WHAT HAVE I DECIDED ABOUT CHRISTMAS? Dr. Josimar Salum

WHAT HAVE I DECIDED ABOUT CHRISTMAS? Dr. Josimar Salum

 There is a current tendency among evangelicals to combat the celebration of Christmas. Someone wrote to me: “We are from Jerusalem and not from Rome.  We have to rescue everything that was stolen from us, which comes from the Jews and not an imposed custom, from Rome. This Christmas is not for Christians ... This altar decorated with lights in the city that our children learn to admire is nothing more than an altar to a pagan god. Our culture and customs have trapped many Christians in Rome, when the revelation of the Word came from the Jews (from Jerusalem); we have to rescue the Biblical feasts, instituted by our God. ”

According to this evangelical trending of not celebrating Christmas, I will no longer give gifts to my family and friends because “exchange of gifts ... on this date means that we worship a pagan god, where the Nordic ritual demanded that they go to the mountains at dawn  and there wept in sacrifices. They waited for the first rays of morning sun and gave gifts to one another in worship, saying, "May you never forget the gods over us."

 “The gift means eternalizing the pact, bringing the blessing of the gods. Tertullian, a Catholic theologian, said that he could not condone this lie, the sun can never be god, because the God of Christians was the One who created the sun..”

Who, a disciple of Jesus, in his right mind would give his son a gift as if he were worshiping the sun?  What exaggeration is this ingrained in a religious heart?  What power is this that this myth has in imposing a meaning on my gesture of giving a gift as if I were worshiping some deity?  As if visiting a church made me devoted to the saint for which it was built, as if taking a bath in the Ganges River made me a practitioner of Hindu purification or if visiting Mecca, if I could, I became a Muslim.  Is it not the intention of the heart that makes you a worshiper as God said that “these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me?

What harm does it take, despite the mercantilist “frenzy” of shopping malls, to enjoy the cultural nuances of Christmas, that is, their aspects and the slight differences between them, as long as I do not participate in the fruitless works of darkness that are avarice,  idolatry, impurity and greed? (See Ephesians 5).  

What harm or sin there is in admiring the creativity of the streets at Christmas time, decorated with white, red and blue lights;  amidst the heat of Brazilian December imagine the snow, looking at the white cotton on the trees and on the ground or giving and receiving gifts without worshiping a god? And even knowing that Jesus was not born in December, in the winter of the United States?

For in truth, parents, disciples of Jesus who give gifts to their children, have nothing to do with Nordic practice, nor do they know what that means!

In my own home we never had Christmas trees, much less with pentagrams, balls, garlands, guinomes and other animals, however, I know hundreds of houses of Christian friends and family who decorate their houses with “Christmas trees” without any pagan symbol. “Ah! The tree is already a pagan symbol! ” Pagan for you who see everything in this world as impure. Why would you judge them and in a burst of fanaticism would you say that not even a tree should have because even the tree is already a pagan symbol? Was it not Jesus, the Creator, who made the tree? How would the rainbow now become a symbol of some human movement when in fact it is the symbol of the covenant that God made with man to no longer destroy with water what is on Earth?

Years ago I attended a Christmas concert at my nephew Filipe's school. All the students, more than 700, practically filled the auditorium.

A beautiful orchestra of violins, cellos and a piano played Christmas hymns that announced the coming of the Savior Jesus to the world.

The orchestra composed by the school's own students sang musical pieces about the joy of all men.

Then a choir of teenagers sang about the Word made flesh, the boy who filled the elders of the Jerusalem temple with admiration for the answers he gave them.

The choir also sang about the man from Nazareth, the Son of God, who went to Jordan to be baptized by John.

The choir sang about the voice they heard that day: "You are My Beloved Son in Who is all My pleasure."

The teen choir sang the garden prayer, which Jesus made to the Father in Gethsemane and the answer he gave him saying he would do his Will.

The choir sang of His crucifixion and death, of His burial and of which the third was resurrected.

The choir with its songs proclaimed the Gospel.

I was amazed just to think that only here in the United States thousands and thousands of schools this week celebrated the same party, a tradition since the first Christian settlers who arrived here, at a time when there were no "shopping centers" nor all this "extravaganza" related  with this date.

At the same time, I was terrified to think that everything related to Christmas, especially and exclusively with respect to the birth of Jesus, the only thing that remains to mention Jesus Christ, in the midst of what we know today is this  corrupt and perverse culture, it will disappear due to a movement of evangelicals to end, destroy and eliminate Christmas and its festivities.

I was terrified to think seriously that this is exactly what happens in Russia, North Korea, Vietnan and China communists with their billions of inhabitants, in Muslim countries also with their millions and millions of inhabitants, across India and their countries  neighbors with its millions and millions of inhabitants, in short, in practically all of Asia and East. There is no Christmas!

When its millions and millions of children wake up in the morning on December 25th, there is not the slightest mention or even the slightest possibility of anyone asking what date this is so special about a name Jesus.

Because half the world does not know the paganisms of Christmas, it is true, a lot of paganism; does not know the joy of gifts that are on the way, which shared today have nothing to do with the practice of the pagans hundreds of years ago, but they also cannot hear the story of the Savior who came into the world, who was born in Bethlehem,  whatever day it was. They do not hear about the God who became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory as the glory of the only begotten of the Father.

Only out of fanaticism would I ever decide to celebrate with my family and millions and millions of Christians the Christmas of Yeshua, yes, the birth of Jesus.

Only in a slight imagination would he stop singing His beautiful hymns, of the Savior who came into the world.

Only in imagination and very fleeting, would I miss the opportunity to proclaim the Message of the Cross and the meaning of the Name of Jesus, the Savior of the sins of His people, in the midst of all this greedy commercialization and all the pagan symbols that were associated  to the Birth of my Savior.

I would decide, just like a light vapor in my head, to scratch once and for all the only opportunity to proclaim and redeem the true message of the Gospel of the Kingdom that still remains in the midst of culture.

Who was born in Bethlehem was not a boy. Who was born in Bethlehem was the King of the whole Earth. And I adore Him with all my heart and vibrate like a child again about Christmas that for me and for millions of people continues and will continue to be about the Birth of Jesus.

 #ASONE