136: Why We Are Celebrating Christmas For The First Time
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 29 ноя 2021
- Merry Christmas!
It is an odd thing to celebrate Christmas for our family because we have never done it!
The incarnation of our King is at the center and the gospel is magnified in our home in this season in light of it.
Join us, as we discuss why we haven't celebrated and why we are choosing to this year.
-
Top 5 Tuesday
Join our weekly email list to keep up to date with the highlights of what is going on in our family life. (scroll to the bottom)
www.nowthatwereafamily.com/si...
-
Looking for more Now That We're A Family resources?
We got 'em!
Website:
www.nowthatwereafamily.com
-
Instagram:
/ nowthatwereafamily
-
OUR FAMILY MUSIC ACADEMY:
www.voetbergmusicacademy.com
-
Is your life just too complicated to ever feel peaceful?
Check out Katie's:
getitalldoneclub.com 
Кино
The Christmas Question is an excellent documentary free on youtube that covers this topic so very well! God bless!
Agreed
God does tell us to celebrate His Holy Days in the Old Testament❣️I celebrate Passover, Feast of Tabernacles, Yom Kippur, Purim, as well as Hanukkah, and in doing so, more joy has been added to my life, as well as more appreciation of my Lord❣️😃👑✡️🌟🌟
This is something I struggle with! My husband loves Christmas but I have convictions about not celebrating, this helped a lot. Thank you.
Glad this discussion could be a blessing! You aren't the first marriage to have to navigate differences when it comes to Christmas.
Have you guys watched Truth and Traditions? After that documentary (real eye opener) I just can’t.. no matter how much I tried to justify and make Christmas ok. The main take away for me was: What does God think? How does HE feel about it. Does it hurt God’s heart when we do this or that. Or is it just our emotions, cozy feelings, beliefs..
I have not watched this but now plan to. I've been torn on this topic,now that I have children of my own I'm looking more into it. Mike Winger had a talk on this topic and pretty much said you can't prove any of the pagan references people connect to christmas in his research. It seems like a tough topic on either side
@@slee7991 Yes, I agree.. very tough :(
Yes! That was really convicting! Unfortunately, we celebrated again this year. 😥Please pray for unity on this issue for us.
Well done, you two 💗
Great podcast! I enjoyed listening and appreciate how you shared your process to get to that conclusion!
Glad it was helpful! Thanks for listening.
Wow wow, so well said!!
Thank you for the scripture and guidance through this subject! Loved it
Glad you enjoyed it!
I love how you shared your hearts on this so openly and that there was no condemnation for those who feel differently. Thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Love your hearts to dig into where the Lord is guiding your faith and family!
Ah, thanks! Glad our journey can be a blessing.
Thank you for talking about the aspect of structure that holidays bring to life. I rarely ever hear it being mentioned in this conversation and yet it has been a huge comfort and blessing in my life. I grew up in a very chaotic family situation and we didn`t have many happy holidays. Actually my mother hated Christmas so we ended up not celebrating it at all. Now as an adult I find that learning about church calendar and implementing some of the traditions into my life brings wonderful structure to my entire year and encourages me to develop more stable habits of spending time with God on a daily basis. Especially Advent has been helpful with that. Sure you can create these habits without Christmas too, but I find it extremely difficult while feeling alone and inventing the wheel every time. I don`t have the strength or the life skills that a healthy childhood would give to help me in that either. So joining in with a tradition that has been celebrated by generations of Christians feels like a wonderful support system and I am very grateful for it.
We enjoyed hearing your journey on this topic and your sincere desire for truth and balance. My husband and I have been encouraged and inspired over and over by your podcast! You mentioned enjoying eschatology and church history and we just had to recommend a book that has given us a lot of insight and clarity on both subjects. It called The Great Controversy by E. G. White.
Thanks for listening and thanks for the recommendation.
We love our Christmas tree, it’s nothing more to our family that spending time together just like going to a park or baking a cake together. Our kids know the true meaning of Christmas and we read them the birth of Jesus. Do WhAts right for your family. So many people will try to condemn of things that THEY think. At the end we all have perspectives and opinions and that’s all it is...
We are really thankful for the opportunity to teach our kids about the birth of Jesus during this season.
@@NowThatWereAFamilyPodcast some messianic believers choose to do that around Feast of Tabernacles. In speculating that he might have been born around that time.
Thank you for sharing such a helpful conversation! I am so happy for you that you guys were able to look into the Word itself and find freedom in Christ in this area. You are totally right, this is really a non-essential, where we can respect one another’s different convictions about non-salvation issues. Freedom in Christ overcoming legalism in man made laws is found in many places in God’s Word. ❤
On a random note, seeing as you guys are so rational and intellectually honest, I have had a weird conviction that I am not sure I have heard anywhere else and I was wondering what you guys thought about it. When I read about when Jesus commands the disciples at the Last Supper to eat and drink his body and blood in remembrance of Him until He comes again, instead of how it is commonly done in Church services on some kind of weekly or monthly schedule, I feel like a straight reading of the Bible shows it is more Him asking them to do it every time they eat and drink together, every time you share a meal with other believers, as a way to remember Christ and what He did, until He comes again (or until we die)…. Does that make sense at all to you??? It makes perfect sense to me but I have not found this view anywhere. Thanks!!
are you all familiar with Gods holy days
and how many keep these days?
Christmas in our home is a wonderful time of togetherness, great smells from the kitchen, Church plays and awesome memories! Family needs traditions.
The Bible teaches us it’s more blessed to give than to receive. I use to buy gifts for our boys, at Christmas, that I would have got them anyway.
So interesting! Thank you for sharing your process of navigating Christmas as a family! Being Catholic, I never associated celebrating Christmas with paganism (all though I can totally see it in the sense of secularization/over-doing it with Santa, obsession with gifts... etc.) I was always taught evergreen trees are used because they keep their life even in the darkness of winter- just like Jesus lives eternally. Wreaths are circular also symbolizing eternal life. And red vestments are worn by Priests on Christmas representing the blood shed by Jesus for us- which is where red came from. The star on top (or some do angels on top) for the Star of Behtlehem/Angel Gabriel. Also, celebrating Advent as a time of penance and preparation- preparing our hearts while leading up to the celebration of His birth can help us enter into what it was like with the darkness and emptiness of life before Christ entered into the world. It makes Christmas Day all the more joyful if the time spent leading up to it is focused on prayer, repentance and preparation. :-) Thank you again for sharing your thoughts!!
Another fun thing to do with the little ones- if you have a nativity scene, hide the baby Jesus until Christmas. On Christmas morning, let that be the first gift they open up to place the emphasis on His birth! Also, having a birthday cake is a fun way to celebrate and remember it is a birthday too!
Thanks for all your thoughts and feedback.
Great episode! It was interesting to hear insight on why some people choose not to celebrate Christmas. I pray the Lord blesses this beautiful season for your family!
Do you mind sharing what advent calendar you're doing with your kids?
This is the book we are reading with the kids: www.amazon.com/Advent-Storybook-Bible-Stories-Showing/dp/0830776087/
I love that you bring up should we not do things just because others are doing them wrong. I feel like the Christian community has let things like that like that influence what we do.
Also, I think most of not all things about Christmas point to Christ! We just need to point all of this out to kids - candy canes, trees, lights, presents! We also do our best to encourage the gift of giving vs receiving. Sometimes we ask family and friends to forego gifts that year, and we just do presents as the immediate family. We also get involved in Operation Christmas Child and other ministries like our church preparing gifts for orphans in Ukraine. Once my 5 year old didn’t even mind going to Walmart to get a bunch of toys for others and zero for us!
Christmas has nothing to do with Jesus. You won't find it or anyone celebrating it anywhere in scripture. Religion tagged on the story about Jesus' birth TO Christmas, not the other way around. It's a hard truth for people to swallow when they've believed a certain way all their lives. Some Christians who want to celebrate Christ's birth, do so at the Biblical holiday Sukkot in the fall, closer to when he was likely born, but that holiday also has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus.
Christmas time is so exciting! We definitely tell our kids the truth about Santa. That their presents are from US, and everything we have comes from the Lord. Really good point that Santa sounds too much like Jesus and lines will be blurred about what is and isn’t true
I never in my life new people didn't celebrate Christmas. We just keep Jesus at the center and don't mention Santa obviously. God's a fun God and a lot less religious than people make him out to be. Live holy and righteous of course, but opening presents is fun! The best part is watching the kids open their presents. What an opportunity to bless them and see their faces light up!!!
Appreciate yalls openess.
My hubs and i are the first on each side to not celebrate christmas. So its cool to hear how yall were raised regarding it.
For us, what it boils down to, is that its not jesus birthday, he was born during Sukkot which is a fall holy feast (8 days) . So if hes not born on dec 25th as with the pagan god, what exactly are we celebrating? And if the traditions of the holiday and decorations are pagan related, when why even use them in the first place? And the fact the whole world whether Christian or not celebrates it makes us question it all the more. We are to be set apart.
I must say, because both sides of family celebrate, and our kids are getting older, they see it and its hard. Id like to hear how yall were raised on not celebrating and being kids throughout it
Now another interesting question: How are you planning to celebrate Christmas? What would a good and god honoring way to do it look like? (for example concerning gifts)
I would be interested to listen to your further considerations around this topic 😊
I personally believe one gift is enough. And I enjoy gift giving. But also don’t like over consumption.
Music is a big deal for my husband. Even just watching movies with Christmas in it. I think it’s just the freedom to walk by a tree and not being triggered into anger (like my husband tends to)
Can you link the advent book you are reading to your kids? I really enjoyed this conversation! Have a great week guys!
Sure! This is what we are reading to the kids: www.amazon.com/Advent-Storybook-Bible-Stories-Showing/dp/0830776087/
Love your podcast. The verse was written before Jesus' birth, life, death and resurrection. It is definitely addressing idols...man-made idols. No tree is anti-Christian unless man uses it to worship someone/something other than the Lord, whether it be a false god or the object itself. Of course, people can lose sight of Christ in Christmas and idolize the tree/decor, gifts etc.
Thanks for catching up on older episodes! And thanks so much for listening along.
100% it's how our hearts are set. If we are set on God we can't accidentally worship something else with the colour red lol
What advent calendar do y’all use for your kids?
I'm really struggling with Christmas for the last couple of years BUT if we stop celebrating it I will really miss 2 traditions we have: Adornaments (12 ornaments with names of Christ and a devotional and scripture song for each one) and Prophecy cards (25ish with OT prophecies on one side and NT fulfillment of them on the other side). Of course we can use those anytime of year. I think they're both by Dennis and Barbara Rainey. We also love singing carols and read through the Christmas story a couple of times. Other than those things I just don't like Christmas and it feels weird to say that as a Christian. Christmas just feels like a lot of unnecessary spending and a lot of effort for a busy mom with brain fog. Finding out about the pagan stuff just made it even harder to celebrate. I just try to focus on being thankful for my Savior.
The Lord did say literally to receive the Eucharist. “Those who eat my body & flesh will have life.” It is not for remembrance, but a real instruction. 🤗
I'm curious what you think about/how you reconcile the command to worship in Spirit and in Truth, if we know that Jesus was not truly born in Winter.
Just genuinely curious. :)
I know you said you believe He was born in Spring, and i agree. I celebrate Passover, and also the Biblical New Year, so for me its the perfect time to talk to my kids about the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, right at the time of things becoming new and alive again in the Spring, and celebrating the resurrection at Passover :)
Are u Seventh Day Adventists or did you come Plymouth Brethren pr Holiness Pentecostal? Did u celebrate Hannukah?
So what did y’all decide about Halloween?
What is your background?
What Advent book did you read your children?
amzn.to/47cda2t :)
I struggle with still the question if jesus was actually born in December or sometime around fall
He wouldn't have been born in December. Shepherds were out in the fields. Start reading about the Lord's Feasts and pray for your eyes to be opened.
Satan always has a counterfeit to rob from what the Heavenly Father gave us. The Feast days are from the Father and they are beautiful and have no ties to paganism and Catholicism
Katey, I side with your dad, granddad and great granddad on this.👍😊
The original celebration is Saturnalia with was christianized by the Roman Catholic Church, it is called mass, Christ-mas, Roman Catholic Mass for Christ. There is so much paganism in Christmas because it’s roots are just that, pagan. One cant make a feast unto Baal and then add a few things and say, “ok God accept this as your feast!” Many Christians say “let’s put the Christ back in Christmas”, but Christ was never in Christmas. This is coming from someone whose favorite time of the year used to be Christmas, so don’t think I don’t know the pain of letting it go and the family conflict that has come from that conviction. I have always admired you guys living “counter cultural”, but this celebration of Christmas….. is that not going with the culture? I have friends from all different faiths who all celebrate Christmas. Does that not make you wonder? How can the world accept a feast to Christ yet hate him and his name and what he stands for so much?🤔
I agree.. I really respect you Katy and Elisha. Christmas used to be my favourite time of the year, but it truly is a pagan festival. It's also the time of year where people lose restraint and covetousness, greed and gluttony reign rampant.. I just think it's a truly slippery slope
Thanks for listening, and thanks for the feedback. We know lots of people who take very different approaches to Christmas.
Say it again for the people in the back: Christ was never in Christmas. So if you're going to celebrate it, don't make it about the Messiah...
Yeshua, Jesus celebrated Hanukkah❣️Shouldn’t we also celebrate Hanukkah 🕎🌟as believers in Yeshua ⁉️I also celebrate Christmas because the angels, shepherds, and the Magi celebrated Yeshua’s birth❣️🌟👑🌟🕎🌟👑🕎🌟👑
Wow, I’ve never heard of pagan rituals, so I don’t want to listen because I don’t want it to ruin Christmas for me. It’s always been about Christ’s birth for me.
Good news! We try to focus in this episode about Christmas as the birth of Jesus Christ.
That's not a wise way to approach life. Honestly apply that logic to any other potentially dangerous, sinful situation and see the issue.
U hun
Never knew there were other Christians out there that had moral qualms about celebrating Christmas. Pretty sure there's a lot of good evidence debunking the pagan myths, any month early Christians chose to celebrate the birth of Christ would have landed near some pagan feast. Rather, the date of Christmas was chosen based on traditional understanding of God's creation of the world, death and resurrection. May the Lord be everywhere praised and glorified, and may we all celebrate his wondrous incarnation and birth that brought about our salvation.
Well said! Thanks Bernadette.
It’s great to celebrate Hanukkah as well as Christmas ❣️Read the story of Hanukkah to your children, showing them how Godly Jews stood up to evil, reclaimed the Temple, and the miracle of how a small amount of oil lasted 8 days‼️🌟🕎🌟There are childrens books about Hanukkah. Hanukkah food is yummy too and the children can light the Hanukiah for 8 nights and say the special prayers. There would be no Christmas without the Hanukkah victory‼️🙏🏻🕎🌟
You might want to look up the real St. Nick story. It's about putting others first.
I appreciate you sharing your honest thoughts and process with us. You mentioned the verse in Romans and I have to say that I believe it was completely taken out of context. If you read it through it clearly mentions eating versus not eating. The context of this passage is about fasting, and whether or not certain days were better than others or required to fast, which was a topic of contention at that time within the body. Using your logic, you could reason that it would be okay to celebrate Halloween as well as long as we slap God's name over it in some way. You also mentioned believing that Christ's birth is in the Spring. There are various arguments over the possible timing of His birth, but just simply according to Scripture we know it could not have been in the winter. We do know that Dec 25th is the birthday of many false gods. Imagine telling your spouse you wanted to start celebrating their birthday on the day of your ex's birthday. To me this must be such a hurtful thing for us to do to our Bridegroom. As far as the pagan rituals go, I definitely see your point however I believe the issue with pagan items comes in when it becomes used specifically in worship, and Christmas is definitely a holiday used to worship, honor and celebrate Christ. I hope my words come across in sincere love to you both and the desire that you truly seek God on this matter and wait patiently on His answer, and I am confident He will reveal His will to you and make all things clear if you are willing to receive His answers with open and honest hearts.
I think you’ll find that Katie and Elisha mentioned at the end that they prayed and sought the Lord a lot over the past year with this decision 😊
@@sharonizzard4410 Ok I missed the last few minutes of the video. Thats good to hear.
I truly mean no condemnation or judgment towards you both or anyone who chooses to celebrate Christmas, just sharing my thoughts in love and some things that people may not be aware of or might not have considered when it comes to this holiday.
These are a lot of reasons why we haven't celebrated Christmas in the past. Christmas is going to look different for each family. Thanks for listening!
I was going to make the same comment. Many people take this verse out of context.
I am sad to be seeing this to be honest. I am a newer subscriber to ya'll but was excited to find other saints (holy ones) living holy (set apart). I strongly urge you to go back to the Word and truly search this. There is SO much scripture about this. We are not supposed to do as the pagans did or even more so man's traditions. But it isn't just about the Pagans, its about the Catholic church. And it's about the celebrations we are to celebrate as well. Truth unedited has some great videos on RUclips about this as well, in fact he has a holiday series. If you are looking for celebrations, look into the book A Family Guide to the Biblical Holidays. Blessings!!
Does Yahweh hate the feasts He gave Israel? Lets see what the bible says: Amos 5: 21-23:
"I hate, I despise your feasts! I can’t stand the stench of your solemn assemblies. Even if you offer Me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; I will have no regard for your fellowship offerings of fattened cattle. Take away from Me the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.“
We run into problems when we quote a verse out of context because it is often taken out of context. Why do I say this? Becuase many people will stop reading there but things change when we continue to read; Amos 5:25-27:
”“House of Israel, was it sacrifices and grain offerings that you presented to Me during the 40 years in the wilderness? ➡️But you have taken up Sakkuth your king and Kaiwan your star god⬅️, ➡️images you have made for yourselves⬅️. So I will send you into exile beyond Damascus.” Yahweh, the God of Hosts, is His name. He has spoken.“
Sakkuth and Kaiwan are references to Israel's apostasy. The "Encyclopedia of the Bible" informs, this is from a Babylonian incantation. Sakkuth and Kaiwan were interchangeable names for the god Saturn. Amos warned Israel that devotion to this god would bring ultimate ruin, and that she must detach herself from it (Amos 5:26).
We cannot worship Yahweh and at the same time worship other gods. This is detestable to the Father. This is called syncretism.
SYNCRETISM is nothing new. It’s been with us since the beginning. It’s the combination of different forms of belief or practice into one unique idea. Our fallen nature is inclined to mix idolatry with worship of the God/Elohim of Israel. This practice began in the Garden of Eden when Eve/Chava thought she could mix together the commands of God/Yahweh with the advice and schemes of Satan - that somehow these two were actually compatible.
Aaron states in Exodus 32:2-8, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to YAHWEH”. Yes, they made an image of a calf, but they were using it to worship Yahweh, not an Egyptian god, Ra. Their “hearts” may have been in the right place, but their actions resulted in Yahweh’s anger. This interesting fact of Scripture is most times overlooked, because the application is personal.
Syncretism is in the church today. We don’t usually worship the image, but we take pagan images and idols and mix it with worship of Yahweh. This is syncretizing pagan practices in our worship. Yahweh says he’s a jealous God/Elohim and His reaction to the Hebrews mixing the Golden Calf or pagan gods in worship of Him is forbidden. It is the same today, when we mix pagan images and themes with biblical stories of the nativity or the resurrection with our worship of Yahweh today.
😂😂 Capitalism IS good! It is the voluntary and free (free as in no restrictions, not free of financial cost) exchange of goods and services, using the giftings and skills that God has given you to produce and create in ways that bless others in your community (or across the world, as we are now). Remember, the Proverbs 31 woman was an entrepreneur in a business related to cloth! 😊