Hi Ladies!
Today on Facebook I posted “Celebrating Christmas without Jesus is like having a huge birthday bash and not inviting the person of the hour- it just doesn’t make sense.
Well- I have prayed and prayed about this and have come to the realization that 3 of the most common misconceptions of Christmas are…
Christmas is about the “spirit of giving”
Christmas is spending time with family and friends
Christmas is about helping the needy
The above sound like beautiful things…and they may indeed happen on or around Christmas, but by NO means are they the meaning of Christmas. In fact, some of these misconceptions may cause us to be so overtaken and side tracked that the real meaning of Christmas is stolen from us. So, in a nut shell-if any of these things take us away from God-we need to re-evalutate.
So…what is Christmas?
Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Period. That is more than enough…more than we ever deserved. Thank you Lord for this gift…a Savior. A SAVIOR!
We may give on Christmas, but that is not the “spirit of giving”~ it is the Holy spirit within us that jumps at every opportunity to share God’s love with anyone at anytime.
We may spend time with friends and family~but Jesus is the only “person” we need. Friends and family are blessing indeed, but to fully love one another Jesus must come first.
We may give to the less fortunate during this holiday~but being a Christian means being used as a tool for the Lord whenever he needs his work to be done- come December or July ..day in and day out….
Looking back on my life, I realize that there is a dark area once upon a time when I did not understand what I was celebrating when I celebrated Christmas. It is so embarrassing…so hard to think about…but it is SO important that I always remind myself of this. God is using my life and my experiences without him to help pull others that are tedder toddering in a “luke warm Christian lifestyle” just like I was.
” Revelations 3:15-16 says “I know your deeds and you are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were either one or the other. So because you are lukewarm-neither hot nor cold-I am about to spit you out of my mouth”
“Spit you out of my mouth” reminds me of luke warm soup…or coffee…or a bubble bath. No one likes luke warm – God is not an exception.
Ladies, I humbly come before you asking you to pray over this. When you are celebrating Christmas are you celebrating the birth of our Savior? Are you hot or cold…or worse, luke warm? I have been there. I have done that. I have been a cheerful giver and have loved my family and friends and have STILL missed out on the true meaning of Christmas many times in my life…”luke warm and loving it” as Francis Chan would have called me.
Merry Christmas and meaning it..Love to all of you, Janelle
Merry Christmas to you and yours, Janelle. Great post. It is easy to get caught up in all the materialism. It is such a trap/trick of Satan. We need to be intentional about why we do what we do. 🙂
I love this Janelle. LOVE it!
Thank you sweet friend! 😉
Love this Janelle! Thank you for sharing your heart with passion and conviction! Amen sister!
Wohoo!
This is an amazing post. I have been thinking this and I wasn’t sure how to put it into words. I have been ‘lukewarm’ most of my Christian life and have just in the last year and a half or so began to move toward the ‘hot’ end. God is doing wonderful things in me!!! I almost cringe now when I hear people talking about the ‘true’ meaning of Christmas. I have yet to hear them say that it is to celebrate receiving our Savior. Totally agree that being a Christian should put us in the ‘Christmas mindset’ all year around. Thank you for voicing what I couldn’t seem to find the words to say!!!!
Thank you so much Nicole! What an encouraging comment. I feel exactly the same way 😉
Happy Birthday Jesus
I’m so glad it’s Christmas
All the tinsel and lights
And the presents are nice
But the real gift is you
All the carols and bells
Make the holiday swell
And it’s all about You
Happy Birthday Jesus
Jesus I love you
awesome!
Thank you for putting it out there so very eloquently!
There is a great movie on Netflix that I wanted to share: The Story of Christmas. I think it’s nice because they talk about the real reason we celebrate Christmas. There isn’t one Santa Claus in the whole movie!
Janelle, what a wonderful post! I agree with you that there is so much misunderstanding about the true meaning of Christmas. The fact is, we wouldn’t have Christmas without Jesus. Period. One of the things I find most disturbing about the secularization (is that a word? lol) of Christmas is replacing the word “Christmas” with “Holiday”. I had a friend from high school post on FB yesterday, “I am so not ready for Holiday. I need another week!” I cringed when I read that. To me it’s like nails on a chalkboard. It really bothers me when people won’t even say the word Christmas in order to be “politically correct”. While I believe that spending time with family & friends, exchanging gifts and cards, baking & decorating are all nice things that we DO at Christmastime, they are NOT the true meaning of Christmas. And without the birth of Christ, none of those well-intentioned, enjoyable things would even be possible. I had a bit of a painful experience this week. I had made a card for my religious education students the other night, as it was the last class before the Christmas break. I made it out of construction paper with a candy cane taped to it with the following poem I had found:
Look at the Candy Cane
What do you see?
Stripes that are red
Like the blood shed for me.
White is for my Savior
Who’s sinless and pure!
“J” is for Jesus, my Lord that’s for sure!
Turn it around
And a staff you will see
Jesus my shepherd
Was born for Me!
Always remember the true reason for the season.
Merry Christmas! From, Mrs. M
Well, my husband loved that so much that he shared it on FB and boy were we SLAMMED!!!! People accusing us of traumatizing children, referring to it as giving children, “bloody candy canes”, inappropriate to make children feel “guilty” about Jesus’ death, that the true meaning was NOT the birth of Christ for everyone, etc. Needless to say I was shocked by the response and frankly, really very hurt. All those horrible things that were said never even crossed my mind! What was most interesting was that the children all loved it! The adults made it out to be this gruesome injustice I was doing to the children, and the children themselves said they thought the poem was “really cool!” Children are so open and beautiful and wonderful that way. 🙂 Anyhow, I’m babbling, but as you can see, this has been weighing on my heart very heavily these past few days so this post came right at the perfect time!
To you Janelle and your family, to all your friends and to all the readers of this blog, I wish you all a very Blessed Christmas! God bless you all. xoxoxo
~Kim M
Oh Kim! I am so sorry you were beaten down by others by that sweet poem! My children learned it at school and immediately ran into the living room to grab a candy cane off the tree when they got home to show me what they learned…turning it upside down and right side up. Just remember, if you are living for God darkness does not like the light-when you get angry people saying things like this often times you are doing the right thing…we live in a fallen world. Love to you, Janelle
Merry Christmas to my beautiful sister in Christ,
What you said is SO TRUE! We tend to get all excited Christmas morning for presents, turkey supper, family & friends, yet put aside the real meaning of Christmas! I tell my kids that if it wasn’t for our Savior being born there would be no Christmas and He must be our first reason to celebrate. All the glory to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!
AWESOME!!
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!! I am not trying to self-promote, but I just wrote a post about “Taking Christ’s Name in Vain”. Just as you are saying if we aren’t worshipping Christ at Christ’s Mass, then we might as well just say Happy Holiday – because we are basically just taking a day for “WE” not “THEE”.
It’s hard sometimes to seaparte our American and church traditions from the truth of God and HIS desires.
Thanks!!!