Each year we all anticipate the first signs of Christmas.
Decorations and music in the shopping centers.
Parades and carol nights.
Pre-Christmas sales.
Each year we complain that these things are making their public emergence a little bit earlier and with a bet more gaudiness each year.
Another annual tradition is the first appearance of some well-meaning Christian individual or group complaining about the failures of individuals or companies to keep Christ in Christmas.
It becomes a hanging offence to say ‘Season’s greetings’ or talk about a ‘holiday tree’. Even the contraction ‘X-mas’ is portrayed as some global conspiracy against the Gospel.
Christian friends, get over it.
There is no biblical imperative to celebrate Christmas. God does not command it in the Bible. It’s a choice we freely make. Christians can thank God for His saving mercy and a lot of Christians choose to do so with special emphasis on December 25.
We can’t punish people for not joining in.
Some Christians choose not to observe Christmas. The Bible doesn’t tell them to, so we can’t make them.
People who aren’t Christian can’t be punished, black-banned or criticised for getting Christmas ‘wrong’. The only thing they can get ‘wrong’ is not following a tradition that we freely impose on ourselves.
Getting all worked up about the way that non-Christians treat Christmas is petulance, not piety.
When we start going off like fire-crackers over the failure of others to follow our self-created tradition we weaken our integrity when we try to communicate imperatives that God actually does communicate in the Bible about the Gospel, the sanctity of life, moral standards and various other issues.
Friends if someone says ‘Happy holiday’ to you and you want to respond, do so by wishing them a blessed Christmas, or by asking what the season means to them and how do they celebrate it.
Don’t lecture, don’t hector and don’t black-ban.
Rember the reason for the season is to spread the Gospel, not to make everyone else follow our tradition.
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