Mt 13:52 He said to them, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.”
When it comes to Christmas, it isn’t just new and old but it is also a matter of good and bad. We need to be able to discern what to hold onto. I want to look this morning at some of the traditions and myths surrounding Christmas with the intention of enabling you to appreciate Christmas even more.
1) Facts about Christmas
a) Date of Christmas
i) Telesphorus, the second Bishop of Rome (125-136 AD) declared that public Church services should be held to celebrate "The Nativity of our Lord and Savior."
ii) There was confusion as to the actual date to celebrate the birth of Jesus until Pope Julius I declared 25 Dec as the date. AD 320
iii) There is evidence, not much, that Christians celebrated 25 Dec before the Roman Emperor proclaimed Dec 25 as the festival of the birth of the sun.
iv) The first printed reference to Christmas trees appeared in Germany in 1531
v) Martin Luther was the first person to put candles in a tree. Came from an idea he had walking home one night and as he looked up he saw the starts twinkling through the branches.
vi) In 1643, the British Parliament officially abolishes the celebration of Christmas.
vii) St Francis of Assisi introduced Christmas Carols to formal church services.
viii) Oliver Cromwell, in England banned Christmas Carols between 1649 and 1660. Cromwell thought that Christmas should be a very solemn day so he banned carols and parties
ix) The Puritans in America tried to make Thanksgiving Day the most important annual festival instead of Christmas.
x) Silent Night was written in 1818, by an Austrian priest Joseph Mohr. He was told the day before Christmas that the church organ was broken and would not be prepared in time for Christmas Eve. He was saddened by this and could not think of Christmas without music, so he wanted to write a carol that could be sung by choir to guitar music. He sat down and wrote three stanzas. Later that night the people in the little Austrian Church sang "Stille Nacht" for the first time.
xi) In 1836, Alabama is the first state in the USA to declare Christmas a legal holiday
xii) In 1843, the first Christmas card was printed in England for Sir Henry Cole. He was busy man who wanted to save time on his own Christmas letters
xiii) In America in 1822, the postmaster of Washington, DC, complained that he had to add 16 mailmen at Christmas to deal with cards alone. He wanted the number of cards a person could send limited by law. "I don’t know what we’ll do if this keeps on
xiv) 1881 an employee of Edison’s company was the first person to put electric lights on a tree outside his house.
xv) 1939 WWII ‘Christmas Rush’ to get presents to soldiers in time.
2) Traditions
a) Presents – going back to the gifts the wise men gave to Jesus.
b) Kissing under the mistletoe.
i) The Goddess of love was associated with the mistletoe and so the practice developed of kissing whenever one saw a girl standing under a sprig of mistletoe.
ii) The church substituted mistletoe with holly. The pointed leaves representing the crown of thorns and red berries, the blood. This is why we deck the halls with bows of holly.
c) What about trees?
i) Practise started in Germany. Evergreen tree symbolizes eternal life and points up
ii) Early decorations were candles and wafers to symbolize Jesus and the angels.
iii) Woolworths were the first to make decorations as we know them.
iv) Candy cane.
(1) 3 stripes = trinity & punishment
(2) bold stripe = blood
(3) J for Jesus
v) Star that guided the wise men
vi) Tinsel
(1) Spiders webs which were turned into sparkling tinsel
d) Boxing Day?
i) Boxing Day
ii) 26 December was traditionally known as St Stephen’s Day, but is more commonly known as Boxing Day. This expression came about because money was collected in alms-boxes placed in churches during the festive season. This money was then distributed during to the poor and needy after Christmas.
3) Myths
a) Xmas – Greek Chi = X
not taking Jesus out of Christmas, but it is actually putting it back!
b) Santa Claus
i) Santa Claus is the American pronunciation of Sinter Klaas, which was colloquial Dutch for Saint Nicholas.
Saint Nicholas was the bishop of Myra in Lycia (in modern Turkey) in 4th Century.
ii) Nothing is known of his life except for the legends that have built up around him, but he was associated with kindness to children.
iii) Romans imprisoned him
iv) When Constantine became a Christian, St Nicholas was released.
v) Saint Nicholas left his very first gifts of gold coins in the stockings of three poor girls who needed the money for their wedding dowries. The girls had hung their stockings by the fire to dry. He had just inherited some money. Not wanting to be known, he climbed on the roof and dropped the money down the chimney. It landed in their stockings.
vi) In memory of this, Dutch children would leave their shoes outside on St Nicholas’ Day in the hope that they would be filled with gifts.
vii) Legends: when infant, his mother fed him only on Wed and Fri, he fasted the other days.
(1) Stopped a storm and saved lives of 3 sailors
(2) Brought back to life children who had died.
viii) The modern version of Santa Claus came from a poem called ’Twas the Night Before Christmas
or Account of a Visit from St. Nicholasby Major Henry Livingston Jr. (1748-1828)
(previously believed to be by Clement Clarke Moore)
’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!"
ix) At the beginning of the 1930s, the burgeoning Coca-Cola company was still looking for ways to increase sales of their product during winter
x) They turned to a talented commercial illustrator named Haddon Sundblom, who created a series of memorable drawings
4) Truth
a) A few years ago a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention in Chicago. They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty of time for Friday night’s dinner.. In their rush, with tickets and brief-cases, one of these salesmen inadvertently kicked over a table which held a display of baskets of apples. Apples flew everywhere. Without stopping or looking back, they all managed to reach the plane in time for their nearly missed boarding. All but one. He paused, took a deep breath, got in touch with his feelings, and experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been overturned.
He told his buddies to go on without him, waved goodbye, told one of them to call his wife when they arrived at their home destination and explain his taking a later flight...
Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the terminal floor. He was glad he did. The 16 year old girl was totally blind! She was softly crying, tears running down her cheeks in frustration, and at the same time helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her, no one stopping, and no one to care for her plight.
The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them into the baskets, and helped set the display up once more. As he did this, he noticed that many of them had become battered and bruised; these he set aside in another basket.. When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl, "Here, please take this $20 for the damage we did. Are you okay?"
She nodded through her tears. He continued on with, "I hope we didn’t spoil your day too badly."
As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, "Mister...." He paused and turned to look back into those blind eyes.
She continued, "Are you Jesus?"
He stopped in mid-stride, and he wondered. Then slowly he made his way to catch the later flight with that question burning and bouncing about in his soul: "Are you Jesus?" Do people mistake you for Jesus? That’s our destiny, is it not? To be so much like Jesus that people cannot tell the difference as we live and interact with a world that is blind to His love, life and grace. If we claim to know Him, we should live, walk and act as He would. Knowing Him is more than simply quoting Scripture and going to church. It’s actually living the Word as life unfolds day to day.
CONC:
Many people try to disguise themselves as Santa. Parents putting pillows into big red costumes, wanting children to think that they are Santa.
Nothing pleases an old man more than a child calling him Santa.
But how many times have you been mistaken for Jesus?
