Don't get wrapped up in 'holidays'
Prepare for spirit of Christmas
By JOE MILLER Pastor FUMC Newton

Dec. 3 was the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the JOE MILLER JR Christian year. Advent is a time of preparation for the receiving of the Christ Child on Christmas morning.

How does one prepare for Christmas? As of this writing, there are 21 shopping days until Christmas. Are you going to shop until you drop? Are you going to spend hours and many dollars decorating? Do you have a huge Christmas card list that will require a lot of time writing and sending them out? Will you take the children and/or grandchildren to see Santa Claus? Will you bake a lot of Christmas cookies?

I am not going to disparage

your doing any of

these things. Actually, I just love Santa Claus and the opening of Christmas presents. Also, since it will have been a good month since Thanksgiving, I like having a nice Christmas dinner.

However, today's scripture may cause us to stop and reflect on our getting prepared for Christmas. In this text Jesus is teaching his disciples about his second coming and the Kingdom of God. The second coming of Christ will be different from his first coming as a baby in a manger, but the preparations could be very similar.

After teaching about the signs of the approaching kingdom, Jesus tells his disciples what to do while they are waiting: "Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap."

In other words, "do not get so wrapped up in the daily, hectic nature of this life so as to miss the next life." Similar advice could be beneficial for preparing for Christmas. That is, "Do not get so wrapped up in the secular celebration of Christmas so as to miss the baby Jesus."

Lots of people decry the commercialization of Christmas. "Put Christ back into Christmas" we hear again and again, but how?

I suggest that we quit worrying about Target and Wal-Mart and their "Happy Holidays" nonsense. Let them go their way. They do not control us. Consider the following suggestions:

1. Shop less and pray more. 2. Decorate with fewer reindeer and sleighs and more with nativity scenes. 3. Focus less on Santa Claus and elves and more on Jesus and angels. 4. Bake fewer cookies and prepare more food for the hungry. 5. Send no Happy Holidays cards; send real Christmas Cards. 6. Give fewer toys and more bibles for gifts. 7. Watch TV less and sing more Christmas carols. 8. Spend less on gifts and give more to your church. 9. Say a prayer before opening your presents thanking the person who really has given them to you... it's not Santa Claus.

And finally, make the time to go to church during the Advent season! It is the birthday of Jesus Christ, and he instituted the church in his own name.

Choose to celebrate Christmas, not "Happy Holidays". Email me at newtonumc@ valornet.com with your thoughts.