November 24, 2003

• Wow, I guess nobody’s fond of debating controversial Scripture issues online.  I was going to throw out the predestination/free will debate today, but since I had no responses to my last throw-out I guess I’ll refrain…

  
  

  EDIT:  oooh, I’m sorry–I just saw GodzTreasure’s response after I posted this.  *shakes head*  I must be losing my eyesight or something.  *grin*

  
  

   

  
  

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  I’m kinda stressed today.  Between planning for Urbana, planning for Europe, paying for Urbana, paying for Europe, paying for tuition, passing classes, writing poetry (due on the 4th of Dec), Christmas shopping (ugh!  crowds!), helping my mom cook for Thanxgiving, teaching Youth Group, facilitating my InterVarsity Small Group (perhaps the most enjoyable item on this list), co-ordinating the return of my church’s College Group, and possibly playing Joseph in a church paegant…

  
  

  Can you say overcommitted?

  
  

  I dislike the holiday season.  Don’t get me wrong: I love the holidays themselves!  Christmas is a great day once it finally comes, despite the commercialism that has bled into the American version of it.  But GETTING to Christmas is horrid.  Give me a fireplace, some snow, carol instrumentals playing on the stereo, and a tumbler of Egg Nog and I’m happy.  On the other hand, all the paegants, cantatas, shopping, planning, wrapping, ect.  do nothing but overwhelm me.  We lose the original point of Christmas in the midst of all the trappings.  It gets drowned in tinsel and pine needles; suffocated beneath a crushing weight of accessories.

  
  

   

  
  

  What does Christmas mean?  Think about it.  What is the point of it?  What does it stand for?

  
  

  The original concept of Christmas has little to do with winter.  There is only a 1/365 chance that Jesus was actually born on December 25th.  The date was chosen by the early Christian church in an attempt to subvert the pre-existing pagan Roman holiday of Saturnalia.

  
  

  The original concept of Christmas has nothing to do with decorated pine trees.  This is a practice adopted from another pagan society, the Celts: the Celtic priests (druids) revered a sacred pine tree on the Winter Solstice (December 21st).

  
  

  The original concept of Christmas predated the Jolly Fat Man.  Sorry, but St. Nicholas was a bishop who was known for his generosity, not a mystical elfin man with command over an army of diminutive sweatshop workers and the living equivalant of eight stealth F-117s.  (The story goes that the original, historical St. Nicholas became aware of a poor family in his parish: a single father and his three daughters.  They had no money for food, and the father was actually considering selling one of his daughters into slavery.  That night the daughters hung their wet stockings on the grate before the fireplace to dry them.  St. Nicholas snuck into the house through a window and left a bag of gold in each stocking so that they would discover them in the morning.)

  
  

  No, Xanga friends, the original concept of Christmas was something that we forget about in the hustle and bustle of the “holiday.”  It involved a race of fallen human beings, and a deity that loved them with a passion we can only begin to imagine.  It involved a poor Jewish couple: a carpenter and his wife caught traveling across Palestine due to a Roman census law.  It involved a mystery so vast and incredible that angels burst into singing when they tried to tell about it.

  
  

  Christmas is a holiday celebrating an invasion.  It is the spiritual equivalent of D-Day.  God laid aside everything that made him a deity so that he could become a mortal–a human–one of us.  By being born a human he was slipping through the blockade that surrounded our plantet.

  
  

  He was born in a stable, yes, and slept in a feeding trough instead of a crib…but there’s a catch.  That little baby in the Nativity scene didn’t stay a baby.  He grew up, became a carpenter and a rabbi.  He shook the foundations of religious institutions with his words.  He DIED–God himself died.  (Nietzsche was half right.)  He died a criminal’s death, nailed to a plank of wood, when a mere word from him could have incinerated his executioners.  And then, through dying, he shattered the organization of Death itself, tearing up from his grave with a shout of victory.  Why?  For love–love of you, love of me.  So that you and I no longer have to be fallen creatures, but can be “adopted” by God, so to speak.

  
  

  It’s an astounding thought, isn’t it?  It kinda makes the choir music and workshop elves pale by comparison.  It goes beyond Tim Allen wearing a fat suit and a beard.  Sleigh bells and Rockettes have nothing on a story like this.

  
  

  And the best part is, unlike Dicken’s tale of Scrooge or Jimmy Stewart’s portrayal of George Bailey…this story really happened.

  • 11:41 am
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