German painting, 1457

Image via Wikipedia

We are in the season of Advent or the season of waiting for our Savior Jesus Christ to be born.  Or as it has become known the Christmas Shopping Season.

For the past several years groups have been spending a lot of time and energy advocating around Christmas time.  Some like Focus on the Family do campaigns encouraging you to boycott stores that don’t advertise Christmas – using generic words like holiday. They’ve actually taken it to the extreme this year setting up a rating system using terms like Christmas-friendly, Christmas-negligent, and Christmas-offensive.

Other groups have been less concerned with the terminology used but more with the idea of getting back to the meaning behind Christmas and focusing less on the materialism side.  One group this year is called Advent Conspiracy. Which is trying to encourage people to give the gift of presence this year.  Their campaign has four tenants –

  1. Worship Fully
  2. Spend Less
  3. Give More
  4. Love All

What do you think? Christmas has always been a special time of seeing friends and family and celebrating the birth of Jesus. But as I’ve gotten older it has been harder and harder to come up with gift ideas for myself and for my family.  It seems that I buy myself the vast majority of things as I need them or the things I’d like to get are unrealistic – a new laptop, a suit, etc – for any one person to buy. I’ve told my mom for years that she didn’t have to get me anything special, a gift card would be fine.  Unfortunately, her primary love language is giving gifts – so she has to give gifts!

I really enjoyed this video from Advent Conspiracy.

It is crazy how much money gets spent each year, how much debt is incurred, all in the name of our Savior.  He would not be pleased with this.  Do you remember that He was born in a barn? Yes, next to the animals.  He is not honored by our extravagant gift giving. He is honored by the love that we share with those around us.  He is not honored by lots of decoratively colored boxes under a dead tree.  He is honored when we are willing to sacrifice our lives for others, like He did on top of a dead tree.

Just some things to ponder this Christmas…

HT Carol’s Place

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