Celebrating Christmas and christmas

This year I found that I was struggling with Christmas. The "spirit" just wasn't there. I didn't want to decorate or give gifts or anything along those lines. Growing up, Christmas was always about the tree and gifts and being told to stop singing all those silly songs (when you have a mom who works at a Christmas themed market, I can now see why it would be a bit much to continue hearing Christmas carols after suffering through them for 4 days would be a bit much) and I remember once wondering why people sang songs about Bethlehem and Jesus as we didn't celebrate that part. I also dimly recall wondering if we were allowed to celebrate Christmas if we didn't believe in Christ. This year it seemed as though I was trying to reconcile the secular holiday with my faith and it just wasn't working.

Eventually I got involved in conversations about secular christmas (which I call "little 'c' christmas" which annoys the spell checker) which is all about the gift giving. I also caught a segment on one of the Christian based radio stations about how when Martin Luther declared that Saints were idols and their feasts shouldn't be celebrated any more, people decided to hang up stockings so "baby Jesus will fill them with presents" for their kids (I haven't tried to dig up the information about this but I do remember hearing it) because that was one feast day everyone seemed to enjoy. I also read this article written by an alum from my college.

I started to realize that there really are two celebrations in this country. There is the Christian celebration recognizing the birth of Jesus and the far more secular one celebrated by lots of people that involve gift giving and often involve a man in a red suit. It really hit me when I was listening to the radio while driving to church to serve for the Christmas services and I heard this program. The first part is really interesting about the Christmas truce of 1914. It then gets into gift giving and then further into raising kids around the culture of Christmas when you aren't Christian. That's what really got my attention. And it turns out a lot of people of other faiths (or non-faiths) celebrate secular christmas.

At some point during all of this, I realized that I was doing the same. I was celebrating my faith by serving at 6 Christmas services. If I hadn't served, I still would have gone to at least the 11pm service, which was scripture readings and carols. We as a family also celebrated christmas on the 25th with opening gifts and time spent together. We don't do Santa which is primarily about the kids knowing who is giving them their gifts. One friend doesn't do Santa for her kids because she doesn't want them to question their faith in Jesus when they get older and realize that Santa isn't real.

I know that a lot of the "traditions" around Christmas aren't Christian in their origin. I'm aware that December 25th isn't really the day Jesus was born but it's the day that was chosen long ago to celebrate His birth. I do like that we celebrate in the middle of winter as it is a reminder of our Hope that God has given us.

I feel much less conflicted now than I did before the holidays. Both have a place in my life though celebrating the birth of Jesus will always be more important to me than exchanging gifts and decorating the house. Those are great moments to share but they aren't my hope or salvation.

Discernment

According to the Google search I just did, discernment is

1. the ability to judge well. ("an astonishing lack of discernment")
2.  (in Christian contexts) perception in the absence of judgment with a view to obtaining spiritual direction and understanding. ("without providing for a time of healing and discernment, there will be no hope of living through this present moment without a shattering of our common life")

The even neater thing, which I've just discovered, is that it will show you a graph to measure mentions of the word over time. It's not all that shocking that the word discernment went from 0.0008% in 1800 to 0.001% is 2000.






I'm sure I'm not alone in not really knowing how to really discern. I've started listening to a radio show run by Naomi's Table. It's helping me to hear scripture every day. It's step one of getting myself into the Word every day and it's not always easy. It's much easier to just listen to whatever is on the radio but I don't feel the same fullness in my spirit as I do when I listen to podcasts of these episodes. (I also have been downloading sermons and listening to those as well.)

Last week, one of the episodes was about discernment. This seems to have been a big thing for me lately as it isn't the first thing that I've listened to that has talked about discernment.

One verse that keeps coming back to me is Romans 12:2 (Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect, ESV). 

There's that pesky word discern again. But I think it's actually a good word. It is very easy for me to follow what others tell me. This verse is telling me to test things against God's Word instead of emptying my mind and letting the world fill it with things. 

Listening to this particular episode, I caught mention of yoga and that had me thinking about whether Christians should practice it as the women in the show were suggesting that we shouldn't because yoga teaches to empty your mind and many of the poses are worship to Hindu gods. This caught my mind because I do yoga. And when I say "do" what I really mean is that when I find a break in my schedule, I go to one or maybe two classes over a couple of weeks and stretch out all of the knots that I've accumulated from life. 

I'm not overly dedicated to it and I find it ridiculous that the instructors end the session by saying "nameste" because most people in the room don't know what it means. I don't actually say it. Each session starts with instruction to empty your mind, which I don't do. I let go of the things that are stressing me out but I don't empty my mind. I know enough to realize that leaving my mind empty means anything could get into it. Instead, I focus on God.

Having heard on this podcast that Christians shouldn't do yoga, I did the thing any semi-decent blogger would do; I went to the internet. I googled about it and sent messages to my friend who introduced me (and she teaches) to Naomi's Table. I've seen arguments on both sides. And then, as I was listening to the Bible study on the same podcast (I think it was the same one), I heard my friend's voice mention that we shouldn't expect our pastors to chew up the word and regurgitate the Word for us and that we shouldn't always be eating the spiritual equivalent of baby food (the pastor at my church has said the same thing; during sermons he'll only show short verses so that people get use to holding and reading the Bible).  We are expected to dig into the Bible ourselves and discern God's will.

So there I was, looking for the baby food option to my question. I wanted someone else to do the hard work for me. Then it hit me during the Bible study that I've probably graduated from having everything spoon fed to me. I've still young in my faith but I should be looking into things myself instead of waiting for others to tell me what God wants for me. I'm pretty sure that letting others tell me will just led me down wrong paths. I still don't know the Bible as well as I should. My small group did a Bible study through the entire thing but I missed most of it. I still have the book that our pastor wrote (I believe it was a team effort actually) to help get through it and I'm pretty sure I know what I'll be doing with my new year.