Christmas Traditions
By Brent Davis, Campus Ministry Coordinator
What does Christmas mean to you? Think about that question a moment … I’ll wait! You can share your thoughts in the comments below. My family and I (with another family) once got to share about the meaning of Christmas on national television—in Kazakhstan. The children put on a little nativity play and we sang carols, as I recall. Later, we explained the meaning of what we strange foreigners had been doing. Do you feel like a stranger as you look around your neighborhood or does your celebration look like everyone else’s? Have you thought about your Christmas traditions and where they came from?
Traditions are good for building relationships, but they should reflect the deeper meaning that God came to earth to build relationships with us. When traditions damage relationships they must be reexamined. In Mark 7, Jesus told the Pharisees:
5 So the Pharisees and teachers of religious law asked him, “Why don’t your disciples follow our age-old tradition? They eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony.”
6 Jesus replied, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote,
‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
7 Their worship is a farce,
for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’[d]
8 For you ignore God’s law and substitute your own tradition.”
9 Then he said, “You skillfully sidestep God’s law in order to hold on to your own tradition. 10 For instance, Moses gave you this law from God: ‘Honor your father and mother,’[e] and ‘Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.’[f] 11 But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’[g] 12 In this way, you let them disregard their needy parents. 13 And so you cancel the word of God in order to hand down your own tradition. And this is only one example among many others.” (Mark 7: 5-13, NLT)
Traditions must represent our values. At AUHS our values are love, respect, justice, and caring. One of our traditions is Santa Cause which we observed on December 16. On that day we gave gifts to children in the community. How do your Christmas traditions represent your values; how are they honoring Christ and bringing each other together?
Merry Christmas!
