Christmas – A Time for Celebration
As Christians, Christmas means far more than a national holiday with all of the traditional trimmings. Presents, decorations, a tree with lights and delectable treats are all wonderful but they are merely reminders of the most important birth in the history of the world – the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, Jesus Christ.
Christmas hasn’t always been celebrated by all Christian sects throughout history. For the Puritans, it was a time of fasting and self-denial, for pondering their sins. The Calvinists in Scotland went even further by completely abolishing Christmas as a holiday. Some groups still adhere to these austere anti-celebratory practices. Some go so far as to say that Christmas is a pagan celebration of winter solstice and that Jesus was not born in the winter, lending credence to their claim
Whereas, the precise date of the birth of Jesus is a mystery, memorializing this and other events of his life, death and resurrection are anything but new. In the early centuries, pagan temples were replaced by cathedrals and churches. Pagan holidays were replaced by Christian remembrances of the saints and God, signaling a new time where paganism had been conquered by Christianity. The practice of worshipping false gods gave way to worshipping and giving thanks to the Almighty God.
In Luke’s Gospel, when Mary visits her kinswoman Elizabeth, John the Baptist leaped with joy in his mother’s womb (Luke 1:41), just as David danced and leaped in front of the ark. (2 Sam. 6:14). Even as an unborn child, John was moved by the Holy Spirit to celebrate the coming of the Christ – the Bread of Life.
Elizabeth then says to Mary, "Who am I, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (Luke 1:43), in the same way David inquired about the Ark of the Covenant, "How can the ark of the Lord come to me?" (2 Sam. 6:9). The ark contained the urn of manna, the bread from heaven, similarly, Mary’s womb carried Jesus, the Bread of Life. Finally – it is interesting to note that the place where Jesus was born, Bethlehem, means, “House of Bread.”
At Christmas, we celebrate our freedom from the captivity of sin through the incarnation of our Savior, Jesus Christ – the Bread of Life!
For more information, please visit:
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1991/9112cust.asp