Occupy Christmas
I don’t do Black Friday shopping. Period. But I generally keep my thoughts about it to myself. Until now. (begin rant here)
The weekend news wires lit up with stories of bizarre behavior by grown adults scrambling and fighting for cheap appliances. I watched a couple of the grainy cell phone videos. This is what Christmas has come to? From an unbelievable night in Bethlehem where God crashed into our little planet with a precious gift in the form of a baby…to an unbelievable night in WalMart with people crashing through lines and doors in order to pepper spray others and snatch their precious electronic gift for Christmas. It’s beyond sad. It made me sick.
Here’s my knee jerk reaction: Occupy Christmas. As best as I understand it, the “Occupy Wall Street” movement is about addressing something (the financial system) that’s gotten seriously lost along the way. Christmas has seriously lost its way in our culture.
I’m not suggesting you camp out in the parking lot at the discount stores. But I am wondering what I can do to protest something that has gotten so far off track that millions of people in this very country don’t even know the real story behind Christmas.
- Maybe it’s offering to pray for your neighbors and co-workers this Christmas season.
- Maybe it’s throttling back on spending money, and spending more time with the people God has put in your life.
- Maybe it’s intentionally reading and reflecting on the actual Christmas story for the entire month of December. (see www.youversion.com for some creative Christmas reading plans)
- Maybe it’s prayerfully asking God to show you how you can live out the meaning of Christmas for someone else this year.
If you have any ideas on how to Occupy Christmas, I’d love to hear them. Use the comment section below. Together, we can begin to help this incredible holiday find it’s way back for the sake of the people all around us. The people God invented Christmas for in the first place. That includes me. And you.
(Rant over.)
Serving together,
Mark Tindle
Lead Pastor
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Posted on December 1, 2011, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.
Living in faith, hope and Love 
I wholeheartedly agree with this and I believe we must start with our children. Every week in Powerhouse I talk to my children about the upcoming holiday. I ask them why we celebrate Christmas and what happened on that day that is so special. We as parents get caught up in shopping and buying and decorating and this is what our children see. They need to be reminded of the glorious birth of our precious Lord and Savior and to understand the real meaning of the holiday!!!
Send a Christmas card to all of your friends and family. And I mean a real card, a card that people can hold in their hands and maybe for a moment will feel like keeping. Not an e-card that they will delete to clear their computer’s in box. And be sure the message says something about the real reason for the season, the gift of Jesus, and especially that it says ‘Merry Christmas’ not happy holidays. Just a thought…..
We can put “gifts to the needy” on our Christmas lists. Depending on the age and willingness of your family you can also give portions of eachothers gifts to others in need.
I don’t know if this qualifies as an Occupy Christmas thing, but in the spirit of this blog I would like to share with all the “family” at Seneca Creek who have known me and my husband, Clive Watson, that just yesterday I have finally signed the paperwork to establish a scholarship in Clive’s name at the college we attended in WV, Davis & Elkins, which provided him with a scholarship to attend college and obtain an education here in America by way of a basketball scholarship.
My prayer would be that others would hear of this gift and not think of what I gave but instead look inside their own hearts and examine what they have, whether it be time, talent, or treasure, that they can give to benefits others and share it in order to benefit someone in need.That to me is the true spirit of Christmas.