I agree with chrischar.  The discussions on why we shouldn't celebrate Christmas remind me of the discussion on why not to read Harry Potter books or see the movie.  However, I agree with Furry Bald Eagle's 2nd paragraph.  We just happen to be on different sides of the fence on this issue.

Amen, marc

How many of us celebrate our independence on the 4th of July?  Why not celebrate the beginning and completion of our independence from death?  Christ's birth(Christmas) and resurrection(Easter)?   It's a no brainer.  What other event in the history of the world would be more worthy of a celebration?  None.

z3

I have really enjoyed reading all of the different posts here about Christmas.  I know that alot of people are thinking about our holidays and if you are like me, you are probably giving some serious thought to the way in which you were raised.  I have much to say on this topic.  Mostly just personal opinion.  
I grew up in a very conservative coC.  We did celebrate the holidays, however, we were not allowed to celebrate Christmas as Christ's birth or anything having to do with Christ.  Santa, Rudolph and even the Grinch were fine though.  I was always really confused about this.  I too remember causing many scenes in school by refusing to participate in the religious part of the holidays.  I wouldn't sing religious songs, yet belting out here comes Santa Claus was great!
As I grew up I realized that this was just a small part of the chaos I would experience stemming from church.  I always had a deep desire to celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday but feared that I was sinning by singing Silent Night.  
I did manage to get out of the bondage of legalism and into God's grace as I grew up.  However, this has been at the disappointment of my family.  When my parents and siblings come to my home on Christmas Eve, they are finding the environment to be more and more Christ centered (music, manger scenes etc) and less secular. We have decided to focus our entire holiday on Him.  It's kind of funny though to watch my family react to this.  They believe that my activities are sinful, yet they had to rush home in order to prepare their house for a man who's legend has nothing grounded in truth! I just can't believe that it is wrong for children to create a manger scene, but right to leave a food offering to someone created out of a lie!
Anyway, I'm glad that I got this straightened out.

Actually there are several Christian denominations that do not celebrate Christmas as the birth of Christ.  It was not always a practice among Protestants.  It does not bother me that others do not celebrate it.  What bothers me is that some who do not believe in its celebration try to impose their beliefs on others... to the point (sometimes) of making it an issue of fellowship or even salvation.  Since the Bible neither commands it nor speaks against it, it should be one of those matters left up to ones conscience or opinion.  It is an example of why God gave us Romans 14.
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The problem is that to some people it is a salvation issue.  Some people make any disagreement in doctrine a salvation issue.

Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago for a church bulletin. You have my permission to use it if you like, I only ask that you let me know. Merry Christmas!

Mama’s Fontanini
By Patricia Redstone

"Christmas comes sooner every year!" I wish I had a dollar in my Christmas club account for every time I’ve heard that -- and two for every time I’ve said it myself! From Labor Day reunions to New Year’s sales, depending on our attitude, we exclaim, sigh or grumble, "I should just leave the lights up all year! No sooner do I take them down than it’s time to put them up again!"

Several years ago, while shopping for Halloween candy at CostCo, a gaudy electronic troll-creature caught my son’s attention. His eyes glittered with delight as the thing twanged an exuberant  "Silent Night" in double time. Inspired, he chimed," Hey mom! Why don’t you dress me up like Santa Clause and let’s go trick-or-treat!" I thought it best not to confuse the situation any further by singing, "Up on the graveside reindeer pause, out jumps good ol’ Santa Clause!" He was a bit too green yet for cynicism.

If you have lived long enough you might have noticed that Christmas is evolving into a much longer season. In order to compete for your Christmas dollar, the retail industries have to prepare all year for "the rush". Four blocks from my house is a year-round Christmas store. Six years ago, at the grand opening, I silently predicted it wouldn’t last a year. Two years ago they doubled their space. Craft stores too, are perpetually stocked in everything red and green with holly and mistletoe to glue in between. And the trend toward living Christmas trees have not only become an environmentally smart thing to do, but they also make it possible for Christmas fans to display a tree from Thanksgiving afternoon to mid-January without a need to change the vacuum bag.  

The hyper-commercialism of Christmas is compounded for those who, like myself, were raised in the Church of Christ. Forty-plus year old members will remember that, from infancy, we were once protected from any reference to "Christmas" and taught to shun all biblical symbols of the "holiday season." The rules, which were mostly unspoken, were a little muddy. Santa and house lights were OK, but Jesus and the manger scene -- and in some congregations -- Christmas trees were definite no-no’s. As a child, it seemed that the only time of year everyone else thought about Jesus, was the only time I shouldn’t. Christmas bamboozled my social consciousness and my perspective as a follower of Christ. My mother had to have known that. Looking back I see how she dealt sensitively and wisely with my unspoken anxiety over the "Christmas" question.

Although my mother never said a word against the church’s teaching, the Monday after the last Sunday service before Christmas she would produce from the depths of her walk-in closet a most incomprehensible example of a yuletide taboo …  a forty piece nativity scene complete with stable, wise men, shepherds, kings, camels, sheep, and angels! And not those big, fat naked baby angels but elegant, ephemeral adult angels with abundant flowing garments and spectacular white plumed wings! Each of us, my big sister and two little brothers, had a personal favorite. Looking back, I suppose the timing for mama’s nativity night had something to do with her high level of church involvement. Our house was always bustling with committee meetings and Bible studies -- and I cannot recall a Sunday when we did not have at least one church member home for dinner following services. For this reason too, Mama did not refer to the manger scene by any name other than "The Fontanini" the name of the Italian artist who designed it.

Mama avoided the issue of spiritual contraband by focusing our attention on the fine craftsmanship and detail of The Fontanini. "This is a collector’s item" Mama would say, "a reproduction of fine European art." We children worked at being casual about it, but, we knew without any explanation that this was one family heirloom we couldn’t boast to just anyone. We managed this underground Christmas celebration successfully for several years, but eventually  -- a common flaw of the guilty -- we got a little sloppy.

One night, a few days before Christmas, as we children sat between The Fontanini and the Christmas tree shaking presents, the flash of car headlights swept across the room through the picture window. Mama got up to investigate. Gasping recognition of the car pulling into the driveway, she shrieked, "Girls! Help me!" And she began throwing the carefully placed full color resin figures of the  nativity scene onto a crochet afghan spread upon the floor with our sleeping baby brother still on it.

Now, understand, this is one of my most treasured Christmas memories; My sister and I hunched like gargoyles on the avocado green shag carpeting with a stable roof jammed between our shoulder blades and the sofa, trying, to quiet our perturbed brother, who would not be easily consoled after being pelted with cows and wise men from afar -- and try, oh, try not look at the suspicious bundle beneath the tree while my mother distracted the preacher with over-animated offers of pie and fruitcake. I can’t remember a word she said as he put back slice after slice of pumpkin pie and cup after cup of coffee …… What I do remember is how my mother’s soft, white powdered skin glistened like new fallen snow and her usually deep and resonant voice often took on an unusually high pitch … But we had a job to do and we did it. We never moved. We never said a word. We never made eye contact. We sat as still and quiet as those manger figures. We did it for Mama -- we did it for our family tradition -- and yes, in some strange way, we did it for Jesus and the church because if the members who argued to have those little cross handles removed from the communion set ever found out about The Fontanini ... Yikes!
       
Whatever tradition, if any, you’ve come to embrace during the holidays please accept my unexhausted wonder in the ongoing mystery of Christmas. Although few would insist that Jesus was actually born on December 25th (most scholars argue in favor of the Spring), the day excuses enough myth to drive those who yearn for Biblical and anthropological accuracy to the brink. But, the mystery for me is that, despite all of the commercial wreckage, folklore and legend indiscreetly dumped around an ancient stable in the city of David, mankind continually finds its way to that place to look upon one unavoidable Fact swaddled in centuries of Christmastime.  

Confounding our concept of "divine," He graced our world through lowly woman flesh and the remarkable afterbirth of an exhausted era strewn over an earthen floor soiled the knees of heaven, men, and kings. They could not deny that the solution for a fallen world lay before them, but what a terrible beauty -- the savior of the world at the ceremonially unclean breast of a Hebrew girl! God and mother, woman and man, man and God united in the most vulnerable contract of human experience … birth. No one can ignore it without extreme effort - especially at Christmastime.

Satan couldn’t avoid it. Another spiritual war against humanity erupted at that stable -- most notably, Herod’s desperate massacre of baby boys -- the guile continues today against the smallest and weakest, exiling them into the strange lands of homelessness, hunger and abuse. But, could it be that the image of our Savior, small and helpless, is a perpetual miracle that summons the attending hands of the world to "the least of these" at Christmastime?

I wonder -- could the visual strength of the stable scene be the reason why we have no actual date of the birth of our Lord -- that God intends for us to act on that sacred image daily. Interesting, I’ve never heard of anyone out to ban public displays of Santa Clause -- nor have I ever seen the image of the infant Christ and his mother put to purely commercial use.
The Fontanini couldn’t speak loud like the preacher -- but it did sink in deeper. In his book Seasons of Celebration, Thomas Merton says that "Christianity is not so much a body of doctrine as the revelation of a mystery. A mystery is a divine action, something which God does in time in order to introduce men into the sanctuary of eternity. Being a religion of mysteries, Christianity is a religion of facts - divine facts, divine actions." That’s what the Fontanini did for me. For a few days a year I gazed upon the image of a mystery which words – even biblical words – must struggle against themselves to convey.

In the spirit of Mary -- in the spirit of Woman! -- Mama’s love broke the rules of propriety in order to access the equipment necessary to explain and express the love of God. And to this day, the candle is lit, the star rises, the celebration begins … Does it ever really end?! Perhaps the annoying and naive perpetuity of Christmas commercialism is the most adequate statement the world can put forth to express a struggle to understand. The fields are white with snow, yet it is harvest time.