a Christian Christmas

What would a true Christian Christmas consist of?

• giving each other an apple (or some other kind of basic, unglamorous item)
• taking into our home someone who is lonely or homeless, and sharing a meal and fellowship with them. Regardless of their appearance, regardless of how graceful or educated or unrefined they are.

If you don't think America is full of pious religion, stop and think how few well-meaning Christians would take someone in off the street and share a meal like this. Here's the true gut check. We'll do a meal like this in December (at a church, school or homeless shelter), but how many of us do it on Christmas day? We'll serve the homeless a Thanksgiving meal on a weekend in November. How many of us will bring a smelly, unshaven "least of the brethren" into our home on Thanksgiving Day itself? We don't. Our cozy, well-kept homes are not welcomed places for the unrefined.

America is engulfed with the dainty decorations and wanting everything to be so quaint and warm and perfect for ourselves. Largely absorbed with our own comfort. (And this doesn't even touch on the abounding glut of consumerism.)

This notion of self-comfort is definitely part of what the American media says makes Christmas Christmas. It's part of "the spirit of Christmas" and "the spirit of the season".

It's not the spirit of Jesus. He came to earth in humility and without fanfare. He showed no regard or favoritism among mankind.

"It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick", Jesus said. (Matthew 9:12)

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me...He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted..." (Isaiah 61:1)

America (Body included) is largely about the production and panache of what Christmas has been made out to be by the media. If you don't have a decorated place to be with family and presents, well then something is wrong with your Christmas picture.

What a crock of crap, and the Body of Jesus buys into it hook, line and sinker.

I am not knocking anyone who has been blessed of the Lord and has His favor. I'm just taking a sober look at the commercialism and separatism in American society, and its infiltration into the Body.

Christmas in this Christian-based society has become much more than the simple celebration of Jesus coming into the world.