Amos 5:21 “I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.”
The world has just finished celebrating a string of holidays and everyone gave it their best shot. They tried to love everyone and remember the ‘reason for the season’ to earn points toward heaven. But there is a paganistic origin to just about everything the world celebrates – including christmas, easter rabbits, thanksgiving, birthdays and all the other feast days that we create. Most crucially, if we are celebrating these things as Christians, we are in disobedience to God.
God never told us to celebrate this
When we like or respect people, we tend to give them things we feel they’d like (because we like them). So, to show our love to God, we feel that we need the upmost celebration. But God is different – you can’t surprise Him; He has everything, and He will not accept what He didn’t command. When we magnify people and things that God never commanded us to in ways that He didn’t ordain, we’re building alters and idols and glorifying the flesh…to fill a void within ourselves.
I remember being on my knees as a young adult saying my prayers and thanking God for everything He’d done for me. I became so joyful and thankful; I began telling Him all the things I’d give Him back in return. I remember Him stopping me in mid-sentence saying, “The only thing you can give me is praise!”
We can’t just give God things. He’s God and He owns it all!! If He wanted us to celebrate birthdays (including His own), He would have given us instructions on how to celebrate them. Yet, that holiday gets more confusing and demonic with every year. When God wants us to do something, He tells us what He wants done, how He wants it done, and He demonstrates it. He even allows us to ask for clarification.
Whether you put Jesus in christmas or take him out, God never commanded it and we’re making things up as we go. The devil has Christians fighting with pagans over a pagan holiday, trying to put Christ back into something that he was never into in the first place. Just because an event happened in the past doesn’t mean we celebrate it in the present
Obeying God’s commands (including reverencing the Sabbath) will keep us busy until Jesus comes. Instructions for the Sabbath and all other commandments are very clear. In the old testament, all the sacrifices and offerings to God, and all temples that were constructed (Noah’s ark, ark of the covenant, tabernacles, etc.) came with detailed instructions from Him. God has shown us examples throughout the Bible and the Holy Spirit clarifies when necessary.
I celebrated christmas for many years in the past and loved it. My earliest memories of christmas were typical and fun because I always got the things I wanted. I believed in Santa Claus until I was in the 3rd grade (when a classmate called me and my best friend stupid for believing in him); then later in life, it became fun again when I started celebrating as a grown-up with my daughter. Each year, we created a different theme for the christmas tree. I drank a bunch of christmas cheer as we decorated the tree while her father drank and cheered us on. Every year we put up the tree on Thanksgiving night. Then a week before christmas we’d drive down south to visit and fight with the family for a few days, leave angry (early), and rehearse what everybody said and did that started it all as we drove back up north. Besides the fights, I loved the busyness of decorating for Jesus and giving him a ‘shout out’ every year.
But then I was convicted of this idolatry. When the Holy Spirit convicted me about celebrating all the feast days, my world went silent. It was difficult to give up the tradition of something so beautiful with all the lights; and that christmas ‘spirit’ that people try to create (I still don’t know what that is) that makes them strangely kind just for the holidays, but then they change back throughout the year – I missed all that.
I also learned the real meaning of persecution when I told my family I would no longer celebrate birthdays and holidays. And from my job when I stood on my convictions. I soon learned not to preach this stuff to people unless I was specifically asked about it or God commanded me to speak about it. I learned that this was not a popular stance (people will kill you over christmas); they became enraged as if I killed the baby Jesus.
Matthew 15:3 “But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?”
Refusing traditions of man does not negate that Jesus was, is and is to come the Messiah. It does not negate that he was born on this earth to the Virgin Mary. It does not negate the facts and truth about Jesus. Christ is real and His story is the real Truth, but unless God commanded it in the Old Testament or Jesus did it in the New Testament, we should leave it alone.
The simple message of Jesus’ birth was to bring peace (within us from the Holy Spirit). But christmas does it backwards: it brings division within and a peaceful (false) performance on the outside. The bondage of christmas defeats the simple message of Christs’ liberation from the world and sin. The rich become richer and the poor and homeless feel even more lonely during this time. God would never create a holiday (with his name on it) that makes the lonely feel lonelier, the impoverished feel poorer, the depressed feel even more dejected, then force people together to lie about how they really feel. He would never have you give gifts that you wouldn’t even want to receive (re-gifting, buying affection, and throwing gifts in the garbage).
mary was a vessel, that’s all
We were never commanded to idolize Mary. She was not a blond-haired, blue-eyed soft-spoken timid angel. She was a dark-skinned, dark-haired woman who was strong enough in conviction to carry a baby for nine months with no earthly father (based on a vision) while a virgin. But Mary wasn’t ‘perfect’ (as she’s often depicted) and she is not our mother; she was the mother of Jesus. She was only blessed and highly favored; but we tend to worship and idolize people who we think are anointed with something. Jesus called her ‘woman’ and the Bible had this to say about her:
Matthew 12: 46-50 “While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother”.
Jesus honored His mother, but we need to get a hold of Biblical truth on family relationships and keep our mission in perspective – obedience to God. As Parents and grown children, we will need to leave some people and cleave to others when we are about our Father’s business – just like Jesus:
Luke 2: 48-52 “And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them. And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man”.
Jesus is not mean, but He will allow you to ponder things in your heart. We also need to take a lesson from Mary about rearing a child who has work to do in the kingdom. Rather than stand in their way when you don’t understand, ask God for wisdom on rearing them and know that some things you will have to just ponder in your heart. Sometimes, we may need to grow spiritually to comprehend our role as a parent to God’s children.
giving christmas to Christ, is like the apostle Paul (zealous for Christ going the wrong way) ~Terri
The gift of christmas is not Christ; Love was not born on christmas; Christ was here before christmas, from the beginning with God. He didn’t just get here when he was born of a virgin, he came to us as a baby so we could see from beginning to end how to grow up to become like Him. He was born to bridge the gap between our sin and God’s holiness. He is a mystery to the inquisitive but a friend and savior to the obedient. He showed us that we are to learn and be taught of the Father for many years before He sends us about on assignments. He showed us how to endure persecution and suffering, die and live again. He gave the ultimate gift, and we can’t top that.
As a Christian, there are many things that we will never understand about God until we see Him. God has commanded some things that this world will never do – but we shouldn’t start a war on them, argue about them, create a law against them or for them. God never said that the whole world would follow Him but if following Him is what He has commanded of you, then you have an individual responsibility to obedience.
Sin is disobedience to God, so laws to make people stop sinning is a waste of time. But as a Christian I know where I stand on God’s word; and when He tells me to speak on it, I will be loud and clear, but only when He tells me. God wants our hearts changed, not the laws. When Jesus returns, it just might be on His ‘birthday’… on ‘christmas’… in the height of paganism, while the world is partying, drinking and blaspheming.
