My Thoughts on Christmas in church

The Saturday after Thanksgiving is the traditional time our church decorates for Christmas. We put up garland and ribbon and banners and a large tree in the corner. I love how our church looks during Christmas time. It is bright and cheerful and it celebrates the glorious gift of love that God gave to his people. People from our church all come and the team sets up everything. It is a great time of celebration and fellowship during the setup. We love to do that.

Some Christians do not like Christmas trees and would never put one in their church. They say that it is a pagan symbol and that December 25 is not Jesus’ real birthday anyway. I say, “lighten up.” No one but God, Mary and Joseph know exactly when Jesus was born. This was for satay reasons, mostly. Because of that we don’t know exactly when Jesus was born, but I want to celebrate the birthday of my Lord and Savior. So do many others, so someone made up the date of December 25 and it has been on the books for close to 2,000 years. It works for me, since the exact date is not as important as the celebration and worship.

So I celebrate Christmas and I lead my church in the celebration of Christmas. We usually spend 4 Sundays celebration Christmas. I preach the Advent of Hope, the Advent of Peace, the Advent of Joy and the Advent of Love. This year there are five Sundays between Thanksgiving and Christmas with Christmas Eve being on a Sunday. So we will focus on the brith of Christ and the work God accomplished that day for five Sundays.

Christmas is always a much bigger celebration than Easter. Of course there are those who say we don’t know when Jesus was crucified, but that fact is not a secret and we can figure that one out. Anyway, we spend 1 Sunday on Easter and a whole month of Christmas. It is just what we do and we enjoy it. I know that throughout the year we celebrate and worship Jesus, we just focus on his birth during Christmas and his death and resurrection on Easter. It is all part of our worship of Christ our King

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