Christmas Season
It is upon us full swing! Are you enjoying the season?
Each family is different regarding what timeframe makes up the Christmas season. I know some people who start shopping in autumn and always put up the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. Others wait for December, but we all know that commercial Christmas begins after Halloween when all the decorations and specials are in place in stores.
How did Christmas get to be about shopping and exchanging gifts? I bet the Wise Men had no idea what they were starting!
The Twelve Days of Christmas
Many Christian families celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas. Those twelve days begin on December 25th when Jesus’ birth is celebrated although no one knows the actual date of his birth. The eight day of Christmas is January 1st and is not associated with New Year’s Day, but with the circumcision of the baby Jesus. The twelfth day, January 6, commemorates the Maji which is the visit of the wise men who brought gifts of gold, incense and myrrh.
And there it began.
Crooked Creek by Sue Mattingly 
Yes, commercialisation has conquered culture and religion, how to enable folk to see through it all is my quest.
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Always informative… Maybe this year we will refocus and realize what truly matters and that it really has little to do with presents but presence.
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There are various days and events associated with what we now know as “Christmas” but most of these, including the word Christmas, were tacked on by the Catholic church over the years as they incorporated various regional celebrations into the Christmas season.
As to the wise men starting the tradition of bringing gifts, I believe that all the decorating and gift giving was a part of the old winter solstice celebration. The wise men certainly didn’t come twelve days after Jesus birth because Herod killed all the children under the age of two, according to when the magi saw the star. And the gifts were given to Jesus, not to each other.
The custom of bringing in and decorating trees had been around for centuries BC. In Jeremiah’s day God told the people to “Learn not the way of the heathen. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.” Jer 10:3-4 When Constantine’s mandatory Christianity moved over Europe, this practice was adapted to the celebration of Christmas.
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Thank you for the information.
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