Faithful Friday - "Jesus is the Reason for the Season"

I am very relieved to see many of the stores where I shopped on Black Friday and where I love to shop sticking with the greeting of “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays”. After all, the holiday is Christmas and Christmas is the holiday we celebrate Christ Jesus’ birth.

We all know how commercialized Christmas has become. We have always made the point of making sure our kids knew why we were celebrating and why we give gifts and we’ve try not to put the emphasis otherwise. But every year still we get caught up in the commercialization of Christmas as well. This year we are trying especially hard to make it all centered around the real reason for Christmas. We are starting an advent called What God wants for Christmas. It was given to me by someone at the end of the season last year, and for the life of me, I can’t remember who. Isn’t that terrible? Anyway, I had tucked it away since it was at the end of the season last year and just found it this year.

 It is an interactive kid friendly nativity with things to read and activities to do and they are all centered around Christ’s birth. In the past we have made birthday cakes and sang happy birthday to Jesus as well. This year we are committed to especially making an effort to put the emphasis on the birth of Christ and not everything else. We are even checking into our family helping to serve dinner on Christmas Eve at a homeless shelter, random acts of kindness throughout the week, and anything else that involves the real reason we celebrate Christmas – the ultimate gift of love given to us in Jesus.

When I go to a store, no more Happy Holidays for me, I make a point to say Merry Christmas. By the way, that reminds me……have you seen Christmas with a Capital C? It’s a movie revolving around an attorney who returns to his small home town in Alaska and quickly rocks the boat by getting an injunction against the nativity display tradition and attacking Christmas. It can viewed instantly on Netflix.

Also I wanted to share a naughty or nice list concerning stores that still use “Merry Christmas”, those that are borderline, and those that do not use Merry Christmas, but instead Happy Holidays. Choosing not to shop at those that don’t support Merry Christmas and shopping at those that do, is just one small thing I can do and have done and intend to continue doing. You can view that list by clicking here. 

I would like to challenge you to make a point of taking the Reason for the Season, Jesus, and do something He would want us to do. First of all, make sure He is foremost the center of our celebrating. Just a pleasant “Merry Christmas” (instead of Happy Holidays) to the clerk who checks us out; picking up someone’s tab at a restaurant, random acts of kindness, helping out the needy……….those things. Those are the things I want my family to be all about this Christmas season, and we’re going to try really hard this year to make that the center of our celebrating. Just thought I’d share………wouldn’t it be nice if we could all do that?

We'd love to have you join us in Faithful Friday too. If you have something you'd like to share from your Christian walk, just let us know in a comment either here or on Joy's blog, so we can come visit you too! (Joy's Faithful Friday post is coming....later tonight...she's babysitting today.) :)

Have a great weekend! Be Blessed!