Holy Day, Holiday, or Hollow Day?

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.   Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. Deut 6:4-9

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving.  In our house the most important event on Thanksgiving, is not the meal, but the Macey’s Thanksgiving Day parade.  Not that we actually watch it, but we did when our children were younger.  The kids wanted to start Christmas season in October, but we could not stand Christmas carols or talk about Santa so early in the year. So we set a rule that we would not talk about Christmas until Santa showed up in Times Square.  From that point on, the Macey’s Parade became at our house the official start of the Christmas season. 

I wish stores had a similar rule. Christmas decorations have been showing up in stores for more than a month now.  By now, the commercials of Christmas are in everywhere.  At some point we have to say “enough is enough.”

Please do not think though that I’m against Christmas.  However, the secular part of Christmas far overshadows the spiritual part. It is so bad that some believers are giving up the celebration altogether.  An article appeared a few years ago in Christianity Today entitled “let the Devil have the holiday!”  I can understand what the author means—sometimes it just doesn’t seem worth it to fight for true meaning of Christmas.

Even so, there are good spiritual reasons for embracing Christmas.  From the earliest times, Christians have celebrated Christ’s coming and birth. God’s people have chosen days to remember great events.  These dates enable us to write the Law of God on the calendar.   It is one way that the people of God remember the Law.  In Deuteronomy, God tells us to keep the memory of the Law alive by writing it on our doorposts and on our hands. In every way we can reinforce the memory of God’s works we should do so. Put it on your bumpers with stickers. Hang in on you walls as plaques, make God’s Word part of your lives in any way you can.

To do this, God commanded the keeping of Holy Days. The commanded holy days in the Bible included Passover, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of the Tabernacles.  In addition there are references to other holy days that were celebrated when great events occurred, such as Purim. These days were Sabbath days, just like Saturday observances.  So there were not just fifty-two Sabbaths in a year, but at least sixty-one.  Holy days were Sabbaths.

A Sabbath was a day with two purposes--to honor God and to do nothing else.  Imagine spending sixty one days a year doing nothing but honoring God! It was this kind of devotion of time and energy to worship that enabled God’s people to survive the sinfulness of the world. 

The two components of the Sabbath—honoring God and resting, we carried over into our Christian concept of Christmas and Easter.  These are holy days, to devote ourselves to Christ’s coming into the world, and Christ’s death and resurrection.  When they are rightly celebrated, they are a powerful tool to help us grow into the image of Christ, which is a Christian’s proper goal for life.

There is a common misconception today that the date of Christmas was chosen to coincide with a Roman celebrations.  Actually, December 25 was chosen in 336 AD, because they believed that Christ’s conception was believed to have occurred on March 25, nine months before Christmas. There is no historical evidence any date, but the early church was not interested in accuracy on dates. They only wanted a day to remember the birth of Christ.

Before Christmas and Easter, the early church celebrated a period of fasting and prayer, to prepare for the day. These times were called Advent and Lent. Something was given up for these times—food, time, or comfort.  After the holy day came a time of rejoicing and festivities, made better by the fasting before.    

What changed?  Christmas has become no longer a holy day. Now it is a holiday. The celebration of Christmas became bigger than Christmas itself and its meaning has become lost.

Think about what Deuteronomy says about the Law or God being posted on doorframes and worn on the hands and foreheads. Think about how some enterprising merchants could sell people plaques from their doorframes (they’re called mezuzahs) and boxes (they’re called phylacteries) to tie to their hands.  Suppose people who were not Jewish saw these boxes and plaques and decided to put them up, even though they did not believe the Law.  They decided instead of putting up God’s law, they would wear or display their own.  Then the message of wearing the plaques or the boxes would be lost. Everyone would have their own.  In time,  the message of the plaques and the boxes would be gone.

That’s what has happened to Christmas. Christmas is a commercial gold mine.  Other messages have been so attached to it, that the rememberance of Christ’s incarnation is lost. 

A holy day is a way of remembering God’s word. It is God’s Law written on the calendar.  Once the calendar has been filled with family and social events, the message of the date is lost.   The point of Christmas is o bring Jesus into our calendar as Lord of it, not as a date on it. 

As Sabbath is a day for honoring God and resting from our labors. A holiday is a day for rest, but it is not a day for honoring God.  As such, a holiday has benefit, though not as much as a Sabbath. We may not honor God on Labor Day or Memorial Day, but as least we get a day off. A holiday is a good thing, a time for restoration and enjoying God’s beautiful world, and love for others is a good thing, not a bad thing. But holidays without the memories of why they exist quickly just hollow days—they do not remain holidays for long.  Holidays, vacations, and Sabbaths give us that rest.  Take it away and work becomes destructive.  Without rest, holidays become hollow days.

On TV and he radio, biggest event of this last weekend was not Thanksgiving, but Black Friday—the day when stores are open twenty-four hours to accommodate Christmas shopping. Store clerks go without sleep so that people who have may rush to the stores to do their Christmas chores.  The spirit of the holiday is the spirit of Black Friday--rush, rush, rush, worry, worry, worry.  Did I get enough presents? Is dinner going to be ready?  Is our family Christmas gathering going to resemble a Norman Rockwell painting or train wreck on the Polar Express?  We see more heart attacks, suicides, and nervous breakdowns at Christmas than at any other time of year. Our holy day become a holiday, but now has become a hollow day, which neither brings us spiritual renewal nor any rest, and only a little enjoyment. For many, Christmas is a huge obligation that never ends.    

What’s the solution?

If we want to keep the Christ first, give Him the first of our time.

I want to challenge you to something this month that will change your life.  If you are not already doing it, commit at least a half hour of study and meditation.  Devote yourselves to devotions this Christmas.

I can imagine what may be going through many of your minds --“That’s impossible! There’s gifts to buy, kids to get off to school, cooking to do, pageants to hold. It all takes so much time!” 

But isn’t that the point? Everything takes time away from what we really should be doing. Christmas time is for Christ.  The Christmas season is a time for preparing to meet Him.   All the events of Christmas are for the Christian merely ways of reminding ourselves to do. 

Celebrate stillness this season.  “Be still and know that I am God.” If your holiday planning doesn’t allow you time for stillness, then you are too busy.  This month would be a good time to renew your prayer life.  This would be a good time to reread the gospels, all of them.  This would also be a good time for long, quiet walks, and thought of how God has blessed you in Christ.

My favorite moment of the Christmas season is not present openings or family gatherings, but Christmas Eve after the service, when all has been done and we can talk long walks through the neighborhood under the Christmas lights.  I the stillness of the night we feel closest to God, and can remember the glories of the incarnation.  Stillness is needed to sense God’s presence.

I also challenge you to worship this Christmas. Come and participate in Christmas services.  Most of us would never think of going through a Christmas season without trying to be with family.  But the family of God is our real family.    If you have to leave your family at the dinner table and go worship, do it, because He is the reason for the season.

I also challenge you to stay focused. We don’t have to give up Christmas, but we can reorient it.  We can stop buying so many presents, and such elaborate ones.  We can stop overeating and over-decorating. We can take the time to get back to our Christian heritage, our Christian roots, and see the blessings of the season, and the celebration of Christ.  

This is not a Law, but a suggestion. The purpose of all we do to remember Christ is to please Him, not appease Him.  When we are dealing with an angry person, we appease them. When we are dealing with a person who loves and accepts us, we seek to please them.

Imagine your mother shows up at your house unexpectedly, and you house is a mess. What would you do?  If you loved your mother, you would let her in. You might try to pick up around the house while she was there, but you would mainly enjoy her coming.  If you feared your mother, you would make some excuse not to let her in until you had cleaned house. Your housecleaning, because you know she would be angry, and you would want to appease her anger. At Christmas, God dropped in on us unexpectedly, and our lives were a mess when He came.  If we shut Him out, because are not ready, then our efforts are to appease Him. But God does not need appeasing.  His coming shows us that He already loves us.  What we do to worship and celebrate Him is to please Him, not appease Him   His love is already secure.

This season, celebrate that love.  Write it on the doorposts and on our hands, make the time to put Him first, and our Christmas will be a holy day, not a hollow day.