A Tradition of Christ...

I have this Blog, and another one @ Yahoo360*, as anyone who reads my page regularly knows...and yesterday I 'ranted' about the yearly mess that happens when the Season finally gets underway. There is no reason, in my humble opinion, for anyone to take the Season of Our Lord's birth in any other way but a totally Christian way...the night (or day, if you will) that He was born was without a doubt the holiest day in the history of the world, up to that point.
God-become-Man, descended from Heaven on high, leaving the Courts of Angels and deigning to be born of a Virgin in a humble stable...living a day-to-day life in Nazareth, learning His prayers and how to handle tools, eating and growing to Manhood...to one day die on a Cross to save the world ~ and thereby giving us the absolutely holiest Day of all...
And now, as I look around at what the world has become: are there enough of us to remember how it used to be, before television and the Internet came to be, and throwing out at us the 'fun' of commercialism? What ever happened to the simple pleasure of a Christmas celebrated for the sheer joy of the Birth of the Savior? Does anyone besides a few of us even hear the voices of Angels on high, singing His praises and giving glory to the Father?
In the beginning of the Season, most of us probably have good intentions...we promise not to over-indulge in all the goodies, the shopping, the craziness of the world...and keep it simple, keep it Faith-filled, keep it holy. Then, sad to say, there are alot of us who find ourselves giving in, as the Season wears on, fighting the traffic at the local mall (just one more gift for so-and-so), decorating our houses a month in advance, keeping out of the cold, but missing in the meantime the reason why we do this in the first place ~ is it to drive our neighbors crazy looking at our blown-up snowman, billowing out there in the wind on a blustery October day? ...or the hanging strings of orange lights (Halloween lights? c'mon, now ~ I mean, seriously!) ~ where does this all end?
The older I get, the more traditional I get in my views. I have always been a conservative, but especially more so now than ever before. I don't remember my parents feeling the dire need to out-do the next-door neighbors in all the silliness of the holidays...and with the department stores now being afraid to even refer to their greens as 'Christmas Trees' and calling them 'Holiday Trees' or 'Family Trees' instead...where does that come from?!?
When Our Lord came to us all those many years ago, He came as a simple Babe in His Mother's arms ~ there were no loud displays, no angry drivers vying for the first place in line ~ and no one even knew about His being here, except for a chosen few. But that one birth, that one Baby changed everything.
Now, we celebrate with song, decorations, gift-giving, family get-togethers, and all the rest of it; I have only one question to put to you all: do we do it because it's fun? because it's what is expected of us? or because we love this tiny Baby Who died for us, and Who showed us how to be?
If someone wants to put out Halloween lights, so be it ~ let them knock themselves out, I say! If they cater to the commercialism of the holidays and yet keep Christ in their Christmas, then all the more power to them, and God bless 'em, every one!
All I can ask, since I am only one person, is that they remember Who came into the world to give us this Holy Day (can you tell that I don't consider it a holiday?) and Who gives us all that we have? In the first place, His coming was barely noted...but here we are, two thousand years later, and there is not one single event in history that has had such an impact on the world as that one!
And all our decorations, all our partying, all our shopping ~ none of these can compare to the One True Tradition that is Christ.
And I, for one, would not want them to...