What does Christmas mean to you, dear reader? Have you thought about that lately?
It is usually synonymous with holiday, shopping, gathering of family and friends, gifts, church services and of course Santa Claus. Now, more than ever, people from around the world are trying to disassociate Christmas from Jesus Christ, whom we are celebrating His birthday in the first place. And some go to great lengths to lobby that the word Christ be taken out of 'Christmas' so that it is politically correct for today's modern society. So, instead of writing Merry Christmas, people will take the short cut and write Merry X-mas.
Since young I always wondered why X-mas is pronounced as Christmas? After all you don't call the X-men as Christmen or X-ray as Christray, right? If they do, then perhaps we have to start calling the old TV series X-files as Christ-files. It's amazing. When people want to make something acceptable, there are ways and means. We call this self-rationalization. Pretty soon, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In my humble opinion, the main focus on Christmas should and must still be the birth of Jesus Christ. Forget about the fact that it doesn't snow in Israel in December. That's like 2000 years ago. I don't think they have birth certificates or computerised database in those days, right? To go one step further. Each year, in Malaysia we celebrate the birthdays of our King and Sultans. But it's on a gazetted day which is not even the person's actual birthday. Yet, we have military display, etc to celebrate. If people can do this for another human being, I don't see how and why anyone would hold it against Jesus.
So, in closing, as we approach the 25 December 2009 and thereafter January 2010, I would like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and share with you the following scripture:
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that whomsoever shall believe in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life." John3:16
That's the perfect present, won't you say!
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