A new year and a new decade has just begun today. Many people use this time of year to reflect upon the past year and set their New Year’s resolutions or goals of things that they would like to change for the coming year. Many of those resolutions are quickly broken by the end of the day.
As Christians, we should be continually reflecting upon our lives and “cleaning house” so to speak. We need to sweep away the bad habits that slowly and insidiously creep into our lives that are not holy or pleasing to our God. Some sin becomes such a habit, that it sets itself up as a stronghold in our lives. We become a slave to this habitual sin and we feel oppressed. We feel we cannot escape it. This sin becomes a false god in our lives.
This year my wife and I decided to celebrate Hanukkah with our family. We enjoyed it immensely and found it to be entirely compatible with biblical Christianity. My son Noah, asked for a couple of nights afterward if we could do Hanukkah that night, but we had to explain to him that it only lasts for eight days. Maybe you would like to celebrate it next year.
In many people’s minds, the idea that Christmas evolved from Pagan feasts is given more credence by the fact that many Christmas customs were observed as part of Pagan religion and culture. Yule logs, holly, mistletoe, and evergreen decorations all play a part in many different Pagan festivals. But does that mean that they all stem from the same source? Lights and trees, revelry and gift-giving are common to many different celebrations in many different cultures. But this doesn’t prove that they are derived from the same source. If Christians use them at Christmas, why assume they were all taken from Paganism?
Here are some good thoughts from John Piper’s wife, Noel:
Over the years, we have chosen not to include Santa Claus in our Christmas stories and decorations. There are several reasons.
First, fairy tales are fun and we enjoy them, but we don’t ask our children to believe them.
Second, we want our children to understand God as fully as they’re able at whatever age they are. So we try to avoid anything that would delay or distort that understanding. It seems to us that celebrating with a mixture of Santa and manger will postpone a child’s clear understanding of what the real truth of God is. It’s very difficult for a young child to pick through a marble cake of part-truth and part-imagination to find the crumbs of reality.
This is a condensed excerpt from a new article on my web site. Every year when the Holidays roll around we get the usual circulated messages about Christmas. One sector of Christendom cries, “Let’s put Christ back in Christmas” and “Jesus is the reason for the season!” Meanwhile another sector says we can’t put Christ back in Christmas because he was never there to begin with. They claim that Christmas is a Pagan feast and any Christian who observes it is committing idolatry. Obviously both sides can’t be right. Is it Pagan? Is it Christian? Is it both? Is it neither? This article is an attempt to sort it out.
In Luke 1:32-33, the angels give us the tip off that it’s all about Jesus being the Christ, the King of an everlasting Kingdom, who will be anointed by the Spirit of God: “He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the LORD God will give him the throne of his father David; and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and his kingdom will have no end.”
Interpretation #1:
From eternity past the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit existed as a community of one, perfect in love, harmony, and joy. In the enternal counsels of this triune God the plan of salvation for the yet-to-be-created human race was decreed. The only question was who would go. Overwhelmed with self-sacrificial love, the Son volunteered to humble himself by uniting humanity to his divinity, veiling his deity by taking on human flesh. Two thousand years ago, this salvation plan was carried out by the second person of the Trinity. He entered the virgin womb of Mary and suddenly she became pregnant with God the Son. He was perfect God and perfect man, not half divine and half human like Hercules, but fully God and fully man in a totally unique way. This incredible event is called the incarnation—the moment when God became man for our salvation. In fact, the cross is not really the most important event for redemption, the incarnation is. For without the humbling act of God giving up his divine prerogatives to condescend to the lowly state of a first century Palestinian Jew, the cross would mean nothing. Thus, in the grand scheme of things, the incarnation is the premier event that brought God to man so that man could be reconciled with God.
“The Christmas message rests on the staggering fact the child in the manger was—God.”—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993).
If you could be a little fly on the wall, in most churches spread across this great nation of ours, during the Advent Season, you might hear the Pastor speak words such as these: “Welcome to our church this morning! We are celebrating that Jesus humbled himself to be born a baby. Although Jesus was God, he took on the form of man, so that he could die for our sins, so that we might be saved.” If you heard this, you might not think anything about it, and just continue on your “merry” Christmas way, celebrating the season and the birth of the Christ-Child. But, I’d like you to take a moment to ponder what we are really celebrating at this time of year.
A new year and a new decade has just begun today. Many people use this time of year to reflect upon the past year and set their New Year’s resolutions or goals of things that they would like to change for the coming year. Many of those resolutions are quickly broken by the end of the day.
This year my wife and I decided to celebrate Hanukkah with our family. We enjoyed it immensely and found it to be entirely compatible with biblical Christianity. My son Noah, asked for a couple of nights afterward if we could do Hanukkah that night, but we had to explain to him that it only lasts for eight days. Maybe you would like to celebrate it next year. 
