Wanting a Better Way For My Children

As I wrote in this post, our goal is to de-commercialize Christmas, modeling it after the one and only Christmas in the Bible during which Jesus received three gifts. If we're to celebrate Christmas at all, we figure why not model it after the one true Christmas?

This is a difficult thing it turns out, because Christmas celebration is an extra-biblical matter. The first celebration wasn't meant to be copied, apparently, because no where in the Bible was it ever recreated and no biblical feast ever started because of it. The roots of our cultural celebration of Christmas come from the Catholic church trying to force Christianity on a pagan culture. To appease the pagans, elements of their culture were interwoven into church practices, including parts of the winter solstice celebration. The Catholic church did the same with cultural Easter celebrations.

The Roman Catholic Church contends that its origin is the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ in approximately A.D. 30. The Catholic Church proclaims itself to be the church that Jesus Christ died for, the church that was established and built by the apostles. Is that the true origin of the Catholic Church? On the contrary. Even a cursory reading of the New Testament will reveal that the Catholic Church does not have its origin in the teachings of Jesus or His apostles. In the New Testament, there is no mention of the papacy, worship/adoration of Mary (or the immaculate conception of Mary, the perpetual virginity of Mary, the assumption of Mary, or Mary as co-redemptrix and mediatrix), petitioning saints in heaven for their prayers, apostolic succession, the ordinances of the church functioning as sacraments, infant baptism, confession of sin to a priest, purgatory, indulgences, or the equal authority of church tradition and Scripture. 

So, if the origin of the Catholic Church is not in the teachings of Jesus and His apostles, as recorded in the New Testament, what is the true origin of the Catholic Church?

For the first 280 years of Christian history, Christianity was banned by the Roman Empire, and Christians were terribly persecuted. This changed after the “conversion” of the Roman Emperor Constantine. Constantine “legalized” Christianity with the Edict of Milan in A.D. 313. Later, in A.D. 325, Constantine called the Council of Nicea in an attempt to unify Christianity. Constantine envisioned Christianity as a religion that could unite the Roman Empire, which at that time was beginning to fragment and divide. While this may have seemed to be a positive development for the Christian church, the results were anything but positive. Just as Constantine refused to fully embrace the Christian faith, but continued many of his pagan beliefs and practices, so the Christian church that Constantine promoted was a mixture of true Christianity and Roman paganism.
Constantine found that with the Roman Empire being so vast, expansive, and diverse, not everyone would agree to forsake his or her religious beliefs to embrace Christianity. So, Constantine allowed, and even promoted, the “Christianization” of pagan beliefs. Completely pagan and utterly unbiblical beliefs were given new “Christian” identities. Some clear examples of this are as follows:  Read more here

Constantine

Every year Christmas becomes more nauseating in the stores. If you infiltrate the stores earlier and earlier with Christmas-consumption messages, surely you'll get more people spending money they didn't intend to spend? Why yes, of course, say the marketers. (Here is a succinct origin of the modern Santa Claus.)

This cover from 1906

This cover published in 1925

Corruption that Constantine initially allowed is added to ad nauseam by capitalism. So what is a Christian supposed to do, other than ignore the whole matter and go with the flow? Being acquainted now with how 80% of the world lives, we have a harder time going with the flow on this, though we'll still put up a tree and make a holiday meal every year. But instead of spending resources on each other, we'll spend them on the unreached and on the least of God's people, in keeping with what was important to Jesus. To be His disciple we have to love what the Lord loved, and hate what the world loves. And not to draw attention to ourselves, but to express God's love and bring Him glory. People who do good in this world are at risk of prideful hearts--Christians or not. We have to pray for pure hearts and make sure that whatever we do in the name of the Lord, we do for his glory and not our own.

The kids have seen the toys in Aldi's and every time they see the ornaments and trees in Walmart, they want new decorations since ours are seven years old and a bit shabby. They also want the whole house decorated as many in this neighborhood do. On all that, we say no. The decorations are nice and we can drive to see what others have put up if the kids desire, but spend that money ourselves on something so fleeting and lacking in real meaning? We can't do it, unless it were to turn into a neighborhood outreach some day, much as trunk n' treats at churches and handing out Gospel tracks during Halloween make that affair more worthy of consideration.

Each time I study the Bible in depth, I'm quickly given an object lesson to illustrate the principles. This time the words "hate your life in this world" come alive here as we struggle to live according to biblical principles, including at Christmas time.

We've told the children there will be no presents this year. We say that nearly every year but some kind people--most often my mother and step-dad or my dad's sister--send some money for presents. This year we were given an early Christmas present (a new microwave) right before Thanksgiving from my mom and step-dad, and my aunt gave us a pizza gift card before leaving for Florida this year, so the kids will spend their first Christmas with nothing under the tree and I consider it a blessing that it turned out this way. I'm not looking forward to what the kids have to go through, I must say, but my prayers lead me to this and my husband's do as well.

A sense of entitlement at Christmas is something our culture has ingrained in kids and because we bought into it for a number of years, we have to pay the consequences now, as our kids slowly reform their own toy-loving, present-unwrapping hearts. All four of my children have birthdays from November to January so there will some present unwrapping to make it easier on them.

To help make the de-commercializing even gentler on them, I've decided to do all the grocery shopping without them for the next month. The commercial lure is overwhelming as soon as one enters a store. There's no end to the "Christmas" spending, spanning all the way from extra food to home decor, to toys, to fancy cookie containers and cutters, to Christmas cards and photos and fancy paper for Christmas letters. Whew!

I know my kids and they will probably make presents for one another, as they've read about in the Christmas Little House books, in which Laura and Mary make homemade presents for each other and for their little sister, Carrie. That is a wonderful, loving, anti-commercial expression of gift giving and I'll encourage it. The Little House books reveal a society far less obsessed with Christmas. The girls received knitted mittens or homemade dolls from their mom often, and maybe some peppermint candy from the local general store, stuffed into darned stockings placed on the mantel. The girls were excited and very thankful and not a bit spoiled.

Oh, but how kids have changed. Sigh. As we read book after book portraying children growing up in the 1800's, I bemoan the loss of all the elements of childhood that built character. Our era has replaced hard physical outdoor and indoor chores with too much leisure and too many possessions.

Building character in children is hard parental work. I think the hardest part for us modern parents--most of us were probably spoiled as tots--is to deny ourselves first. We have to say no to the world in our own hearts and then parent from that perspective.

My children will grow up and make their own decisions on Christmas and on a consumption-obsessed society within their own families, without any interference from us either way. My goal is to give them a godly foundation of self-denial from which to make sound biblical decisions. Without a history of self-denial they will have a lot of personal spiritual issues to work through before they can truly parent biblically.

They won't understand this for many years, but the kindest thing I can do is to teach them discernment and make their childhood less a fairy-tale and more a preparation. Children, when given the chance, will make their own fun. It's their God-given nature to turn their environment into a playground. That natural upbringing is the fairy tale I'm after. And it's okay with me if gratitude from them comes many years from now, when they're in the throes of child-rearing themselves.

I don't write any of this to change your mind, but to cement in my own mind what I perceive the Lord wants from me. This blog is nothing if not my main method of self-preaching, so hopefully no offense is taken.