Christian Christmas vs Secular Christmas
As a kid in the 1960s, I remember watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade with enthusiasm. I enjoyed seeing the wonderful floats, celebrities, giant balloons, and marching bands, but I knew that at the end of the parade there would be Santa Claus! This spelled the end of the Thanksgiving holiday and the beginning of the Christmas holidays.
Although I went to Sunday school at our church and learned about the birth of baby Jesus, as a child, I seemed to pay more attention to the version of Santa Claus. This was because I was always looking forward to Christmas morning, so I could see what Santa had brought me this year!
Being immature, as all children are, I focused more on what I was receiving that day, and not on what I was really supposed to celebrate this day. Probably, as young Christians, most of us start out on a similar path, and then grow up, without changing our focus to what the day was really supposed to be. Greed and selfishness for what we got or gave became the emphasis of this day.
Business owners are interested in this weakness of ours and do their best to monopolize it. The greed and selfishness of your business losing a nickel on sales, or the store across the street getting its nickel has become your driving force. That said, and over the years, the start of the Christmas campaigns became earlier and earlier almost every year. The secular holiday theme had a firm grip on most of us, and I wasn’t about to let it go!
I noticed that in the 1970s, the Christmas season began to unfold in early November. Then in the 1980s, the commercial blitz began, and store displays started popping up just after Halloween in late October. The 1990s continued to drive the start of the commercial business Christmas season even earlier, and some exhibits were now starting to appear before Halloween.
At the beginning of this century it was also the turn of the secular fever of the Christmas holidays to start even earlier. Now, the end of September is the launch of many Christmas business campaigns. Business owners and CEOs are driven to show their shareholders and board members a red, constantly pointing up arrow on a PowerPoint chart to show these people that they are doing their job well. For business owners and CEOs, greed to make more money than last year is their only concern.
With this trend, by 2010 we will probably see Santa and his sleigh rolling on the field just behind the players in the first game at the start of the football season. What thought; The transition from when I was a kid watching Santa in the Thanksgiving Day parade, at the end of the football game lineup from the initial seasons!
A passage from the Bible that says it best is Luke 18: 24-25 (NCV), “It is very difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of such a needle so that a rich man enters the kingdom of God. ” For the individual, greed and personal selfishness of what we give or receive is the distracting factor. Luke 12:15 (NCV) Jesus tells us: “Be careful and beware of all kinds of greed. Life is not measured by what you have.”
Whether we are business owners, CEOs, or consumers, we are Christians too and must refocus our focus on the real reason for the holiday celebration. Our emphasis should always be on the birth of Jesus Christ.
Please do not take the above statements incorrectly. It is “okay” for us to receive gifts, or give gifts to the people we care about during this celebration, as the Magi visiting the child Jesus demonstrated in Matthew 2:11 (NCV), “They came to the house where the child was and They saw him with his mother, Mary, and fell down and worshiped him. They opened their gifts and gave him treasures of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. “
We should all try to do the best we can at our jobs. We just need to eliminate our personal greed and selfishness. We can do this by adjusting our emphasis to reestablish the true reason for this celebration and downplay the secular version.
Romans 2: 6 (NCV) tells us: “God will reward or punish each person for what they have done. Some people, by always continuing to do good, live for God’s glory, honor, and life that has no end. God will give them life forever. But other people are selfish. They refuse to follow the truth and instead follow evil. God will give them their punishment and wrath. “
The holiday season statistically shows a high rate of depression and suicide, why? This is mainly due to our greed and selfishness. The business person who fails to meet your business goals and expectations; The person who gets depressed because he cannot afford the wonderful gifts he had in mind for his loved ones attributes everything to the fact that these rates are so high.
I have personally experienced these feelings of depression and suicide on some of the last Christmas holidays. One year I was unemployed around Christmas time and could not afford to bring even the smallest gifts to my family and friends. Being in such a difficult financial situation was destined to be a disastrous Christmas season for me, with the emphasis of my secular Christmas poster firmly in place. This was also the year that I personally changed my mindset of emphasis and put Christ at the center of my Christmas celebration. And with this change in point of view, I had the best Christmas vacation I had ever had in my life!
From this personal experience, I encourage all Christians to shed the secular emphasis as the center of importance of this holiday and to experience the Christmas celebration as it should be. It will be one you will never forget!