As we rush toward the holidays, I am reminded that the essence of holiday is holy days. Time and seasons that we set apart from the rest of the calendar to observe and remember. These two elements are key to making these days holy. I often hear people lament the loss of Christmas to commercialism, but I don’t share that concern because I know that my faith and my choices are not controlled by outside forces. My personal experience of these holy days are set and controlled by me. Years ago, Dawn and I made the conscience decision to remember and to observe. A decision that met lots of resistance from our extended family. So what do I mean by remember and observe?
By remember I mean to remember what God had done for us through Christ, to remember our heritage of faith handed down to us over the generations of faithful Christ followers in our family, and to remember the price paid by Christians in every generation so that the message of Christ could be transmitted to us. There is a lot to remember. We do this through specific traditions, and stories that we share with one another, and over the years we have handed-off the opportunity to our children to tell those stories back to us. No amount of commercialism has stopped us from doing that.
By observance I mean that we have put into practice times of reading the Scripture, prayer, and song into our observance of these holy days. We have made sure that no matter how many people come, and no matter what agenda anyone else brings, at our home we observe these practices, and we do not go to anyone else’s home until we have observed our time with God.
This past week my children thanked me again for our decision not to let what everyone else did determine our holiday celebrations. Turns out they didn't miss the commercialism either. Maybe being like everyone else isn't what it is cracked up to be?
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