Janet Ruth is the author of Standing Firm: Living Victoriously in a Cursed World, a study on the Armor of God. You can learn more about Janet and her books at www.JaneTruth.com.
CBN.com Christmas is coming. Fall decorations are gone, replaced by twinkling lights, artificial trees and Santa Clauses riding little reindeer. It’s a festive time of year with office parties, school musicals, and family gatherings. Yet, apparently, not everyone is getting into the Christmas spirit.
A few years ago, a number of major department stores made news by instructing their employees not to say “Merry Christmas.” Public schools have winter breaks instead of Christmas vacation. City and state governments are scaling back their holiday displays or giving equal time to other, minority religions. Christmas seems to be losing ground and losing popularity.
Christians have tried hard over the years to make Christmas a time everyone can enjoy. Christmas cards and wrapping paper show happy scenes of snowmen, cute animals, or silly cartoons. Christmas decorations fit any taste, from elegant bulbs and ribbons to cartoon characters and patriotic emblems. Santa Clause and his reindeer have little to do with Christianity, and angels fit in with many religious beliefs. Granted, the nativity scene of the baby Jesus with Mary and Joseph is particular to the Christian faith, but it is rarely seen now and easy to ignore amid all the tinsel and trappings of the season. The Spirit of the Season is love and giving and family. Why can’t everyone get into that and join us in wishing each other a Merry Christmas?
Still, some people are offended by the idea of Christmas. As hard as we have tried to disguise it, some people still see Christmas as a celebration of a religious event exclusive to Christianity. They remember what many Christians seem to have forgotten – that this Jesus whose birth we celebrate claimed to be the Son of the one true God. He was God incarnate, Emmanuel, “God with us.”
Is that offensive? If you are an atheist who believes God is nothing more than a harmful myth, yes. If you are a Muslim who believes it is sacrilege for anyone to claim to be equal with God, yes. If you are Jewish and still waiting for the promised Messiah to come, yes. There are even many who call themselves Christians who have difficulty accepting that Jesus really was the Son of God. At best, they consider this to be a divisive point and not central to their religious beliefs.
Yes, Christmas is offensive when you get right to the point of it. I’m afraid it isn’t the non-Christian minority who is missing the point of Christmas. It is the Christians themselves. Christmas is not just a holiday; it is a “holy” day. It is a day when we remember that God loved us so much he sent his only Son into the world to die as a sacrifice for our sins. Not everyone has accepted this precious gift. Those of us who have should hold onto it as something sacred and special, not something to be diluted and disguised so everyone can enjoy it.
The real meaning of Christmas is not merry to those who do not understand or accept it. Nor are they “persecuting” Christians when they say keep your holiday greetings to yourself. If we have nothing more to offer people than a simple “Merry Christmas” as we rush through our holiday shopping, then we are no better than Marie Antoinette when she said of the poor peasants of France who had no bread, “Let them eat cake!” So instead of being angry this year that not everyone “gets” Christmas, be thankful for what you yourself have been given. Remember the true meaning of Christmas – the offensive, special, exclusive meaning. And don’t be offended by people who don’t share your traditions. Remember that you have something more precious than traditions to share with them.
“The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel – which means, ‘God with us.’” ( )
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Janet Ruth is a Christian writer who believes in the sanctity of Christmas. She is a former attorney and college professor and currently a full-time mother. You can find more of her short insights at www.JaneTruth.com.
When we think of the Bible and the word ‘peace’ we are likely to picture the scene of shepherds guarding their sheep by night. Suddenly, an angel appears with good news about a baby in a manger, then a multitude of angels join in singing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill to men.” We hear about it every Christmas: peace on earth. We sing about it. We pray for it. Peace on Earth: an end to wars, an end to bitterness and hostility, an end to fear. We even talk about how nice it would be to have Christmas all year long, so we could always focus on Peace and Goodwill to Men (and Women – all of Mankind, in fact).
But the wars go on. Bitter struggles that have lasted for centuries continue. We find new ways to kill, new things to be afraid of. The Christmas ideal of Peace on Earth seems to be nothing more than an oasis in the midst of a violent world – or maybe it’s just a mirage.
When we think about peace, it’s important to remember that Satan and God have been at war since the beginning of time. As Christians we have switched sides in the Great War and joined God’s forces. We are no longer at war with God. He has offered us peace. Unfortunately, peace with God means we are now at war with Satan and all his forces. So our peace is not complete, yet. It won’t be complete until Satan is defeated and removed from the earth or we go home to be in heaven.
Perhaps the angels meant that because of Jesus’ birth we can find peace with God and eventually complete peace will reign when Satan is defeated. But I think there’s something more to the peace God offers than just an end of war and conflict. It involves more than just the lack of commotion and difficulties. It promises something else than the absence of fear. Jesus didn’t come to earth to take our problems away. He came to stand with us in the midst of our problems so we would find that he, himself, is our peace.
The word ‘gospel’ means ‘good news’ or ‘good tidings.’ The angel that came to the shepherds said, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people.” ( OPEN VERSE IN BIBLE (nlt) ) He came to announce the gospel, the good news that Jesus had come into the world. The good news doesn’t end with the Christmas story. Jesus taught us how to know God and how to serve him, he showed us how to love each other, and then he gave his own life as a sacrifice for our sins so we could live with him someday in heaven. But the good news doesn’t end with Easter, either. Jesus is living in heaven right now, watching over us. The Holy Spirit lives within us to help us know God better and to experience his love. God has a plan for your life, and he has a plan for the whole world. In the end, everything will work out according to his plan, and he – and we – will be victorious. That’s good news!
So this Christmas when you think about Peace on Earth, thank God for sending his Son to be our Peace – now and forever.
"You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You." (NKJV)
Excerpt with permission from Standing Firm: Living Victoriously in a Cursed World by Janet Ruth, copyright June 2009.
Several years ago, my son came home from Sunday school telling us it was wrong to celebrate Halloween. His Sunday school teacher had said that Christians should not take part in a holiday that was once so closely connected to pagan beliefs. To be honest, I was a bit stunned by this pronouncement. We had always celebrated Halloween, although in a limited fashion. Our kids weren’t allowed to dress in scary costumes or attend scary parties. We only put out a few decorations, usually crafts the kids had made at school. To me, Halloween was a chance to use our imaginations, have a little dress-up fun, and get out and see our neighbors. I didn’t see a lot of harm in it.
After doing some research into the history of Halloween, I had mixed thoughts about what to do. The origins of Halloween can be found in a mixture of pre-Christian and early Christian traditions in England that bear only a slight resemblance to the holiday celebrated today. When I was a kid, Halloween meant little more than putting on a costume once a year and going around asking for free candy. My strict Christian parents had no qualms against the holiday, nor did my church, which often had costume parties for the children around Halloween.
Still, I had a growing feeling that Halloween was something we could live without. As the holiday has increased in popularity, passing Thanksgiving and Easter and rivaling Christmas in the amount of shelf-space it gets in the retail stores, and even spawning it’s own specialty stores and online sites, I wondered if it wasn’t becoming more important than it should be in our culture. The entire mentality of Halloween has grown on us so much that skulls have become the latest fashion trend, and witches, ghosts, and vampires have taken over primetime TV, books, and the movies.
What I had to ask myself was this—what are we celebrating when we celebrate Halloween? When you look past the cute kiddie costumes and the tons of candy, isn’t it really all about fear, darkness, and death? As Christians, shouldn’t our focus be on hope, light, and the eternal life that is available through Christ Jesus our Lord? Why would we want to celebrate something so foreign to our Christian beliefs, even if it’s just a cultural tradition and even if it’s just one night? As the Bible says, “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.” OPEN VERSE IN BIBLE (nlt) NIV
For many years now, we have not celebrated Halloween at our house. We don’t do costumes and trick-or-treating anymore. We don’t put out Halloween decorations. We do give out candy if we are going to be home. I still like to say "Hi" to my neighbors and see the little kids dressed up. What we discovered, though, is that it isn’t that hard to say no to Halloween, especially when we remember the truth about our own beliefs.
As the Apostle Paul wrote: “For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? … What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.’” b, NIV
Copyright © 2010 Janet Ruth. Used by permission.
