We have been discussing marriage, and we have seen how it is God’s calling. Instead of any lack of oneness or even divorce we are to pursue oneness in marriage, despite any difficulties. This is one of God’s prominent callings toward us, and so our oneness-pursuit is a form of obedience before God and a response to His grace toward us.
This time there is a focus on using Christmas toward children. There are two points:
1. Our culture is mis-communicating Christmas. See this below.
2. We need to teach our children to go in a Spiritual direction. Christmas is one thing to teach.
The children we focus on might be the ones we are still raising – or they might be adults who are married and have their own children.
Either way, we can provide some important thoughts on Christmas.
Our culture’s attitude toward Christmas
It is interesting to see the culture promoting non-Christian perspectives. Let’s look first at the cultural view of Christmas. The cultural idea is that “Christmas” is not even a “Christian” issue. Instead, “Christmas” is a secular family time, not a focus on Jesus Christ being born.
An illustration of how our culture is not focused on Christianity in Christmas is what we see on the yards outside of houses. Many people put Christmas things on their yards – they have Santa Claus plus things like snowmen and elves, plus some animals. These things are standing throughout the yard.
The point here is that in most houses’ yards, there is no display of Jesus’ birth. There are some houses that have a picture of Jesus’ birth, but the most common thing is that a yard has only Santa Claus and snowmen plus animals. Jesus’ birth is not included in most yards.
Another is that in stores when we are paying for things, the workers don’t say “Merry Christmas!” to us. Instead, the standard comment is just “Happy Holiday!” The “Happy Holiday” is just a non-spiritual reference to the Christmas, and the time has become secular. People and jobs throughout our nation are using a time off for Christmas, but it is not a spiritual thing. It is simply an enjoyable time-off.
The question is whether we can help our children – our young children or adult children and grandchildren – to see that Christmas is a reference to the history of Jesus being born?
A reality is that we really do not know what day Jesus was born. Centuries ago, Europe Christians started using December 25 as a recognition of Jesus’ birth. The fact that we do not know what actual day He was born, it does not matter. We can celebrate His birth on any day, and Christmas at December 25 is a celebration of Jesus’ birth as God’s Son and Christ, and our Savior.
Jesus was born as a man, but one of the things we can see in the Bible is that He was both a born-human and the eternal version of God Himself. For example, in John 1:1-3 and 10, Jesus was described as an eternal form of God. In verses 3 and 10 it says that Jesus was the One Who created the world:
John 1:1-3 and 10
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
He was in the world, and the world was made through Him,
So the idea here in verses John 1:1-3 and 10 help us to see that Jesus was not just a human. Whereas He was born as a human He was throughout history the Creator God. So when we celebrate Christmas we are recognizing Him as God and as our Savior – His salvation to us when He died and rose up to heaven.
So – whatever day we celebrate the birth of Christ – if we see December 25 as a historical day of Christ’s birth, then we should focus on worshipping Jesus Christ, versus just having a secular and family-day of “Happy Holiday.”
What we need to do is focus on this in our marriage and talk to our children about it. We need to get them to see Christmas as a day of worshiping God versus just having gifts and a secular and fleshly “family time.” We also need to get them to see that the society they live in is not spiritual. What they see around them is a secular culture. So they live among those people, but they need to see the difference between God and the culture. And they need to view Christmas as a time of worshipping Jesus Christ.
Tom Clark is a Family Life Ambassador with the Family Life Ministry and on the Advisory Board of the Virginia Christian Alliance.
