Christmas traditions

If one thinks about Christmas long you can start having a problems with how we celebrate it. I mean by that that when you compare the holiday to its origins and how we celebrate in modern times causes one to question our modern version. We have taken a religious holiday and laminated our own traditions and concepts on it. Ultimately, the holiday bears little resemblance to the original holiday.

You need to look at the words:

holiday/holy day

Christmas/Christ's mass

The giving of gifts derives from the coming of the Three Kings, bearing gifts for the Christ child, which traditionally didn't happen until the Feast of the Epiphany, in January.

I realize that the fathers who placed Christ's mass in December were laminating Christian symbolism on the Winter Solstice and the Roman holiday of Saturnalia. There is no real reason to think that Jesus was born in December. However, the dying of the old year and the beginning of a new year just provided a handy spot on the calendar for the death of the old world, or old testament, and the beginning of the new. The pagan calendar and rituals could be incorporated into the Christian gospel to assist in the evangelization and transformation of the old with the new.

But the world we live in today with its commercialism and materialism is far from either. No matter how hard we try to inject the season with love and giving, we still seem to celebrate nothing more than the collection of things. People who call themselves Christians, but celebrate that "commitment" by dressing and entering a church for the first time in maybe two or three other times during the year, take on the clothing of belief, commitment and faith for an hour, then quickly discard it for the real sign of Christmas: $

Symbolism is tricky.