Thursday, December 13, 2012

An Alternative Way to Celebrate Christmas

It's been a very long time since  have decided to post on this blogl. I really should get back to it.  Here is another one of my musings; I hope it makes some sense to you,

I'll be glad when Christmas Season is over. Heres why: The hype of the season and day never lives up to the planning and the spending and the pomp, etc., I haven't genuinely enjoyed Christmas Day since I was about 12 years old. Back then all I had to do was wait in anticipation for the day and get new stuff, eat and start vacation from school.

Life has become a little more complicated since then.  While I am not truly Ebenezer Scrooge or a Grinch, I do wish that things were just more simple. I agrre that the holiday has become too comercialized. That's factual; no real argument can be made against it. People claim to abhor the presence of Christmas advertisements right after Halloween, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah, and yet they participate as if they are powereless to resist the lure of Black Friday sales, Cyber Monday seductions and Small Business Tuesday, ugh. I will not participate in any event that begins with people being knocked down, shoved, stomped and trampled for an inanimate object. Insanity and greed run amuck.  I have made the decison to celebrate the holiday in the simplicity in which the Savior came; to humble people via humble means, of no reputation, in the form of of a servant.

This year, If I cannot make the gift, I won't be giving it. I love the idea of giving gifts but trolling the malls, shoppes, stores, catelogues and on-line sites for the "perfect" gift annoys me.  It is not necessary.  I am not condemning those who will do it I just want to be free from all of that pressure. I find it telling that we need to remind ourselves repeatedly thyat "Jesus is the reason for the season!"

I cannot see how this exhorbitant spending and indebtedness in celebration of the holiday represents Christ or the purpose for which he came.  I am choosing to make financial gifts to two charitable organizations that in my estimation do the work of Christ on a daily basis.  One feeds the hungry on an international level and the other takes in the homeless, addicted, hungry and sick in Boston, MA.  I do this not to tout some superior spirituality or to claim a higher sensibility but becaue I think it more truly represents the character of Christ as I understand it. Perhaps my sharing this may free someone else from the cultrural pull that starts in late October and begins again on December 26th with all the crap that is now on sale that folk spent top dollar for 2 days before!

This year, on Christmas Eve, I will light my candle, read the nativity story, hug my grandchildren, kiss my wife and go to sleep glad for the incarnation of the Christ who came to make all men free.

God rest ye merry gentlemen let nothing you dismay
Remember Christ our Savior was born on Chritmas day
To save us all from Satan's pow'r when we had gone astray
O Tidinigs of Comfort and Joy Comfort and Joy!
O Tidings of Comfort and Joy!

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