Thursday, December 14, 2006

Looking for a Partridge

Unless I missed my guess, and that is entirely possible, today kicks off the whole 12 days of Christmas thing. I'm in luck because directly behind our house is not one but two Pear Trees! Now all I need is a Partridge and I'll be set.

I have heard the story about how the song, The Twelve Days of Christmas, has hidden Christian meanings. If so, I suppose that's great. However, I think we are past hiding our Christianity. It's time we were bold about Christ. Last year I was almost nauseated by all the blabber about saying or not saying "Merry Christmas." Now, the mega-church of those who worship at the retail-bottom-line alter, Wal-Mart is boasting about openly greeting customers with "Merry Christmas." Is that really the point? Although I love to wish people a Merry Christmas, the incarnation of Jesus Christ is more, so much more. The whole holiday is very anti-climactic when you focus solely on the manger and not the life and work of the Messiah. He came that sinful mankind might be reconciled to a Holy God. Not sure if that message is buried in the lyrics of the 12 days song or not. But, it ought to be on the lips of every life that has been transformed by God's grace!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey chief -

This blog stuff is cool. I have it my list of things to investigate next year . . . one of the things in my Rule of Life is to journal regularly, and this might help me do it . . . anyway . . .

The twelve days of Christmas are traditionally the days between Christmas and Epiphany - that is, Dec 25th to Jan 6th (I think I have that right). Mom used to tell me that, when she was a kid, the holiday "Christmas" started on Christmas day rather than starting in early December, (or perhaps now we should say early June). You can see this also in some Christmas movies that portray older times (did you ever notice that in the Christmas Story, they don't put up the tree until the night of Christmas Eve)?

I personally like the way we do it now better because it makes more sense to me to align Christmas preparations with Advent. My two cents.

C.S. Lewis has a good essay about Christmas that you could probably find on the internet if you google long enough. He puts forth his thought that Christmas is really three separate things and this has helped me to get the season in perspective, and to not get upset at people for saying or not saying "Merry Christmas" for the right or wrong reasons - such a waste of time to concentrate on that when there is so much more to do to prepare for the arrival of Jesus.

God bless,

Jim Cormack

Jon Cyrus said...

Thanks for stopping by. Visit often, comment regularly and tell your friends!