According to the Bible, God quietly entered our world as a human baby, and Christmas celebrates that event – but what does it mean to me, personally?
Years ago I accepted why Jesus was born – to save me from my sins (Matthew 1:21), but it still left me wondering why he had to be human [...]
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It’s coming up to Christmas and my sister’s dying. It must be deeply saddening for her family, especially at Christmas-time with all its wonderful memories of shopping for gifts, decorating the tree together, preparing the Christmas dinner and relaxing in that special warmth that only Christmas, it seems, can create.
I’m so glad, therefore, that Christmas [...]
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Imagine the Managing Director of a major business stripping off his pinstripe suit and dressing instead in the clothes of the drabbest job in the company, and then quietly, without anyone noticing, he slips downstairs to the basement and takes on a menial job that pays him just enough to survive. And later, when he [...]
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Jesus came to free us from religion, but Santa Claus is the world’s response. And it’s the typical response of toxic religion.
While Jesus was here with us he made it abundantly clear that he is the source of our salvation, not our efforts or our behaviour (as religion would like us to believe). But in [...]
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Jesus spent a lot of his time here talking to people about the Kingdom of God, because with his coming the doors to that Kingdom were being thrown open to everyone. That’s why he told people to “seek” the Kingdom, because from that point on anyone could find the Kingdom if he or she went [...]
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For years I’ve battered Christmas as a travesty of what the season is supposed to be about, zeroing in on its faults, excesses, obligatory giving, pagan origins and huge exploitation by business.
But what is Christmas supposed to be about? In the original story, it’s about God coming as one of us to rescue us from [...]
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Ripples of horror shook through the family when Aunt Jane suddenly announced by email last October, “I’m sorry everyone, I just can’t do Christmas anymore.”
Her sister, the alpha female in the family and the Drill Sergeant organizer of the Family Christmas every year, struck back with the speed of a viper who’d just been trodden [...]
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“So, what did you get for Christmas?” kids want to know – but what did Jesus get for Christmas? Because it was his birthday, right? So what did he get?
What he got arrived on his doorstep from hundreds of miles away, tucked away in the saddle bags of some very important people. And those gifts [...]
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Every year now there are two Christmases going on – Christmas and Xmas.
Xmas used to be an abbreviation of Christmas, but nowadays it’s a holiday all its own, and it’s all secular with nothing religious attached to it at all. It glorifies the mythical Santa Claus, not Jesus Christ, and it pastes over the birth [...]
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A whole hour of talk radio was taken up with the rules of Christmas gift-giving. One lady was complaining bitterly that she really puts some thought into finding the right gifts for people but all she gets in return is the usual stuff like perfume that takes only a few minutes to find and purchase. [...]
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