Rick Beckman

Jesus is the Reason for the Season?

If you believe that Jesus is the Rea­son for the Season,:”(I per­son­al­ly don’t think Jesus had any­thing to do with the win­ter hol­i­day until Chris­tians ret­conned Him into it.)”: why is the over­ar­ch­ing theme of Christ­mas, “All I want for Christ­mas is…” 

The con­cepts of giv­ing — which we ought to do sac­ri­fi­cial­ly rather than oblig­a­to­ri­ly — as well as fam­i­ly togeth­er­ness are sec­ondary to San­ta Claus and the Want. Hon­est­ly, I don’t have a prob­lem with want­i­ng things. I make a list with stuff on it just like every­one else,:”(Though I am thank­ful that this list is becom­ing more and more dif­fi­cult to make, for two rea­sons: Even though my income is just a bit above the pover­ty line for a two per­son fam­i­ly, we’ve still plen­ty for the occa­sion­al indul­gence. Sec­ond­ly, I’m sim­ply more and more con­tent with those things that I do have already and see most things as sim­ply friv­o­lous dis­trac­tions. I’m very much ignor­ing my strong desire to get a hold of Final Fan­ta­sy VII to play through it again…)”: but I cer­tain­ly don’t do it in the name of Christ­mas; I rec­og­nize a win­ter fes­ti­val that fam­i­lies can get togeth­er and have fun for.:”(And I’m very much not brave enough to append Jesus’ name to this fes­ti­val when He did­n’t care to tell us to do so in His Word.)”: I durst not make this a reli­gious thing, lest I add tra­di­tion to the suf­fi­cien­cy of Scripture!

But if you believe Jesus is the Rea­son for the Sea­son, why aren’t Jesus’ over­ar­ch­ing themes the same as Christ­mas’? Where are the procla­ma­tions to “Repent, for the king­dom of heav­en is at hand”?:”(Matthew 4:17, NASB)”:

If giv­ing is such a strong theme already, per­haps we would do well to remem­ber this pas­sage: “And if any­one wants to sue you, and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. And who­ev­er shall force you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you,and do not turn away from him who wants to bor­row from you.”:”(Matthew 5:40–42, NASB)”: How dif­fer­ent would Amer­i­ca be if Amer­i­ca’s pro­fessed Chris­t­ian population:“Religion in the Unit­ed States(Ignoring denom­i­na­tion­al dif­fer­ences and pseu­do-Chris­t­ian cults, 75% of Amer­i­ca’s pop­u­la­tion claims some kind of Chris­t­ian affiliation.)”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States#Popular_affiliation prac­ticed with­out hes­i­ta­tion just those few com­mands of Christ?

And regard­less of how much one wants to focus on the pos­i­tive aspects of a giv­ing, lov­ing, self-sac­ri­fic­ing Chris­tian­i­ty firm­ly root­ed in the words of Christ, it is dif­fi­cult to ignore oth­er pas­sages, such as, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daugh­ter against her moth­er, and a daugh­ter-in-law against her moth­er-in-law; and a man’s ene­mies will be the mem­bers of his house­hold. He who loves father or moth­er more than Me is not wor­thy of Me; and he who loves son or daugh­ter more than me is not wor­thy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and fol­low after Me is not wor­thy of Me.”:”(Matthew 10:34–38, NASB)”:

If Jesus is the Rea­son for the Sea­son, then why aren’t fam­i­lies polar­ized because of Him dur­ing this time? When the lost & saved can all gath­er ’round and enjoy glo­ri­ous (albeit overt­ly materialistic:”(This is of course debat­able, but I’m will­ing to hypoth­e­size that if you had a very Christ­mas-ori­ent­ed fam­i­ly and you showed up with no gifts to bring say­ing that the rea­son you did­n’t was because you don’t rec­og­nize the hol­i­day but still want­ed to spend time with your fam­i­ly, if you received any gifts at all, they would come with at least a small mea­sure of ill-will or grudge-bear­ing.)”: :(“I men­tioned ear­li­er that I devise lists of things I want; well, I also give ’em too. Amaz­ing, I know!)”: ) fel­low­ship some­how “in the name of Jesus,” some­thing is wrong. To put it blunt­ly, Jesus is hat­ed by the lost for the sim­ple rea­son that they love their evil deeds and do not want them exposed by He who is able to right­eous­ly judge.:”(John 3:19,20)”: Even as a baby in a manger, He was still that Judge, still He who the world hat­ed. Why else would Herod have ordered the exe­cu­tion of all males two-years-old and younger in and around Beth­le­hem?:”(Matthew 2:16–18)”: He who is a Right­eous King is a threat to a world in love with darkness.

If Jesus is the Rea­son for the Sea­son, per­haps some time could be spent remem­ber­ing what He actu­al­ly spoke. Plen­ty of myths and leg­ends have been ret­conned into the his­to­ry of the Incar­na­tion. Let’s shove all of it aside and wor­ship the Lord in spir­it and in truth!:”(John 4:23,24)”:

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6 responses to “Jesus is the Reason for the Season?”

  1. Justin Avatar
    Justin

    I was read­ing this. Just want­ed to share.

    A woman was Christ­mas shop­ping with her two children.
    After many hours of walk­ing down row after row
    of toys and after hours of hear­ing both her children
    ask­ing for every­thing they saw on those many shelves,
    she final­ly made it to the store ele­va­tor with her
    two chil­dren in hand.

    She was feel­ing what so many of us feel dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son time of the year, get­ting that per­fect gift for every sin­gle per­son on our shop­ping list, over­whelm­ing pres­sure to go to every par­ty, every house­warm­ing, taste all the hol­i­day food and treats, mak­ing sure we don’t for­get any­one on our card list, and the pres­sure of
    mak­ing sure we respond to every­one who sent us a card.

    Final­ly the ele­va­tor doors opened reveal­ing a crowd in the car. She pushed her way in and dragged her two kids and all her bags of stuff in with her .
    As the doors closed she could­n’t take it any­more and blurt­ed out,

    “Who­ev­er start­ed this whole Christ­mas thing should be found, strung
    up, and shot.”

    From the back of the car, a qui­et calm voice responded,
    “Don’t wor­ry, we’ve already cru­ci­fied Him.”
    The rest of the trip down was so qui­et you could have heard a pin drop.

    Don’t for­get this year to keep the One who start­ed this whole Christ­mas thing in your every thought, deed, pur­chase, and word.
    If we all would, just think how much bet­ter this world would be.
    Jesus is the rea­son for the season.
    Wise men still seek Him.

    Sor­ry if it is out of place, I copied and pasted.

    Reply
  2. Rick Beckman Avatar
    Rick Beckman

    Not out of place, but I’m not entire­ly sure I agree. What if “Jesus is the Rea­son for the Sea­son” is com­plete­ly inac­cu­rate? Cer­tain­ly, it isn’t bib­li­cal, and in all hon­esty, if any­one at that time was going to remem­ber any­thing about the time sur­round­ing Jesus’ birth and infan­cy, it would have been the slaugh­ter of every male child two years of age and under in the area in which Jesus’ lived. The birth, while immense­ly and prophet­i­cal­ly impor­tant, yield­ed cel­e­bra­tion for a short peri­od, made up of angels in the air, shep­herds on the ground, and magi from the East.

    As Jesus grew old­er, though, there is no such record of any­one cel­e­brat­ing His birth annu­al­ly — not Him, not Mary, not the apos­tles, and not the ear­ly church. There was no rea­son to empha­size His birth because the Holy Spir­it made it crys­tal clear that Jesus Christ is Ever­last­ing God. His birth was sig­nif­i­cant, but He was God Almighty long before ever Mary gave birth to His body.

    If “Christ­mas” is tru­ly a cel­e­bra­tion of Christ, and if Chris­tians want to con­tin­ue to keep Him in it, then I say, “Jesus is the Rea­son for Life!” We lim­it Him when we lim­it cheer, giv­ing, love, and fam­i­ly to one sea­son of the year.

    Reply
  3. Justin Avatar
    Justin

    :) Yay, a new per­spec­tive on things!

    True, Christ­mas has become way too com­mer­cial­ized and sec­u­lar­ized. I think, how­ev­er, that when peo­ple say, “Jesus is the rea­son for the sea­son”, it’s a giv­en that He’s the rea­son for life, but they are just remind­ing peo­ple why we do and should always cel­e­brate Christ­mas: Because it was the night that Jesus came to earth that He might live the obe­di­ant life and die the inno­cent death.

    Any­ways, that’s just what I think. :)

    Reply
  4. Glen Avatar
    Glen

    Jesus is the rea­son for the sea­son. It’s a pity the world has lost the sight of why this day was set aside. I guess it’s the same in some ways with “east­er” time. It’s replaced with a big bun­ny and east­er eggs. It would be nice if Christ­mas was rememe­bered for the rea­son it was intend­ed, but hey that’s what hap­pens when you live in a world where we are born in sin, and have no desire of our own to please God.

    glen

    Reply
  5. Rick Beckman Avatar
    Rick Beckman

    It is one of his­to­ry’s biggest ironies that Chris­tians would ret­con Christ into the pagan fes­ti­vals and then when the pagans want the hol­i­days back, we claim they are the ones steal­ing them or get­ting them wrong.

    Unless “Christ­mas” or “East­er” as the Church knows them as annu­al cel­e­bra­tions (and not one-time events such as a birth or a res­ur­rec­tion…) can be estab­lished sole­ly from Scrip­tur­al texts, they are but tra­di­tions estab­lished by the wis­dom (or lack there­of, in the case of using pagan fes­ti­vals as a foun­da­tion) of man.

    If we want to decry about man’s for­get­ting the “real mean­ing” behind things, I think most Chris­tians would do well to re-eval­u­ate what bap­tism and the Lord’s sup­per are; those things we are com­mand­ed to do, and they are things which have inde­scrib­ably deep scrip­tur­al mean­ing. That is some­thing the win­ter and spring fes­ti­vals can­not claim in any way, shape, or form.

    Reply
  6. Justin Avatar
    Justin

    Hel­lo every­one! Mer­ry Christ­mas Eve! :)

    Reply

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Rick Beckman