An excellent post by Andy Dodwell. Many Christians will agree with him wholeheartedly.
Ok, so please don’t hear this as a Scrooge rant… and please please don’t hear this as anything like a ‘how can you celebrate this early?’ post… So just to make sure this is heard: CHRISTMAS IS AMAZING!! I AM ALREADY BEGINNING TO CELEBRATE!! IN FACT I CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR!!
But at this time we do some more obvious things… Advent calendars are out- check, Advent candle is on the table- check, planning Christmas services has started- check (no, its not finished yet, at last count I am involved in 17 events…), yes yes yes, however…
I’m wondering at how far we’ve gone from the origins of Christmas- whether you go into the Christian origins (celebrating the birth of Jesus as the ultimate expression of God’s love for humanity and the restoration of relationship between God and humanity that it demonstrates and brought about) or the…
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A Suffolk Lane 
Thank you so much for sharing Andy’s post, Clare. I loved it! xo
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My pleasure Jill! Thank-you xo
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I enjoyed Andy’s post. I like Christmas as I remember it as a child. Do you remember this song from Emerson, Lake and Palmer?
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Thank-you Lavinia. Yes I do remember this song very well. I think many of us (those of us lucky enough to have had happy homes) look back to the magical Christmases of our childhood.
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Thanks for sharing Andy’s post, Clare. I enjoyed it very much. I’m more of an agnostic, but I still celebrate Christmas – if for no other reason than it’s a fundamentally Good Thing (and there will be a post to that effect in due course). I do agree with Andy that it’s all a bit too much sometimes, which means that it’s easy to lose sight of the goodness. And the magic.
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Thank-you Mike. Yes, I think we all, believers and non-believers alike, regard Christmas as a time of sharing and giving.
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It seems like this business of searching for personal, authentic meaning in Christmas is going around . . . 😉
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Thank-you Kerry. I had just read your post and commented on it when Andy’s post appeared!
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Thanks for sharing the link to the excellent post by Andy!
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My pleasure Jerry, and thank-you.
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He is right No wonder some nonbelievers hate Christmas – all the commercialism and the awful music give such a wrong impression of the meaning of it.
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Thank-you Lisa. My husband is beginning to say that what he really wants is to go really low-key with the celebrations – just church and not much else. I understand why he’s saying this but I would really miss the decorations and the present buying and the carols etc. Maybe we’ll try it one year when our daughters are totally independent 😦
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Maybe if you still decorate, but tone things down a little, he’ll come around. 🙂 And, no carols! The good ones are so integral to the celebration! I was only referring to the canned versions you hear at the stores. Maybe this is a temporary thing with him, hopefully.
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We don’t decorate as much as we used to do when the girls were younger. I think he dislikes the Christmas adverts on TV starting in October and the shops selling Christmas chocolates from September onwards. I dislike that too but I also like to get gifts for my family and I have a large family! I personally wouldn’t think it was Christmas if I couldn’t decorate a little and I have to have a tree! I expect we’ll come to a compromise eventually 🙂
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Thank-you!
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you’r welcome
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The celebration of Christmas has its fashions like anything else, and it is celebrated in different ways all over the world, so, for me, it’s not so much about how we celebrate, but what we are celebrating.
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Thank-you Ann – and you are exactly right and that is something we should all take to heart.
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