: Nothing!
Nowhere does the Lord Jesus, the Apostles, or anyone in the early Church observe it, or give any instructions as to keeping it whatsoever.
While we do not known exactly when Christmas started to be observed, it is believed to be around 400a.d., when Romanism reared it's head. We do not know when the Lord Jesus was born, so why was it decided that it be December 25th? There was a pagan holiday being observed on that day. Can't have that, so let's make it Christmas! So they renamed and repackaged a pagan holiday in an effort to give it some credence.
There are many observinces associated with Christmas. In order to be brief here, as I hoped to be, read about these things in a good encyclopedia (such as Encarta here on the internet.) None of these things originate from scripture, or the early Church

 

Watchman, I agree 100%. I thought you might have something I haven't come across yet!

 

Actually, there is some evidence that the Nativity, the birth of Christ, started to be celebrated in the second century. The gnostics and arians were making great inroads into the church at the time and were causing a lot of trouble. Since the gnostics were teaching that Jesus didn't really have a body, he only appeared to have one, so, he couldn't be God in the flesh. The celebration of the Nativity could have been a way to combat the false teaching. As far as the day of December 25, we don't have any conclusive evidence of any pagan celebration on that day. Saturnalia was from Dec. 17-23 and there was another on Jan. 1. Others that are attributed to the day actually happened as long as 2 months before to 2 months after Dec. 25. The first mention of Dec 25 was in 274 (or 294) AD when the day was declared to be the birth of Sol Invictus. However, some parts of the early church were celebrating the Nativity (some on Dec. 25 and others on Jan. 5) before that. It simply could have been a move by the pagans to counteract what the church was doing.

Did you know that Hanakkuh was celebrated on the 25th of Kislev. Kislev is the month equivelent to December on the Jewish calender. It is possible that is where the 25th came from and since the change in calenders, it's easy to see why December was chosen. Christmas and Hanakkuh share many parallels. It's within reason to believe that Christmas is Hanakkuh infused with new meaning - just as communion and baptism are the old testament counterparts infused with new meaning. No need to look for a pagan under every rock. Just because some pagan wrote a claim that made it into an encyclopedia, doesn' make it true. I choose to give the early church the benefit of the doubt and won't believe the pagan rewriting of history. Just as I don't believe the pagan rewriting of creation.