Faith Venture

We have been discussing the origin of celebrating Christmas this week. Evidently the early Christians were not concerned with Jesus birth. Mark, the earliest Gospel, has no mention. Matthew is mostly concerned with placing Jesus in the Jewish tradition and notes only a few details. Luke was writing a Greek or Roman style history and he writes the most.
As Christianity was being established official Roman religion, a traditional Roman celebration was morphed into a Christian one. Early American Christians did not celebrate the holiday calling it frivolous. But the idea of gift giving was appealing to rnerchants, so they promoted the holiday. Early drawings of St. Nicholas were done for a magazine. The present form of Santa Claus is derived from an advertising campaign of Coca-Cola.
Those of us who are trying to turn the holiday into a time of Spiritual reflection are going against a 150 year (or more) tradition. Still, it remains for each of us to find our way to God.

This entry was posted on December 28, 2011 at 6:55 am and is filed under Christianity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.