I have one really great Christmas memory. I was elementary school age. After the Christmas parade, in which I had marched with my baton twirling class, my best friend and I were allowed to run around downtown enjoying our giant candy canes. This was 1970's, it was a real downtown, lights, music, happy shoppers, the works, an American Christmas!
For about 35 years of my life I believed Christmas was a Holy Day, an important Christian celebration, and as an adult, I religiously put up those decorations. I accumulated debt to buy the gifts I was expected to provide in the family gift exchange, plus the excessive gifts for my kids, I attended Christmas Eve candlelight ceremony, I did all the stuff and found myself feeling empty and discontented every year. I was expecting more. I was expecting an encounter with God.
While raising my boys I couldn't bring myself to lie to them about Santa (or Easter bunny, or tooth fairy either). I had planned to do the whole Santa thing, but when it came down to it I couldn't. When the kids asked, I just told them it was a make believe game people play during the holidays. No Santa wasn't real, yes your family bought the gifts, yes I had them hid till I placed them under the tree, no it's not about Jesus, and please don't tell other kids who are playing the make believe game with their parents. I did, however, get a birthday cake for Jesus every year. Lol, I don't do that any more either.
My marriage (ex-husband) was contentious, we weren't friends and I was depressed. I am thankful for this situation because I am convinced that my misery lead me to seek my Creator and Savior in desperation. Because of my emptiness and ache for a connection with my Elohim(God) I was eager for Him to show up on Christmas (and Easter) and let His presence be known to me. Each year I was disappointed at Christmas (and Easter). He wasn't there. When I cried out for truth, a broken woman, He began to show me the answers.
Creator YHVH gave His Children His Holy Days, His Appointed Times, and His instructions about when to meet with him and how to love Him and His creation. He has set appointments to meet with us. His meeting times have not changed, He hasn't changed. And the big thing for me at the time, was learning that Christmas and Easter, and Sundays were not included in His meeting times. I was showing up to meet Him at the wrong times. No wonder Xmas seemed so empty, it is. Yes, Yah is available to us 24/7, but that doesn't negate His appointed times, they still stand.
It's been 25 years or so now, and I don't miss Xmas at all. The debt, the stress, the questionable pagan traditions, I miss none of it. Some family members are still disappointed that I don't participate, but I just try to be obedient to The Word. People say, "Jesus is the reason for the Season", but that's just not true. That chosen date, the celebration, the decorations, and the festivities were all going on before the Birth of Yahusha/Jesus and had nothing to do with him. Xmas, or the Winter Solstice has been honored since ancient Babylon for rulers who claimed to be deity, as their birth date. Do your own research. Truth matters to me, I am not interested in compromises when it comes to doing Bible things in Bible ways.
It's been such freedom to shed the traditions of men for the Instructions of Yah.
A work in progress
Teresa
*Photos are of my actual hometown downtown and Xmas parade.
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