Christmas to Celebrate or Not

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Welcome to another

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Theology Throwdown. I am your host Andrew Rappaport, the Executive Director of the Christian Podcast Community, of which this is a proud member, and this podcast is actually a podcast of all the podcasters at Christian Podcast Community, of which, well, we have at least six represented here today.

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So, as we usually do, we're going to give a round table. Before we do, I will tell you the topic. Today's topic is

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Christmas. Well, it is December. Isn't that what everyone else is talking about? Well, actually, no, not everyone does.

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Some Christians think we shouldn't celebrate Christmas. That'll be one of the topics tonight. And so, let's start with our round table.

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We'll start with Pastor Dominic, if you don't mind introducing yourself, your show, and how people can find you.

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Why would they want to? Wait. Yeah, that's the question. That's the question I want to ask too.

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Why would people want to? Pastor Dominic Romaldi, I do a show from the

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Christian Podcast Community called Street Talk Theology, where we take theology and bring it to the streets.

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I also pastor here at Desert Sky Baptist Church here in Casa Grande, and it's always an honor to be on with my fellow podcasters.

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Aaron, how about you? My name is Aaron Brewster. Sometimes people know me as AM Brewster, and I am the president of Evermind Ministries.

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There are a number of ministries that are part of Evermind. Two of them happen to be

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Truth Love Parent, which is also a podcast that I have on this network, and we're taking a little hiatus from that one right now.

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But the other one is the Celebration of God, which we have a lot to say about Christmas and various other holidays from a biblical perspective.

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So, I'm really looking forward to this conversation here today. You can go to truthloveparent .com or ambrewster .com

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or celebrationofgod .com to learn more about any of those. So, what you're basically saying is either whatever we say here is going to be corrected on the

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Celebration of God the rest of the month, or we're providing you show prep. One or the other, right?

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Yeah, basically, I will have more to say. Actually, we look at this section of time starting in December as the season of grace, and we're actually doing a couple of series right now about the grace of God.

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I'm not really talking too much about Christmas. I have talked a lot about in the past, and those episodes are available, but not going to talk about Christmas a lot right now.

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So, this is my one opportunity to do it. Okay, next up is Eve. Hey, good evening.

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I'm Eve Franklin, and I'm co -host of the podcast, Are You Just Watching?, and I also have a workbook called

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Are You Just Watching?, in which we discuss secular entertainment, how to watch secular entertainment with a

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Christian worldview, and we sometimes publish podcasts that get Andrew into trouble.

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I was going to comment something about that, the fact that I listened to your show without watching too many of the movies, but I got myself in trouble just tweeting things out about things

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I listened to your podcast, and well, I didn't word things the best. We'll just leave it at that.

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If you want more details, you could go to my Apologetics Live podcast and hear it all. Melissa.

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Sure. So, I'm Melissa Lex, and my podcast is Thoroughly Equipped, and we just basically go through women's ministry teachings.

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We look at the speakers that are very popular in that sphere, and we compare them to Scripture.

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And recently, or this month, we'll be going through Christian mysticism and looking at how the

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IF ministry from Jani Allen brings in Christian mystics, and so we're going to dive into that very deeply.

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That will be good. I'm going to look forward to that. Last up is Brett. My name is

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Brett Collier, and I host the Christian Rebel Podcast. Basically, on the Christian Rebel Podcast, we follow the teachings of Romans 12 -2, which says,

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Do not conform to the pattern of this world. Essentially, by not conforming to this world, we are rebelling against the world and conform with the

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Christ, so be a rebel and follow Jesus. You can find us at christianrebelpodcast .com

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and also on the christianpodcastcommunity .org. And I am your host here,

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Andrew Rappaport. I host some other podcasts. One is, I already mentioned, Apologetics Live, where the most recent one

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I had to explain a comment I made about superheroes based off of E's review of Black Adam.

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So I'm just, for the record, I think with the group we have here, I think Brett is Batman and Aaron is Superman.

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I don't know, they just, that's the characters they look like to me. But anyway. Yes. But I've been told that that's probably not good, because I guess one of you is

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DC, one's Marvel, and you guys aren't supposed to get along. So okay. You just totally messed that up, man.

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We're both DC. Come on, bro. Well, there we go. You called them

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Spider -Man, then we didn't have an issue. And Captain America is Marvel. So the other two are

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DC. My pop culture intellect is so high, or non -existent.

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My other podcast is Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report, which if you're listening to this show,

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I'll give you a little hint. There's a voice here, one of the six voices that you're going to hear on my

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Rapp Report next week as we talk about the topic of regeneration. Which voice is it? Well, the people know which ones they're not, and the one person knows who he is, but you're going to have to listen to that to find out.

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So that's how you try and tease people in, but it won't work. So today we're going to talk about Christmas.

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Now, I'm going to say for the record, before I ask the first question, I did not grow up with Christmas, celebrating

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Christmas. And so I remember when I first became a Christian, and everybody that I went to church with, when

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I started going to church, told me that I needed a Christmas tree. And I had one response to everybody.

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You give me a good reason why I need a Christmas tree, other than the fact that you grew up with one, and I'll get one.

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Needless to say, I never bought a Christmas tree. My wife eventually did. But so I want to say this up front, that I think that we have some views of Christmas that I've seen in Christianity get emotional, and I think some of it is based in nostalgia.

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Some of it is just based in the fact that this is the way we grew up. I believe you all need a menorah, and for eight days you sing in Hebrew and light candles.

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That's nostalgic to me. So one of the first questions I want to ask each of us is the question of, should

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Christians celebrate Christmas? And I don't know each of the views here, so maybe one of you guys, guys and girls,

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I should say, one of you will have a view that we shouldn't, and therefore the rest of the questions may end up just ending right there with you.

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I'll start in order that we have here right now. I'll just start with Pastor Dom. Should Christians celebrate

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Christmas? And I guess then that might answer whether you do, but I'll ask that because maybe you think

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Christians should, but you don't. Should Christians celebrate Christmas, and do you? Yeah, I think the

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Bible is clear that there's freedom in Christ. I mean, should they celebrate

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Christmas? That would be their choice. We're Italian. We celebrate everything, but normally, but you know...

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Wait, wait, wait. You celebrate everything because you're Italian, which means there's food. That means we like to eat.

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We like to eat. That's what I mean. No, I think there is freedom in Christ.

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I mean, if you're celebrating it, I, my thing is that what

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I try to do in my celebration of Christmas, even when I preach in the church, if I'm doing Christmas sermons,

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I always implement the resurrection of Christ. I don't keep Christ in the cradle.

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So in any of my sermons that I preach during Christmas, I let them know that we serve a resurrected

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Christ. I think the world and its ideologies want to keep

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Christ in the cradle. So I don't see a problem if people celebrate it or not celebrate it.

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So that's my view. Aaron, how about you?

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You have a whole podcast about the celebration of God focused on holidays and festivals, so...

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Yeah. Well, what Pastor Dom said is correct. There is liberty for believers to celebrate a certain holiday or to not celebrate a certain holiday, but here's my perspective on this.

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I believe every born again believer in one way or another or at one time or another is going to celebrate,

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I'll put it this way in air quotes, Christmas, meaning the main focus that most

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Christians have... Let me rephrase that. The main focus that most

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Bible -believing, God -honoring, God -focused Christians try to have during Christmas time is something that you can't avoid as a

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Christian. I mean, generally speaking, this is kind of a whole other topic, but to deny the virgin birth, you can't be a

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Christian. You can't truly be born again to deny the virgin birth. You're going to read through the scriptures and you're going to encounter the fact that Christ came to this earth.

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The incarnation was obviously very important to all of our salvation. So to meet a

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Christian who in one way or another doesn't celebrate the main themes, the main biblical themes of Christmas, I don't think they exist.

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Whether or not they do that on December 25th might be an interesting question, but I think that we all do. And I think even that the

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Christians, maybe even the Christians here today who would say, no, I don't celebrate it on the 25th.

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We don't get a tree. We don't do any of that kind of stuff. I still believe in some way or another they do reflect on and they do celebrate

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God for the incarnation. All right, Eve, how about you?

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Well, I don't see any harm in having a day set aside that you spend with family and especially if that is centered around a remembrance of Christ coming to earth in his incarnated form.

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I don't see a harm in it. I also don't see a harm in not celebrating it as a holiday.

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I think I've always seen Christmas as being a time to reconnect with your family and especially have a chance to maybe even witness to unsaved family because it's the chance where where your

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Christian walk can actually intersect with a secular holiday that everybody observes.

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And so that gives you that opportunity to, hey, do you know what Christmas is really about and why it became a holiday in the world?

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And it's not just a U .S. holiday. It's a global holiday and this is why.

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And then on top of that, I would say that Christian parents who then use

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Christmas as an opportunity to preserve myths of Santa Claus and elves and and all of that stuff are probably harming their children because and we can get that into that further.

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Oh, yes, we will. Melissa, how about you? Yeah, so when you pose that question,

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I'm thinking should we celebrate Christmas? Should again, we have the liberty to treat each day.

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Well, that's the way I try to think of it, try to treat each day equally.

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So I'm always trying to celebrate Christ in some way. But then I go to what's the definition of Christmas?

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What do people when when they say Christmas, what is included in that? So I agree with all that was completely said, and especially

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I like that A .M. Brewster mentioned about how we do all at one point talk about and celebrate and come to worship or think about the the virgin birth.

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Right. But yeah, Christmas in regards to some of the traditions

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I we ourselves don't. So we celebrate what we call

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Christmas. And we do look at the reading of Christ coming into the world.

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And we do focus on that. And then we do have family gathering and we open gifts. And but the

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Santa Claus and the other stuff. Yeah, we don't do that. OK, we're going to get into that more in a bit.

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Brett, how about you? I totally agree with what everyone said that we have liberty in Christ to celebrate

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Christmas. I celebrate Christmas, even though I'm a bit of a scrooge sometimes because I've been in retail for 15 years and listening to Christmas music for 15 years has kind of killed me of Christmas.

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So I say bah humbug to all of it, except about Christ, keeping Christ first.

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And because the world has commercialized it, it's all about gift giving. And when

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I grew up, my dad would read us the Bible story of Jesus being born. And then he would go into Jesus dying on the cross and resurrection.

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He would preach a sermon before we had a chance to open up one gift growing up, which was kind of cool.

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And I did that with my kids until one of them's out of the house now in college, and I still have one at home. But we read the

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Christmas story before we open our presents and we keep Christ first. That's good.

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So let me ask this, and I'm just going to put it out for anyone to unmute. Have you guys run into anyone that believes we should not as Christians celebrate

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Christmas? Yeah, I actually know people that will be very adamant this time of year.

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They start posting things that Christians shouldn't do this. They'll talk about how pagan it is.

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I think we've all agreed it's we kind of see it as a Christian liberty, not saying you're not saved by doing it or not saved by not doing it either way.

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But have you guys run into people that have these strong views against Christmas?

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I have run into a couple. Go ahead, Melissa. Tag, you're it. Okay. Yes, because I have some

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Jehovah's Witness friends. That's all. Okay. So then before Aaron goes, explain that because maybe not everyone knows the

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Jehovah Witnesses' views. Why do you, because you're saying it and expecting us all to know.

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And so they don't celebrate holidays. They don't even, from the friends that I know, and it is still a little amount.

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They don't celebrate birthdays either because it places, they say it's like a, it worships humans or man -made tradition instead of their beliefs.

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Aaron. Though I've encountered some

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Jewish Christians, some Messianic Jews who prefer to take a more

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Jewish approach to this time of year. So I've encountered some people like that. But most of the people

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I interact with are the kind of like the hard line types who would kind of put

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Christmas and Halloween on the same level. It's pagan, it's wicked, you're encouraging, you're celebrating these things that Christians shouldn't be celebrating.

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That's most of what I've encountered. There is an element that we historically have to recognize that this was originally a pagan holiday,

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December 25th, that was Christianized by the Roman Catholic Church. And they gave it a, you know,

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I don't want to be a spoiler alert for anyone, Jesus wasn't born in December 25th.

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So, which actually on a side note becomes really funny if you guys are ever out and people tell you that the stories of Jesus are similar to Mithra and all these other

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Egyptian deities. Well, it's kind of interesting, the two things that they always have in all the ones that they try to put that with, when they try to find these ancient

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Egyptian myths, myth gods, that they say, well, see, it's just Jesus is just another myth.

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The two things they always have in common is they always say that those Egyptian myth gods were born on December 25th.

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And the second thing is they are all called the Son of God. Now, it's very interesting with those two, because one,

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Jesus wasn't born December 25th. Second thing is we actually would think he is born probably more in April timeframe.

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But the other thing is, when they say that he's the Son of God, they're usually saying

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S -U -N, which is the Egyptian god Ra, which only works for son and son in English, not in Egyptian.

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But that's a side note. But Aaron, you're raising your hand. Well, I am because, you know, in this day and age of misinformation, right, you know, trying to not about actually put some.

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I tried to put something on Twitter recently is like the people who are so worried about like, putting duct tape over someone's mouth and controlling what comes out of everyone's mouths are generally not the people who can be trusted to be speaking the truth.

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I will say this, though, like we've come to as a culture, as a

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Christian subculture, we've come to accept a lot of things as being true. For example, if I heard you correctly,

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Andrew, you just said that, you know, the Roman Catholic Church kind of usurped this

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December 25th you know, holiday that was going on with the pagan things. And they kind of they kind of made that their own and, you know, injected the celebration of Christ into that.

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Well, we've heard that a lot. But the interesting thing is, and I wish I were this person, actually, as part of my podcast,

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I hope to do more and more history and research on this. But there are some very scholarly,

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I'm not sure, you know, G3, you know about G3, right? Scott Anuel from G3 has written quite extensively on this.

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And he basically flat out says that that's not even true, that the Roman Catholics did not usurp the 25th from the pagans and replace it with their own thing.

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So what I would do is, first of all, I'm going to be looking for those references. I'm looking for them right now. I'd love to share them with you.

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But I think it's really important for us Christians to be discerning. I'm not saying,

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Andrew, that you're not discerning, because I believe the same thing for the longest time. But we need to, we need to just be looking, we need to be studying, we need to be asking the hard questions, we need to be just to take everything at face value, because we may find that that thing that we believed for a long time, that Christmas trees were pagan and candy canes were pagan and all that kind of stuff, actually isn't historically accurate.

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And with that said, I'm going to look for some information to prove that point. Yeah, no, you're right.

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I mean, the reality is what's our natural starting point is we, we typically go with what we've heard a lot until we research something in detail.

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And truthfully, we don't have the time to research everything. This is what drives my wife nuts with me is because I do original resource.

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And so when I go and when I study something out, I always go back to the original source of something.

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If one person quotes someone, I don't stop that I actually keep going back to it. So I try to figure out the original source, which is time consuming.

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But I like you said, I have found countless times where things that people say over and over again, we find out actually aren't right, aren't true.

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So So let me ask this, because I do know that we there's some people that think Christians shouldn't worship or sorry, celebrate

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Christmas. But I want to ask this, because I know Pastor Dom is going to need to go shortly.

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And I want to ask this before he goes, because he's he's a pastor here.

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And so this year, this happens every what seven years, Christmas will be on Sunday.

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And so a big thing that we're going to start hearing we I've already started to see it is should a church cancel services, sir, when

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Christmas is on a Sunday. So I'm going to start with you call out for a minute,

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Andrew, I did you guys all hear what he said? I know. Yeah. Well, my internet was fine on my end.

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So I'll ask the question again. So should should Christians are searching churches, cancels

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Sunday service when Christmas is on a Sunday. So you for the sake of Hey, this is a family for so families can get together.

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That's the way that many of these churches do it. But Dom, are you going to cancel church services this year?

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No way. You know, in fact, I didn't even know that happened, Andrew, until I seen something in the paper, one of the churches that I just know.

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So we're going to have a Christmas clock and then we're gonna have regular

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Sunday service at on Sunday. I'm that's the

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Lord's day whether it's Christmas. I think my

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Okay, I lost internet there for a second. But I got the gist of what you said there,

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Pastor Dom. Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna have it. We're gonna have it. You know, we're gonna have

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Christmas Eve service and Christmas Day. Anyone?

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So just raise a hands if anyone has anyone want to add to any of your anyone go to a church where they're planning or in the past had canceled services due to Christmas being on a

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Sunday or have any opinions of that. My dad never canceled church for no reason.

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Whether it was Christmas, Super Bowl Sunday or whatever, he had church open.

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Background, my dad was a pastor, by the way, if anyone, if any of you didn't know that. So my dad would have

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Christmas and sometimes you'd have a special Sunday. Because it was Christmas, you'd have

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Christmas, Christmas hymns being sung, or some type of special Christmas type of, like,

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I guess, a Christmas cantata, they used to be called back in the day, where they have like a play and a musical, the birth and resurrect the birth of Christ and all that.

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So my dad never closed church. And I've never been to a church that actually did.

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So I've moved 20 sometimes

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I've been to a lot of churches and I've attended churches where they did close it down on Christmas Day and others where they did not.

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I would have to say if I were pastoring a church and Christmas landed on Christmas Day, I definitively would not cancel services.

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Yeah, I personally would have a hard time with a church that cancels the worship of a service toward the worship of God.

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Yeah, especially for, as Brett said, a Super Bowl Sunday. You know, I did go to a church where we didn't have evening service on Super Bowl Sunday, because they actually would schedule the business meeting, the once a year business meeting.

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And that was their way of, you know, I fully admit, I think that was their way of getting out of it, like saying, well, we had the business meeting.

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So we have a service and a lunch and a business meeting, and then we don't have evening service. I think it just happened to coordinate with Super Bowl Sunday every year.

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But even, I think that for me, if I'm going to bring, if I want to raise my children,

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I want to have a family to say we are going to worship

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God on Sunday and to say, well, we're not going to worship God this Sunday because it's

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Christmas, so we're going to stay home with family. What, I guess in my mind, I'm thinking, what am

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I teaching my children? That the worship of God is for our convenience, or that our family is more important than the worship of God?

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Because I can think of a verse where Jesus said He came to divide family, even.

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In other words, He came that we should put God first above family. And so I think that canceling church service so that for family gathering,

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I think reverses what the teachings of Jesus would be on the priorities. I do think it is fair to say, and I would have added this caveat to my statement before, that if we had multiple services on a

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Sunday, that's not necessarily clearly identified in Scripture.

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God's people meeting to corporately worship the Lord on a Sunday is clear and obvious.

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And so that is important. But to say that I wouldn't cancel an evening service or something like that, or cancel a morning service and have an evening service,

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I probably would give some careful thought to that. Just because sometimes we like to say that our modern, and this is good for this conversation, we like to claim that our modern church traditions are absolutely necessary because we do them.

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But though I wouldn't cancel all corporate worship on a Sunday, if we had more than one service,

28:13

I could perchance consider canceling one of them. Hey, Aaron, may

28:18

I, Andrew, for a second? I don't know if you can see.

28:24

Well, here it is. You're showing won't work well on audio, so why don't you read the title of the book?

28:30

Oh, Aaron, no, I'm just saying, Aaron, try to look at this book in your research.

28:37

It's called Christmas, The Sacred to Santa by Tara Moore. This will help you in some of your research on some of the stuff that you were talking about.

28:47

I appreciate that. What was the author's name? Tara Moore. It says The Sacred to Santa.

28:54

And how do you spell that, the author? T -A -R -A M -O -O -R -E.

29:04

Cool. Thank you so much. And if it was too fast for you, Aaron, you could go back and re -listen to this.

29:12

I'll have to repeat it a couple of times. That way you get to know what I edit out from what you say.

29:18

All right. So, this is, I think one of the things that we end up getting into, though, is when we talk about Christmas and we, you know, mentioning as far as Sunday, having it this year, but, you know, we say, okay, we,

29:38

I think we all agreed it's a Christian liberty issue. But then we've already started to bring up the topic.

29:45

The two ladies already hit on it a little bit on how should we, how should we as individuals and churches celebrate

29:53

Christmas? So I want to, I'm going to start this off with Eve and then Melissa, because you guys already kind of started some of this.

30:00

And so, Eve, are there things that you think we can do as part of our celebration of Christmas?

30:07

Are there things you think we shouldn't do? Well, my position on the whole

30:14

Santa Claus thing is that it is a secular part of Christmas that Christians should probably avoid.

30:21

I remember going to big family gatherings where a great aunt would have presents under the tree that were from Santa.

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And the whole tradition of having the stockings that are filled overnight and the house decorated and the presents all put under the tree during the night so that the kids wake up Christmas morning after Santa had somehow come down a house with no chimney and eaten the milk and cookies that were,

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I mean, all of these like secular traditions that, that we think make Christmas fun for children.

30:54

And, and personally, I've always felt like it's lying to kids. And in the fact that Santa is not real and, and yet we present him as a, as a almost godlike being who, who does these, you know, knows whether you're doing wrong or right and, and rewards you and all this kind of stuff can, can actually communicate falsehoods about who

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God is and who Jesus is. And, and it sets children up for failure in their Christian walk when they're lied to by their parents about Santa.

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And then, and then they grow up and find out that they were lied to. And then they're like, well, you lied to me about Santa.

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You're probably lying to me about Jesus too. And, and I think that that just sets children up for failure in, in the

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Christian walk. And I, I feel like Christian parents should not be setting up their children for failure in believing something that isn't true.

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And my parents never, ever did any of those traditions growing up. I never believed

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Santa was real. And I kind of laughed when we went to family gatherings where there were people in the family who thought that Santa was real.

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And, and then to, to go beyond that and have the whole secular media and the whole world, you know, they see

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Santa Claus in the mall and they get to sit in his lap and then they, they track his sleigh on Christmas Eve, you know, going around the world and all this kind of stuff that, that kids are exposed to and it's the whole world is lying to them.

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So I, that, that seriously bothers me, but I don't see any problem with Christians having, you know, a

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Christmas tree in their house and, and, you know, giving presents to each other. My family has long since quit doing that.

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This whole Christmas is all about what I get for Christmas. We, we draw names and each person gets one gift and the rest of the money that we, we want to give to charity or spend our time with, you know, doing something for people in need or whatever.

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And, and I think that that is a good emphasis to put on the idea of gift giving, that it's not about what we get.

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It's about what we give. It says in Acts, you know, that, that it is more blessed to give than to receive.

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And I think that's a good time of year to demonstrate that to your children. The joy of giving, not necessarily the, the greediness of getting, and I'll stop so other people can talk.

33:26

Yeah. And I'll just say with what you said, I mean, growing up Jewish, I never was taught about Santa Claus.

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And I guess for me, I decided I was never going to tell my kids about Santa Claus because I remember it was either kindergarten or first grade.

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And I had this, this girl that I went to school with and she was so excited Santa Claus was going to come and give her presents.

33:49

And I don't know, maybe in my innocence or in my troublemaker -ness, whatever that term be, whichever one you want to pose it as.

33:59

But I just remember saying to her, you know, there's no such thing as Santa Claus. And she's like, oh no, there is. He eats the cookies that I leave for him and drinks the milk and leaves me presents.

34:08

And I, I just remember saying to her, your parents are lying to you. They're the ones doing that.

34:15

And she went home that night and came back the next day bawling her eyes out because she told her parents what

34:23

I said. And they figured, well, she's old enough now for them to tell the truth. And just, you know, she was crushed that her parents had been lying to her about that.

34:32

And I just, I still remember that reaction and said, I'm never doing that to my kids. You know, so, so there, there is an aspect, like I think you said, where it's, it's nostalgic.

34:42

People grow up having these stories and they, they, they enjoy telling their kids the stories because they want their kids to have that same nostalgic feeling that they had.

34:51

And I think a lot of that does play into it. Aaron raised his hand. So is it your, you want to respond to what

34:56

I said? Well, no, I think, I think it's fair to acknowledge that there is a third option here.

35:02

I, normally when this is discussed, it's embrace Santa or, or not. But the reality is, I mean, we were earlier talking about superheroes.

35:10

For a person to say, I refuse to tell my kids anything about Santa Claus. We don't watch the movies. We don't, we don't read the books.

35:17

And those same people sit down and watch Batman movies. It's kind of like, well, you, I'm pretty sure you can enjoy the fiction, the story, the, the, the imagination without telling, you don't tell your kids that Batman really exists.

35:31

Right. And I think that's, that's the approach we took with our kids. So, you know, we just, there's a new

35:39

Santa, the Santa Claus TV show being put out by Disney as a sequel, sorry, as a sequel to the

35:47

Santa Claus movies, the C -L -A -U -S -E Santa Claus movies. And those ones with Tim Allen, and we always enjoyed that.

35:55

Now my kids have never believed that Santa Claus was real, but we really enjoy just the, the fanciful stories.

36:02

So I think that that is a third option that rarely gets represented. And I think it's fair to put it out there. And you'll notice,

36:08

I said that it's having your children believe that Santa is real. And I agree with that a hundred percent.

36:13

Yeah. I don't have a, yeah, I don't necessarily have a problem that, you know, Santa Claus exists.

36:19

He's based on a, on a real care, a real person who did some good.

36:25

I, I'm not, I don't believe in canonizing saints like the Catholic church does, but I, I think there's some value in teaching about the historical person that Santa Claus is based on.

36:35

But, and, and playing with the fiction of it, I have no problem with fiction, but there are an awful lot of people that let their kids grow up thinking that Santa Claus is real.

36:44

And that's what I object to. What blew me away was my sister who grew up in the same house as me,

36:50

Jewish, um, like taught her kids that Santa Claus was real. Like, I mean, was freaking out one time when

37:00

I was saying that Santa Claus isn't real. Like, you know, and I looked at him like, what?

37:07

Like you, you teach your kids at Santa Claus is real. I said, and I looked, I said, do you teach her the

37:12

Easter bunnies real too? And she's like, stop. I was like, wow, like, come on.

37:20

So, uh, Melissa. Um, yeah, I basically everything

37:25

Eve said and even, um, what Mr. Brewster said, that's basically what we do.

37:33

Um, I do kind of understand. Cause I grew up with parents who played the

37:40

Santa car, uh, Santa Claus card, but they were always, it was a, it was this.

37:47

Yeah. It was just imaginary. They were always very clear that it was imaginary. And, um, like we might have a gift or two, like the really, you know, special gifts that we give to the kids.

38:02

They might say Santa on them, but my kids from the very beginning, um, knew that Santa didn't exist.

38:10

And yeah, we had to deal with the whole them possibly telling somebody else, but I get the, the parent, the reason why parents do it.

38:20

Um, I, part of me thinks it's not so much tradition. I mean, I think that's a part of it, but it's that, um, you just, you see the kids getting all excited about this.

38:31

Yeah. Godlike being, and you play a part in, in, in, um, sharing that, that spirit of Christmas and, um, get a part of them being excited about counting down the days and this man who's going to come down the chimney and, and things like that.

38:56

So I can understand the, um, wanting to, uh, wanting to incite that excitement with the kids, because I'm sure when they were younger, they felt that excitement when they were kids.

39:11

And so they're reminiscing about the way that felt and they want to have that for their kids. But that's where my,

39:17

I think the problem is because a one I'm bearing false witness is basically what

39:23

I'm doing. Um, like you've said, you're lying, but there's even more, like,

39:28

I'm not just lying. I'm bearing a false witness about something that doesn't exist.

39:35

Um, and I'm playing into that, knowing very well that it's false.

39:41

And, oh, and I forgot the other thing I was going to say. I hate it when that happens.

39:47

If you hear my son, he's playing with the VR. You're too young for that, Melissa. You're too young to be forgetting it.

39:53

It's because I have two teenage kids, just saying. I'll remember it later.

40:01

And then we'll come back to say it. Yeah, we can always bring it back in. And, and folks that, uh, they're for you listening.

40:08

If you go in the show notes, I'm going to have some links that Aaron is putting into the chat on, uh, you know, that he mentioned with, with Scott's article, um, some from, uh,

40:19

Kevin DeYoung on Christmas is a pagan rip off. And one that he also has on December 25th that's, uh, that he has.

40:27

So I'll have those links in the show notes for you. So check, check those out as well. So we can all do our research.

40:35

And so, so is, is there anything that you guys think, because I think

40:41

Melissa, like what you had said, I think a lot of this is, that we have with Christmas is this nostalgia, right?

40:48

It's, we grow up with certain traditions, certain things that we, um, that, that we enjoyed and it, we want our kids to enjoy the same thing.

41:02

Is there anything wrong with having traditions like that? Anyone? I think the

41:10

Bible is very clear that, um, people will hold to different traditions for different reasons and that can be okay.

41:18

But it could also be not okay. We know the scriptures say that anything that is not done in faith is a sin.

41:25

And I think the, the big, the bigger question behind tonight's question goes really to every decision that every

41:33

Christian makes. Biblically speaking, I can do the right thing in the right way and still be sinning.

41:42

Um, if I'm being a decent individual, if I'm giving a Christmas gift, but I'm doing so because I want you to like me more, or I'm trying to manipulate you into doing something for me, or I'm just being, um,

41:58

I lost the last example. Just, you know, if I'm just giving you a Christmas gift, uh, to, to gain my own ends, that's completely self -serving.

42:07

That's not Christ honoring. True biblical obedience is doing the right thing in the right way for the right reasons.

42:15

So the question needs to be asked, is this thing that I'm doing for Christmas or Easter, right?

42:22

We give Easter baskets, right? Well, does giving this Easter basket, um, give Christ the preeminence?

42:29

Uh, whether I'm eating or drinking or giving an Easter basket, is it glorifying God? Am I doing this in faith that this is genuinely, honestly pleasing the

42:37

Lord, and He is the receiver of this, uh, the, my ultimate goal for doing this action?

42:43

That's the big question here. And so I would say that, uh, yeah, most of the Christmas holidays that we have actually, um, aren't that old.

42:50

They don't go back to the original pagan roots. They, they, you know, even if it could be argued that they originally started there, um, they really, for the most part, the, the ideas surrounding modern

43:00

Christmas started in the 19th century. Uh, they were created by authors, uh, who were writing stories about Christmas, trying to, uh, trying to help, um, people be less, uh, nasty during this time of year.

43:13

And, um, those are all very noble things. So those obviously can be done to God's honor and glory.

43:20

At the same time, maybe they aren't, uh, if we're not doing it for Him. And we need to really get down deep and look at our motivations.

43:27

Okay. So I want to, I'm going to ask a question and we'll get back to traditions, because son, you just said there, it reminds me son, that Melissa kind of hit it on, hit on it as well.

43:37

So I'm going to ask this of, of Aaron, Melissa, um, and then, you know, if anyone else wants to chime in, but is, do we celebrate

43:47

Christmas just once a year, or can we celebrate Christmas every day? What do you, what do you say,

43:54

Aaron? Well, yes, I think that it goes far beyond just Christmas in July.

44:00

I think if we are truly born again believers, and the only time that we reflect on Christ's incarnation in His first advent is the month of December, um, that's really sad.

44:14

Now, I think it was Calvin who said that, you know, we don't need to celebrate certain holidays, because we should be celebrating all of those things all of the time.

44:23

Um, and to a certain degree, I agree with that. I think we should be doing that. But of course, we, we deal with an infinite

44:28

God. Uh, His character is infinite. His deeds are infinite. And so therefore,

44:33

I think that's appropriate to have certain times where we focus on certain elements.

44:39

That's why, you know, in the celebration of God, we have the season of mercy, the season of grace, the season of life, and the season of power, just focusing on those elements of God's character and how they affect us.

44:48

Um, but yeah, I think that, that clearly I should be meditating on and praising God for the incarnation more than just in December.

44:59

Dominic? Yeah, you know, I was thinking, uh, when you got, when you guys were talking is that, you know, one of the things, and I want to be careful here, but one of the things sometimes you'll see a lot behind the pulpit is almost like docetism, and the fact that everybody speaks about a, there ain't many,

45:19

I want to be careful again, but the humanity, no, but the humanity of Christ is something that is less preached today than the resurrected.

45:30

I mean, obviously the resurrected Christ, the, the, the son of God from a, from the foundations of the world, from the beginning of it, but you see a lot today in the churches.

45:40

So I'm grabbing this from Aaron a little bit, trying to flush this out. You see a lot in the churches, the deity of Christ and well should be preached all the time, but you don't see enough about the humanity of Christ being preached behind the pulpits.

45:55

And it almost falls into docetism where we're not honoring the humanity of Christ who, you know, obviously came in the birth channels of a woman to, uh, relate to people and save God's elect from their sins.

46:12

So in, in the aspect of, of the virgin birth and Christ coming as a human, there's a great message in that.

46:21

Um, and then sometimes we don't preach that enough, me first, maybe that we don't preach enough of the humanity of Christ as we do of the resurrected true son of God.

46:31

And we fall into docetism that way. So do you think pastor Dom, that that could be because of the view of Jehovah witnesses and others who deny the deity of Christ.

46:43

So we almost overemphasize his deity and forget about his humanity almost. Yeah. I don't know the re

46:49

Andrew, you would that that's kind of your belly wick a little bit. And I don't know the, I wouldn't know the reason for that.

46:56

It just happens. And I think, and I may because, and maybe cause we don't really truly, it's hard to grasp the humanity of Christ.

47:04

Cause we always want to put him as being who he is God of very God. So, but, but I think that because of the

47:12

Christmas messages we're hearing tonight, we can make this truly theological in the point is that we preaching enough of the humanity of Christ as much as we are the deity.

47:24

I'm sorry, Melissa, go ahead. I seen your hand raised. No, actually, I think I could partly answer

47:30

Andrew's question because I think in my study of Christian mysticism, and now this is a part or separate, but I'm trying to answer your question.

47:39

Christian mysticism exalts divinity. And I think

47:45

Christ divinity is exalted more because we in mysticism, you want to find the divine within.

47:53

So if you can enhance Jesus as man in connection with divinity, and then kind of teach that we as Christians are in connection with divinity, we get a lot of the mysticism.

48:04

We get a lot of the charismatic mania and what is it?

48:13

It's people believe in the Trinity, but they don't believe in the Trinity. They believe he shows himself in forms.

48:19

Okay. Monalism. Oneness, right? Oneness. Oneness, Pentecostals and stuff like that.

48:26

So you get the mysticism is huge. And if you exalt that the God is in creation, and therefore in Jesus, you exalt that higher, you can be like Jesus.

48:40

I think it's more of a way of glorifying man in a way.

48:46

It's trying to glorify God, but ends up glorifying man the way people take it.

48:52

That's just my, from what I've been learning. Well, we see that in the word of faith. Yes. You have a lot of them who will say that just like Jesus could do all these miracles, we could do all these miracles.

49:03

And just like Jesus was God, we are God. You hear a lot of that teaching.

49:09

Right. And so that's possibly why it's exalted more. And you see it more in Christian communities, because we have such a broad

49:18

Pentecostal charismatic community among the Christians.

49:23

What is it? 75 % in America? I'm sorry, Melissa. But as sound theologians, that doesn't stop us from preaching on the humanity of Christ because somebody else is usurping that.

49:37

Somebody else is using that for their own, name it, claim it, whatever they do.

49:43

I am, could speak things into existence. That should not stop us from preaching and teaching about the humanity of Christ, because Paul says that relates.

49:55

The writer of Hebrews says that he comes to relate to us, that he could.

50:01

And that's important, I think anyway, but we can't stop preaching something because it's being masqueraded by some, you know, how 75 % of the world, you know.

50:15

Yeah, well, I think sometimes though we do that. I think that some because of the prosperity preachers, there's pastors who don't like to talk about money, you know, because they don't want to be lumped in as trying to talk about someone that seems self -serving.

50:32

I think that a lot of times there's Christians who have, solid Christians who might avoid speaking the

50:37

Holy Spirit because they don't want to seem charismatic. So, I think there could be some of that, but Melissa, I like what you had said.

50:44

That's an interesting aspect I didn't really think of. And I can see that as well with so much of the mysticism coming in, that how that can influence it as well.

50:55

Yeah, and so I'll bring it back to Christmas since we're going, I totally agree with Pastor Dom.

51:02

The way we have done it, the way we celebrate is we'll read the scriptures of the birth, but we also talk about, right, that Christ, that God condescended to come in human form and give of himself.

51:20

And this is us, kind of explaining why we give gifts during Christmas.

51:26

But yeah, I think we should be able to celebrate Christmas, well, celebrate

51:32

Jesus and his birth and his giving of himself and his condescension. I'm not saying it right.

51:40

Condescension. Condescension. Thank you. Condensation is a thing with water, totally different.

51:46

Blame it on the teenagers, Melissa. What's that? Blame it on the teenagers. Yes, it is.

51:53

So yeah, every single day. And that can be translated because that's the way

52:01

I see work and service now, is because Christ gave himself for us, for his people,

52:09

I can give of myself to my children. I can give myself to my husband.

52:15

I can give myself to my friends and family. So that's how you can celebrate, too, the giving of Christmas every single day.

52:23

Yeah. Brett, what do you think? First, I got to say, I'm very upset. You're all telling me that Santa's not real.

52:29

I still believed in him. I wish

52:34

I could go back in time and do it differently. We raised our kids to believe in Santa.

52:40

We went as far as putting that magical little bell underneath the tree from that, what's the name of that movie with the train?

52:51

Polar Express. My wife put a bell inside a box and said this bell was from Santa underneath the

52:59

Christmas tree. And I was like, I wish I could go back a little bit and change things. But we always had the

53:06

Bible story read. We had a nativity night where we would read the nativity story where Jesus was born, and we would set up the nativity, have hot chocolate.

53:17

That was one of our traditions. But there's part of me that I wish I could go back and just give it more of a focus on Christ, not so much on Santa.

53:26

One of the things I find interesting, and Brett, I'll start this with you. Have you ever had where a church will sing one of the

53:34

Christmas carols at some other time other than December, and people think like, oh. I've been in churches where they'll sing songs of the

53:42

Incarnation some other time other than after Thanksgiving and before New Year's, and people make excuses for it.

53:50

Well, I know it's not Christmas time, but let's have you experienced that? What do you think? Can we sing

53:56

Christmas carols all year long, or should they be reserved for December? My wife would say yes.

54:02

She has Christmas music playing all year round. For those on audio, we have clapping, fist pumping going on.

54:16

I don't mind the hymns, but when I hear jingle bells, I just want to plug my ears and stick a bunch of cotton in my ears, because I just can't stand that music.

54:25

But anyway, my dad has actually, in church services, done the

54:30

Christmas hymns in other times of the year, because some of those old hymns have great messages. So he's done like Hark the

54:38

Herald Angels Sing in, I think, in the middle of summer one time, because he was doing a sermon on, trying to remember the name of the sermon.

54:45

Of course, I was maybe 15 years old at the time, but he did a message, Harking the

54:51

Return of Christ, and he'd sung that song, and that was kind of a neat service.

54:58

So yeah, I've heard it done before in church where the hymns were done before Christmas.

55:03

You know, yesterday, Andrew, they did, they sung We Three Kings, so I told him,

55:09

I got up and I says, now listen, two things. The Wise Men, I says, came a lot after the birth, right?

55:16

You know, they seem like they come six, eight months after. And I said, second of all, think about this. This is where my

55:22

New York stuff got in, right? I says, now you think it was only three guys? I says, you think

55:27

Herod would have been scared with three guys? Them Magi, there probably would have been 50, 100, maybe 150 of them coming.

55:34

And that's what got, I think, Herod a little nervous when he seen that, because I don't think there was only three.

55:40

I think they probably traveled in a lot more than three. Unless they were from, you know, the

55:45

Bronx, and then... They were from the Bronx, maybe, but they weren't from the Bronx. Three guys from the Bronx would scare anybody, you know.

55:52

So what we did was, what we do over here in the church, because the women like to put the nativity scene up, we put the

56:00

Magi way in the back. Yeah. Because they came later. So if you go into the sanctuary, you don't see the

56:07

Magi at the birth, but we see that we put them in the back. So we're theologically correct, anyways.

56:14

You know, it's funny you say it, because that's what my wife has a little nativity scene. And when she set it up,

56:19

I think the very first time I did the same thing, I moved the wise men off. You can tell, see, you can tell he's from New York.

56:27

That's how that happens. No, I'm from Jersey, man. You know, I'm the armpit of New York. We get all, you know, we get no respect.

56:35

Eve, what do you think? Well, I think it's talking about the myths of Christmas and how they get, you know, preached from the pulpit.

56:48

And that kind of thing is, I think that kind of goes along with our traditions.

56:54

And one of the ones that bugs me the most now is when a pastor will get up and preach on Christmas day or, you know, the

57:03

Sunday before Christmas, if it doesn't land on a Christmas. They preach on how the innkeeper needed to make room for Christ in the inn.

57:13

And I'm just like, number one, it probably wasn't an inn.

57:20

Bethlehem was an itty bitty little town. Number two, the innkeeper was never mentioned in scripture.

57:26

It's assumed because of a mistranslation of a word that there was an inn, therefore, there must be an innkeeper.

57:35

And then the innkeeper has a wife who bustles about and tries to convince her husband.

57:41

I mean, they make up all these fictional characters in the story. And then that becomes so traditional that they actually create songs about the innkeeper singing about making room for Christ and all of these spinoffs that go off of our traditional myths about what happened at the nativity and the wise men coming in and worshiping and all of this stuff.

58:04

And I wish sometimes that churches would be a little bit more biblically accurate about the advent and not letting, you know, the traditional myths of what happened.

58:16

It's bad enough that we let Santa Claus take over Christmas, but that we let a lot of these myths take over Christmas as well and create false messages about Christ and Christmas.

58:33

And so I don't know whether we want to lean that direction or not, but I wanted to bring it up because it's something that's become bothersome to me in the last few years.

58:42

And I think you're 100 % right about that. I think that one of the things that humanity likes to do is we like to latch on to the almost truth.

58:53

We like to make a big deal of the ancillary things. Because honestly, the truth,

58:59

God himself, he is a blinding light. He is a consuming fire. He's something that leaves us petrified and on our faces recognizing that we are nothing and we are not worthy.

59:09

And most humans don't want to feel that way. And so we kind of get close to the truth, close enough where it's comfortable.

59:17

It's kind of like the children of Israel. No, Moses, you go up there. We can't even, you know, we can't even get close to the mountain, right?

59:24

And I think that that's really a dangerous thing to do. And I think that these ideas of like the

59:33

Magi and the innkeeper and that kind of stuff distract us really from what's desperately important. And it's just bad preaching.

59:39

If we're preaching about the innkeeper, we are so outside of the text.

59:45

I mean, we're definitely not being expositional. But then my wife, if I didn't mention this, my wife would be very upset with me.

59:53

We are both quasi -grammar Nazis. We're not perfect in what we do, but we try really hard.

59:59

And she said, being a woman who has given birth twice, she's like, stop saying Jesus was born in a manger.

01:00:06

Okay. He wasn't born in a manger. He was laid in a manger, right?

01:00:12

But it's not like Mary was straddling the manger and Jesus just stopped saying that.

01:00:17

It's grammatic. It doesn't even make sense. So there you go. That's my wife. I never, never once did I think of it that way.

01:00:24

He wasn't born in a manger. He was laid in a manger. No. And Andrew, I think if the text is right, he was laid actually in a feeding trowel.

01:00:33

Yeah. Right. I mean, because not born for your wife. Because there was, he was, in fact, there was,

01:00:45

Eve, there probably wasn't no inn. It was probably in a house. And I think that if in the

01:00:53

Greek text, or even the old NSAB says that he was actually laid in a feeding trowel where actually the animals would eat.

01:01:04

So there was no inn. There was no innkeeper. There was actually no stable. Yeah, exactly.

01:01:10

Right. Exactly. I think it was. Yeah. I assume there were animals because of the feeding trough, but that's the assumption.

01:01:18

Yeah. So the way I heard it explained was that the homes back then had an upper room.

01:01:26

And you actually hear that referred to later on the same word, I think, is translated upper room later on during the

01:01:32

Last Supper with Christ. It is. It is. Yeah. And that they would have the family that would live in the home, and then they would have an upper room that would use for guests.

01:01:44

And because of the tax taxation that was going on, all of the people were flooding into their home places.

01:01:53

And so everybody's homes, their upper rooms were already filled with family that were coming in for the tax.

01:02:00

And so there wasn't any space available because of that. But that there was no inn in the story.

01:02:08

It was just a mistranslation of a word into the English text. And so everybody has run with it and distorted the story.

01:02:15

And I think why some of that sometimes happens is because even when the translation into English, by the time we have

01:02:24

English, the culture has changed and they're not living in a culture that understands the whole concept of the upper room and things like this.

01:02:32

So it makes it where how do we translate this to people today to understand?

01:02:38

And the closest thing they may have had is the idea of an inn. And so they translate it that way because they're trying to describe something that's not part of their culture anymore.

01:02:48

And this is why we have to do the research to dig into the cultural settings of the time to understand what was meant.

01:02:56

And as pastors and preachers, we need to communicate that. And I know

01:03:02

Yves shared another article that I'll put in the show notes from Answers in Genesis, which goes through a lot of the different things that people know of when we talk about these traditions and all with Christmas and sets the record straight with some things.

01:03:15

And that's one of the things that's important to do even with our children is go through the account and see what really is going on in the biblical account and communicate that to our children as well.

01:03:32

You know, Andrew, I was telling, it might have been yesterday or, you know, the days run because I might have been, maybe

01:03:40

I was at the prisons because I go in the prisons every couple of weeks and preach. But I was telling the guys that, you know, if you don't do good,

01:03:50

I don't care how good you sound behind the pulpit. If you don't do good exegesis and you're not preaching from a good exegetical standpoint,

01:04:01

I don't care how good you sound, there's no power in it. I don't care how good you can say something or if you're not doing good exegesis, there's no power in the scripture.

01:04:13

And I was trying to, because in prison, you got a lot of, because obviously me being there for many, many, many years, in the prison libraries there, they have all the

01:04:26

Joyce, you know, you got all that stuff, you know, Aaron, it's like all that mysticism, nonsense.

01:04:34

And, you know, even though it may sound good or look flamboyant, there's no power in that.

01:04:40

And I was trying to tell the guys, unless you, like you guys were saying, understand the text in its original context, there's no power in it.

01:04:48

And then obviously you got to hermeneutically bring it into today, but you got to come from an exegetical background or there's no, the text is not going to be able to transform through the spirit anyway.

01:05:00

And when we look at it, I mean, like I said earlier that Jesus wasn't born December 25th. Why do we make that claim?

01:05:07

Because if he's described as being swaddled and left in a feeding trough, they wouldn't be able to do that in winter.

01:05:17

Like Jesus would freeze to death. So you look at this and realize the time probably wasn't

01:05:24

December for that reason. So there's things we could see from the text of scripture to realize some of the traditions that we have for Christmas are not accurate.

01:05:36

But I will say I understand some of the mathematics that have led to the

01:05:41

December 25th date. I do think it's kind of interesting. But going back to what was said earlier, assuming that it was the lower room of the house where the animals would be, it did have walls.

01:05:56

They were oftentimes heated and even the body heat of the animals would keep it pretty warm. So there are still arguments.

01:06:02

And I think that's the beauty of it. God wanted us to know for sure. He would have told us. And I think that we just get so stuck on these things that we ride these hobby horses.

01:06:13

We need to have more charity. We need to be willing to exegete the scriptures, to dig down deep.

01:06:18

But when it doesn't actually say, at the end of the day, we can walk away still loving each other and exalting

01:06:24

Christ. Well, and that gets back to really the first question we had, right? Because it's right back to the freedom that we have in Christ, whether to be able to worship or celebrate or not to celebrate, right?

01:06:37

Same thing here. We have to have the charity. Eve, what are your thoughts? Well, I was thinking back to,

01:06:43

I'm jumping around a little bit, but you were talking about listening to hymns at different times of the year,

01:06:48

Christmas carols in July or whatever. I also think the Christmas story should be exegeted when you arrive at it.

01:06:57

It shouldn't be saved for the Christmas season. And I think that if good pastors, at least the good pastors that I've sat under,

01:07:06

I really appreciate a pastor who exegetes through scripture. They pick a book and they preach from it until they've reached from one into the other.

01:07:16

And if it happens to be a gospel, you shouldn't skip over the Christmas story.

01:07:21

If you started preaching through, let's say, the book of Luke in July, you're going to deal with the

01:07:27

Christmas story right away because it's the beginning of Luke. I don't think that you should save that to preach on at the proper season.

01:07:35

I'm also not entirely sure that you should interrupt what you're preaching on if you're in the middle of a, you know,

01:07:43

Jeremiah and Christmas arrives or Easter arrives. Do you skip over or you interrupt your sermon series on, you know, this particular book in order to sandwich in the, you know, the proper storyline for, you know,

01:08:02

Christmas or Easter or whatever. I'm just curious, as we do have pastors in the house at the moment, what your thoughts are on that.

01:08:08

Actually, Pastor Dom and I talked about this earlier today, but before we even started recording, we were on the phone and he's doing a series right now, right, a four -part series, you know, in preparation with Christmas coming.

01:08:26

And we were talking, I said, when I, in December, when I'm preaching, whatever

01:08:32

I preach on Christmas Day is the next verse of wherever I was the week before. You know,

01:08:38

I might call it my tradition, I guess. My view is I don't preach a different message just because it's

01:08:48

Christmas Day or the Sunday before Christmas or the Sunday before Resurrection Sunday.

01:08:55

I just keep preaching what we have is the next text. So here's what I'm doing,

01:09:02

Eve. I just finished 50 weeks in 1 Samuel. I just finished my 50th week in 1

01:09:07

Samuel, and I'm going to start preaching through the book of Genesis, which would probably take,

01:09:13

I don't know, probably take me maybe eight years to finish or 10 years. So what I did was, because I'm just about done with 1

01:09:21

Samuel, what I did was I'm trying to come up with a sermon series that's going to connect the book of Genesis to the

01:09:30

Gospel of John and try to incorporate the Incarnation and Resurrection.

01:09:36

So I'm not actually, I haven't gotten to Luke 2 yet. I don't think I will.

01:09:42

So my first thing, I'm in Genesis 1, 1 through 5, and then I go to 1 John, I think.

01:09:48

So I'm trying to, I'm trying to kill two birds with one stone. I'm trying to start a sermon series on Genesis and try to incorporate the

01:09:58

Incarnation and the Resurrection inside that, so then it can kick me off the Genesis. So I haven't met it to my madness.

01:10:05

I don't know if it's going to work, but... Oh, go ahead,

01:10:11

Melissa. I was just going to say, the churches that I've attended, they, yeah, continue doing whatever they're doing on Sundays.

01:10:20

But it's always a Christmas Eve service. That's what, so if it was like, say,

01:10:27

Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday, it would be evening, and Christmas Eve service is always evening.

01:10:32

And then Sundays just remain the same. So for me, I've never had it where I've gone in on Sunday, like we will have this year, and I'll have to see what they preach.

01:10:43

I doubt that he's going to do anything Christmas related. It's going to be, he's going through Matthew right now, so he's probably going to continue with Matthew.

01:10:51

But we'll probably have some kind of Christmas Eve service either Saturday, or even, I've not, the

01:10:56

Presbyterian church I went to before, I had it a week ahead, and I was like, oh, surprise.

01:11:05

I mean, yeah. Well, and Brett mentioned this, and so Melissa, you may not have an answer for this one, but Brett mentioned churches that do cantatas, where they do a for Christmas service where they know there's unbelievers there.

01:11:21

Instead of preaching, they do a dramatic recreation of a story.

01:11:27

Sometimes it's a biblical story. Sometimes it's really just a play, a drama.

01:11:35

Let me start with Pastor Dom, since he's the pastor here. What are your thoughts on doing, even if you're against dramas in every other week, can a church do a drama on that that one

01:11:51

Sunday because there's so many unbelievers there? Not in Desert Sky. I mean,

01:11:59

I don't, I'm not, I don't want to start any drama. Not, I don't, I mean, not here.

01:12:06

I mean, I'm not gonna, I'm not here anyway. I think the elders will fire me if I do something like that.

01:12:16

I think there are a lot of extremes in the, in conservative churches. We have some people on the regulative side, the regulative principle, right, where if it's not mentioned in Scripture, it's not done in church.

01:12:27

And yet those people generally are wise enough to recognize that everything about their church building completely defies all that the early church experience.

01:12:37

Amen. Then you have other people on the other side who, you know, they're okay with interpretive dance, and I guess maybe that's not the conservative

01:12:44

Christian side, but I've been in churches where we would have

01:12:49

Christmas cantatas where the vast majority of it was, were the

01:12:54

Christmas hymns sung, you know, with high caliber, full orchestra, a choir.

01:13:01

We use it as community outreach, and our pastor always opened God's Word. So I have a hard time, you know, if someone's going to point their finger at that and say, that's not biblical.

01:13:11

We're singing, and we're engaged in outreach, and God's Word is being open.

01:13:17

Now, if it's just some hokey drama, the gospel message is not clearly given,

01:13:23

God's Word is not open, and we end with, it's the most wonderful time of the year, then we can start arguing that there are some issues there.

01:13:31

Where's the Christ focus? But I think, you know, as Brett was talking about, a cantata, obviously that can mean lots of different things, but the church services that I've been part of where we've had, where we've done

01:13:42

Handel's Messiah, or we've had a cantata, I think have always been very Christ -honoring, though they definitely were not your typical

01:13:48

Sunday service. No, and I think, but yes, I totally agree with that, but I think Andrew was saying more of this, that type of, like, dance or play or something like that, but yeah, no, we've done, as long as there's a preached message or singing, and we've done things like that too, but even if they give the pastor 15 -20 minutes to go up and expound the

01:14:09

Word, and you want to do some singing like that, I don't see a problem with that. No, I would be like, in our church, we would do is, we would have a service, my first church,

01:14:19

I should say, we had a service, and we did have a cantata in the evening, and so it wasn't part of the morning worship, it was like a special, we had evening service, and we still had the preaching of God's Word.

01:14:33

Now, there was some, one year, I think, maybe two, where we moved it to the morning, and several of us had kind of issue with that, and so we changed it back, or I think we actually just canceled doing the cantata altogether, but I think that this kind of gets back to what we're saying with, do we cancel on a

01:14:53

Sunday? My conviction is, we're there at church on a

01:14:58

Sunday morning to worship God, and that's the preeminence, and so we're there to do that, not to entertain goats, not to evangelize, not to do anything other than what

01:15:13

God has established, which is the proclamation of His Word, and so I think the preaching is what we do.

01:15:21

And Andrew, you know, and I think you guys would agree, believe it or not, on a

01:15:27

Christmas Sunday is when you might have unbelievers that walk into the church.

01:15:34

I mean, it's almost evangelistic. I mean, you know, people, you know, they'll come, that, you know,

01:15:39

I have people call the church and say, you're doing Christmas service or something, and I know that they're just, because it's

01:15:47

Christmas, so it is a good time to, you know, where you might see some people that you don't normally see on a

01:15:54

Sunday, and hopefully and prayerfully they can get saved. Yeah, but you can still preach as I've done.

01:16:02

No, no, without a doubt. And then share the gospel. Without a doubt. You always share the gospel. Yeah. And so I think a lot of the things we've been discussing, really, whether those who are listening thought about it this way or not, what

01:16:20

I'm hearing from each of us is there are traditions that we have, and whether it's the singing of Handel's Messiah, that's a tradition, and some churches do that, that becomes their tradition, whether you have a

01:16:33

Christmas tree or, you know, have gift giving, whatever it is, these are different traditions that we end up generating.

01:16:42

I mean, it's something where I think when it comes to Christmas, people default to the traditions that they grew up with.

01:16:50

I didn't grow up with traditions for Christmas, and neither did my bride, and so when we got married and we started having children, we started discussing, well, we got to think about what we're going to do as a tradition for our family, and every year we came about going, well, what's going to be our tradition?

01:17:06

What's going to be our tradition? And by the time they were like eight or nine, we realized, you know what? We're already creating a tradition of nothing because we didn't do anything.

01:17:15

So we decided, okay, let's come up with some things that we would do for Christmas, and if you haven't figured out that I'm a little bit odd, this will convince you, but our tradition became we would take the kids and we'd go to the mall, and I would take my son and we'd go shopping for the two girls, and my wife would shop for the boys with my daughter, and then my wife and I would switch kids, and we all had an area of our car where we put our gifts and hide it from each other, and then we wouldn't put a gift under a tree because, well, we didn't have a tree early on.

01:17:51

So what we would do is we would give gifts and we would hide them on one another. So you actually had to go find your gift.

01:17:58

So, you know, Christmas morning, you'd... It's a Christmas gift hunt. Yeah, it's sort of like a mix of the

01:18:04

Easter egg hunt, which I know we never do with the Easter eggs, but they'd have to go find their gift, and, you know, so the funny story we have in our family is that my son didn't know what to get my wife, and so he decided to follow her in the mall, and he saw her looking at a dress over and over, and so we end up hiding presents all over.

01:18:26

Well, my son decided to hang the present right over the window in the baluster that, you know, holds the drapes, and so it's blocking the window, and my wife couldn't find the gift.

01:18:38

It was just funny, like, best place to hide it in plain sight, and so we...

01:18:45

But that created a memory that each of us have with that, and that's what a tradition is.

01:18:53

It's those little things that you may do with your family or with your church that gives you that nostalgic thinking, and you go back, and you like to enjoy that, but the point

01:19:07

I'm making is that tradition can be anything you choose to do with your family. It can be as silly as what

01:19:14

I just gave. It's a crazy thing to do, and no one... I don't think anyone else probably does that for Christmas, but that became a tradition.

01:19:23

Dominic? Yeah, well, in the Tarah Maul book, one of the traditions that... I don't know if it was a church or a family, a couple of families.

01:19:31

What they would do on Christmas Day, they would buy no gifts for each other. They would go buy a whole bunch of gifts and give them out to the homeless.

01:19:39

That's what they would do. In that Tarah Maul book, it was some people of God who were...

01:19:45

It was a church or families in the church. I think it was in the 1600s or 1700s.

01:19:54

They would buy nothing for themselves, because they had what they needed.

01:19:59

They would get together and buy gifts and just go give them out to the homeless. Isn't that a little bit what

01:20:06

Boxing Day is? It is. The concept of you give out of your access to those in need.

01:20:15

Yeah, that's exactly what it was called. I knew nothing about it even until I read it in this book.

01:20:22

I'm going to have the link to that book in the show notes as well. One thing to consider,

01:20:29

Andrew, you're talking about we do what we know. I think it goes beyond that though.

01:20:34

I think we are, especially here in America, we are so oftentimes arrogant that we assume that what we do is best.

01:20:43

It's not just that we do what we know, we do what we're used to, but of course, it's best. Who wouldn't do this?

01:20:49

If somebody else doesn't do it, it's like, they're weird, or like you said, or they're sacrilegious or whatever the case may be.

01:20:57

But that example that Dom just shared, that's beautiful. That is, if done to glorify

01:21:03

God and just boost up oneself, that is a gorgeous thing to do. There was somebody

01:21:08

I read, they said, they only give one gift per person on Christmas.

01:21:15

When it comes time for the children's birthday or whatever, that's when they get the abundance of gifts.

01:21:22

But Christmas is just one gift, again, because they have an intentional Godward focus. That's a beautiful thing.

01:21:28

We should have encouraging people to think outside of the box. My wife and I had very wrong views of Christmas growing up.

01:21:35

It was very self -serving. It was about the presents. When we had kids, we started thinking very early on about what we were going to do.

01:21:42

We continued a lot of the traditions that we had until we really came face to face with the fact that God was in so little of it.

01:21:50

My children can attest that I don't think there's been a year of their life that's gone by that we didn't do something different during Christmas season.

01:21:57

In fact, last year, we went all out celebrating Advent. This year, we haven't for various reasons, reasons that we believe are going to please the

01:22:09

Lord. There's nothing wrong with that too. Because then, really, when your kids look back, what they remember is that we are always striving to find a better way to worship

01:22:18

God, a better way to keep our minds focused on him during the season. Well, I hope next year, your kids are running around the house trying to find their gifts.

01:22:26

Oh, yeah. That's the next thing on the list. That's great. What you just said is what I was trying to encourage people with.

01:22:34

If you're listening to this and you say, well, the traditions I had growing up, I don't agree with them.

01:22:41

The whole point is you can create new traditions for your family and things you're going to do.

01:22:48

It doesn't have to be based on the way you grew up. Because especially as parents and we have children, our kids don't know how we celebrated

01:23:00

Christmas or didn't. They don't know anything about that unless you share it with them. But you can create something that's unique for your family if you want.

01:23:09

But that's the beauty of what a tradition is. It doesn't have to be based on what everyone else does.

01:23:15

It could be something that you choose to do with your family or your church and becomes your own tradition.

01:23:22

Melissa, what do you think? I just I have a question because I have dealt with this. What when somebody presents to you about certain traditions and they say they they relay a certain connection to pagan idolatry, how do we come at that with a godly answer or a biblical answer in addressing especially like, well, my traditions, it may look like a pagan ritual.

01:23:55

Like if they want to claim that somehow the tree is pagan and I'm worshiping Mother Earth through the tree or whatever, what

01:24:03

I'm really doing just by having the tree in my house and decorating it, what are some ways that we can argue for the traditions that we do have biblically?

01:24:16

I think it starts with getting studied up, having the answers.

01:24:22

I think that's a big part of it. It's just too easy for us to throw out the sound bites that we encounter. One of the links that Andrew is going to share in the show notes,

01:24:34

Scott Anuel has a number of paragraphs talking about the Christmas tree and actually how it came to be.

01:24:39

And the reality of the Christmas tree is that it distinctively was a very Christian thing. Now, pagan religions utilize trees, but the

01:24:48

Bible also puts a significant emphasis on trees as well. But a couple of interesting things that he points out here is that the first person to put lights on the tree was

01:24:58

Martin Luther. And Martin Luther did that specifically because of the spiritual symbolism that he intended he wanted to see there.

01:25:07

In fact, he did it because he wanted to recreate the beauty of the stars twinkling amongst the evergreens. And he wanted to do that as an act of worship to God.

01:25:15

And a lot of interesting things in history. So I think what we need to do is just start with when you're able to talk some of that, oh, really?

01:25:24

Well, did you know that so and so? Then what that does is that gets their brain thinking that, oh, well, is it possible that what

01:25:33

I thought I knew maybe isn't true? Yeah. And I think in other ways, sometimes, as I said in the beginning, for me,

01:25:42

I didn't have these traditions. So it was when people would say things, it's like, well, is it, you know, it sort of goes, could go back to what

01:25:52

Dom and Aaron said at the beginning is that you do have Christian liberty. So that's something we could present as well as an argument.

01:25:58

But some of it for me was like, well, I don't have that tradition. I don't have a tradition of a tree.

01:26:04

It doesn't have any nostalgic value to me. But if it does, is it so wrong?

01:26:11

I mean, what's what's wrong with if we have a tradition that that just reminds us of the time of year that we enjoy and doing that with our children?

01:26:25

I mean, if I decided, even though I've now become a Christian and there's nothing in the

01:26:31

Bible about Hanukkah, it's something that happened in the intertestamental period.

01:26:37

But if I wanted to share the stories of how, you know, the Israelites felt that God miraculously saved his people during a time of war with having oil that lasted eight days that should have lasted one and to to sit and light the candles and sing the prayers.

01:26:59

So what? Right. It's nothing biblical. There's nothing biblical about, you know,

01:27:05

Hanukkah. But if that's something that I enjoyed and I want my kids to enjoy that thing, what's wrong with it?

01:27:14

Right. See, I think where a lot of people take it is, well, this is absolutely religious.

01:27:20

And like Aaron said, some of this stuff may not be as pagan as you think. So the research will help.

01:27:27

But some of it is what's the big deal? If this is if this is something that I enjoyed and want my kids to enjoy and it has no religious aspect.

01:27:39

Guess what? There's a whole lot of things we do that have no religious aspect that we all do.

01:27:44

We've mentioned and Melissa, you mentioned Jehovah's Witnesses. Don't do this. Do you celebrate your birthday? Right.

01:27:51

A lot of people give gifts on birthdays. That's a tradition. It's not religious.

01:27:58

Should we stop doing that? I mean, so you get into a thing where I think if people say like, well, that everything has to have a connotation, that's going to be hard to hold to,

01:28:09

I think. Oftentimes those those conversations are definitely had with a hint of accidental hypocrisy.

01:28:17

Those same people have their their traditions that they do. And it's funny is that we're

01:28:23

OK with traditions that don't have anything to do with uplifting God and putting him preeminent in our lives. It's the traditions we have that, you know, because I my family and I, we observe

01:28:31

Halloween, but we do so actually. I know we do so with a with a distinctly biblical

01:28:39

Christ centered focus, because we believe that it's a really powerful and potent time of year to focus on certain truths from the scriptures.

01:28:48

And what's funny is that, you know, people would be aghast that how dare we celebrate God on October 31st.

01:28:55

And that's just it's ridiculous when you step back and you look at it that way. If you have a person, you know, who's claiming to be a

01:29:03

Christian, who is actively participating in witchcraft, well, yeah, then, you know, then we have a problem on multiple levels.

01:29:11

But I think a lot of those conversations aren't really had with any depth. They're superficial and they're

01:29:16

I think we need to interact with them really from more of a logical perspective.

01:29:22

Well, and I would also say that when somebody comes at me saying, you know, this is a pagan ritual that was that was done for however many years and they attribute those type of motives to me, it's well, it's wrong.

01:29:41

That's not why I put a Christmas tree in my my house. That's not why I put lights on it. So it's always the motive behind, which is, again, why then

01:29:49

I cannot talk about or I cannot promote

01:29:55

Santa because the motive behind there is with a false.

01:30:01

It's there's a false witness within it. I mean, I myself don't truly maybe if I truly believed in Santa Claus as a 42 year old adult, you know, that might be different if you truly believe he exists.

01:30:15

But I don't. And so the motive to try and promote

01:30:20

Santa would be false. I think you make a good point. Action, action and motives are two different that that's that's that's really important.

01:30:30

It's the motive. That's that's what it's about. And, you know. I got to go, guys,

01:30:36

I think. Well, we I know you stayed a little bit longer than you planned. Thank you. Yeah, because I enjoyed the conversation.

01:30:42

You guys are great. It's an honor to interact with you guys. Really, I mean that. Well, we like having you.

01:30:48

I really appreciate you guys. I learn a lot every time I come on. I got to get home.

01:30:54

I'll see. I'll talk to you tomorrow, Andrew. All right. All right. You've been you've been the less talkative here tonight.

01:31:02

Any other thoughts you have as far as your traditions when it comes to Christmas?

01:31:08

I think when it comes when it comes down to who's who are you focusing on? Is it is it the tradition or is it

01:31:14

Christ? If you put Christ in your traditions, then you're you're good.

01:31:20

I mean, you got to put Christ first in in when you're celebrating Christmas, when you're worshiping

01:31:25

Christ. Like we have a tradition. This has nothing. You said about non -biblical traditions. One of the traditions we have after we're done opening gifts is we get a gift wrapping fight.

01:31:35

We throw gift wrapping paper at each other. And so you guys are full of great ideas.

01:31:42

I'm loving this. We've done that since I was a kid at my grandmother's house. When there was 20 kids in the place in a little trailer, we would throw wrapping paper at each other.

01:31:52

And it was just a mess. But we all had fun. Like I said, it comes down to you put

01:31:57

Christ first in your traditions and your life and your walk. And everything will be

01:32:03

OK. It's like our liberty in Christ. See, I could never have done that growing up because my grandmother, who grew up during the depression, would freak if we ripped the wrapping paper because she would iron it and reuse it.

01:32:19

So we had to cut it along the seam where the tape is so she could reuse the wrapping paper.

01:32:26

Smart woman. Smart woman. I think another fun thing to throw into this discussion is all those

01:32:35

Christians who get their sanctified undies in a bundle when they're greeted with a happy holidays or they encounter

01:32:44

Xmas somewhere. I think this goes, Melissa, to what you're saying. Just sometimes the silly hobby horses we have.

01:32:53

I mean, holidays is a derivative of holy days. Man, oh, man, if we would be more holy during the holidays, to call them the holidays really is a fantastic thing to do.

01:33:07

And I think more and more Christians are coming to recognize that Xmas actually comes from Christians.

01:33:15

Christians made it up. The Greek letter chi is the shape of an

01:33:22

X, and it was oftentimes substituted for Christ's name. And so that's where it came from.

01:33:28

I think it's a beautiful thing for us to study these out. Because then when we encounter somebody who says happy holidays or we encounter

01:33:36

Xmas, that gives us a connection point for that individual to bring up these truths and to show how even in what they're trying to say, maybe that person is trying to avoid saying

01:33:46

Xmas, but they're failing. And it's a wonderful opportunity to share the gospel at that point.

01:33:52

Well, they may be doing it out of respect because they don't know if you're

01:33:58

Jewish or whether you celebrate Xmas or not. So it could be out of respect. But how quickly would the world want to talk about Xmas if all the

01:34:08

Christians, when they say happy holidays, start talking about the holiness of God?

01:34:14

Well, merry Xmas to you. Yeah. I mean, that may be a good thing.

01:34:22

We all start when people say happy holidays. I do think it would be happy if we were holy these days, you know.

01:34:29

You know the holiness of God, you know. They're saying happy holy day. I mean, just think about that.

01:34:36

I mean, you're right. There's great opportunities in taking that and being able to, from there, start sharing the gospel, which is what we should be doing.

01:34:45

Instead of getting upset over political things, we could actually, crazy idea, talk about the gospel as Christians.

01:34:53

Yeah. That's an interesting thought because I've had a lot of people, I see those bumper stickers, you know, keep

01:34:59

Christ in Xmas. And I never thought of, well, happy holidays, yeah, holy days, and maybe coming at them with, you know, that type of argument.

01:35:12

But I've always thought, well, I know you have the bumper sticker, but why does it have to be just Christ in Xmas?

01:35:19

Why can't Christ be like every day? So I thought, I want a bumper sticker that says keep

01:35:25

Christ in every day. Nice. And on top of that, you know, the whole concept of they're saying keep

01:35:32

Christ in Xmas, but are they, I think as Christians who we bear the like, we are attempting to be like Christ.

01:35:41

I mean, that's what Christian means. It behooves us. It is our responsibility to put Christ into Xmas.

01:35:47

It's not the world's responsibility to do that. That's our responsibility. And to be going out there and saying, oh, you need to be putting

01:35:56

Christ in Xmas, and you're talking to the stores that are hoping that their Xmas sales puts them in the black finally.

01:36:03

Or, you know, all of these other secular things that are just seeing Xmas as a opportunity for capitalism to work.

01:36:13

It's not their job to put Christ in Xmas. It's our job to put Christ in Xmas. So, we should be pointing the fingers back at ourselves.

01:36:23

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that we've covered a lot in this.

01:36:30

A lot of it really does come down to individual choices that people are going to make.

01:36:35

And, I mean, one thing I think, you know, I was thinking, Aaron, with what you were saying that your family does go out and do stuff for Halloween.

01:36:44

I remember my first church that I pastored, Halloween was a big deal. There was a group that thought, like, it's perfectly okay to take your kids out, and another group that thought, like, it's of the devil to take your kids out.

01:36:57

I mean, there's really strong views. And so, I took the opportunity to preach a message,

01:37:03

Halloween to celebrate or not to celebrate. And I basically taught about Christian liberty.

01:37:11

And I actually said, if, because I never took a position on whether to celebrate it or not,

01:37:16

I never said, and I ended up ending the message saying, if you are upset because I didn't tell you whether you can or cannot celebrate

01:37:26

Halloween, then this message was for you. And if you're still thinking this, you need to go back and re -listen to the message, because you missed the point.

01:37:36

And I had several people come up to me after I got done and asked me my position, and I'm like, were you listening?

01:37:43

So, I'll end this in a similar way. We've talked a lot about Christmas, and whether people can celebrate it or not, and how they could celebrate it or not.

01:37:56

And I think this is an issue of Christian liberty, where we do and should have, as I think

01:38:01

Aaron said, have grace for one another, and recognize that what is our tradition, we should not force onto other people.

01:38:11

And what is our views that are not grounded in clear scripture, but where we have freedom, we need to not try to force that upon others.

01:38:22

And if we didn't take the view you think we should take, I'm sorry, but maybe you need to re -listen to the program again.

01:38:31

That might be my take on that. But I think that this, I think this has been helpful for me.

01:38:37

I definitely think it was helpful for Aaron, who has a whole bunch of years of new traditions that he will be able to add for his children coming up.

01:38:47

But whatever is your view with Christmas, whatever it is you plan to do, we here at the

01:38:53

Christian Podcast Community hope that you will do it with love and charity, and be able to enjoy