I am not sure what my Christian brethren think about Christmas? Particularly those who like to think that they are Christians Anarchists, but all other people who claim to be Christians are also my brethren, and non-believers are my brethren if they are prepared to accept me in that I believe in Christ and that I try to be a Christian. There are many people who do not celebrate Christmas, and still claim to be Christians. The position is as varied as every human being is varied, and all of us are opinionated, and as Christians we accept everyone. I am going to use this entry to briefly describe my view of God and Christianity, but first I will indulge in a little nostalgia.
For me as a child, Christmas was a marvelous and magical time. My parents, who were pretty well destitute and their guest house business was nearly bankrupt for eighteen years after the end of WW2, still provided for their children, me, my older brother (we were two war babies) and elder sister. We dressed the house with decorations held over from the previous Christmas, my brother and I went into the country to find a holly bush and dragged some branches back over several miles. My sister helped our mother with home-made Christmas cake, pudding (with embedded sixpenny bits put in it), mince pies, jam tarts, lemon-curd tarts, and coconut ice small cakes. On Christmas Eve my brother and I hung our stockings at the top of our bed, believing in Father Christmas, having placed a glass of whiskey and a mince pie by the chimney fire-side. We would wake at 3.00am on Christmas morning, empty our stockings, always with an orange and apple at the bottom, check that the whiskey and mince pie had been consumed, and wake everyone else up. On Christmas Day we had a roast chicken (I do not ever remember a turkey), and brandy sauce with the Christmas pudding, and I must mention the sherry trifle which we had later.
In our early years we had major presents. Mine were Meccano sets, and I received Set One when I was four years old and Set Six on my tenth Christmas, the last occasion when I received a major present. I was born in 1942, and after1951 my parents struggled even more to make ends meet. They bought very cheap toys for us, but we never felt disappointed with our Christmas experience. They never relinquished their efforts to provide a marvelous Christmas for us throughout our teenage years, and I have remained a Meccano enthusiast throughout my life.
Well, that's a bit about my childhood, but it does leave me with the memory of how my Christmases were spent. I do not think it was commercial or materialistic, but nowadays I have great reservations about how we should spend Christmas. Materialism, commercialism and the mass media have distorted all of our views. In my childhood we played board games, snakes and ladders, ludo, and monopoly, as well as tiddly-winks and I Spy with My Little Eye. We were supremely happy. I hope and pray that present day children are experiencing the joy which we experienced, but if it is because they are given fantastic gifts, bicycles, computers, expensive clothes etc. and would be just as happy with far less, I hope they also understand that millions in the world are under-privileged.
I move now to a short description of my Christmas times in later teenage years and throughout my adult life, until I became a fully committed Christian when I married my present wife. My father enjoyed his drink. His father kept a public house in a small rural village, my father sang tenor in the parlor room, and we, as children, spent several Christmases there. My father was not a Church-goer, he often said that those in the Church were hypocrites, but he was a deep believer in God, writing poetry whilst he patrolled the fields of our country-side during the war years. He was a police war reserve, being too old for the armed forces. Imbibing in alcoholic beverage was not anathema to me, taking a Double Diamond in my grandfather's pub at eight years old, and going into pubs at eighteen years old. I over-did the drink, was often drunk, vomiting, but never in a state in which I could not remember what I had done. I thank God for saving me on one occasion, a Christmas Eve. I was in bed, the bed spun, and I needed to get to the bathroom to vomit. At the top of the stairs I took a wrong turn and did a somersault down the whole wooden flight without touching a step. I landed on my back, slightly bruised but nothing more, and the wooden platform at the bottom of the stairs was split. In my hospital letters earlier in this blog I described a young man totally paralyzed for eighteen years after such a fall. Why did God save me? Well, here I am, trying to spread His Word, not the written words in any Bible, but a realization that to understand God's Word is a relationship with God through Jesus, who is God's Word.
My view of God and Christianity is simply this. God is the supreme creator of all time and space. This universe and life in it are far too complex for them to have been created by chance. He created man in his own image and gave him, and all angels, free will. The devil rebelled, took over the world He had created for man, and corrupted it. God knew this would be a consequence of free will, but gave man the opportunity to relate to Him only, knowing that he would not, and from the beginning He knew that He would come to earth as a man because mortal man would not relate to Him as a spirit. Man can now relate to God through Jesus, and develop a spiritual connection. I was an anarchist before I became a Christian, and my non-violent version of anarchy motivates my interest in Christian Anarchism as the only possible world-view which I could hold, but hold back from calling myself a Christian Anarchist because, like all other man-made versions of Christianity, it is susceptible to the wiles of the devil. Dorothy Day was apparently comfortable with being known as a Christian Anarchist, but I am not.
I think we should all enjoy Christmas, celebrate the birth of Jesus (even though the date may be questionable), but we live in this world and to celebrate with other Christians, as long as we are not obsessed with the materialism and consumerism of our wicked world, is what we should do. If I was a young man and had obtained a place in an intentional community (see Wiki) I would encourage the members of my community to live frugally. However, as I experienced in my childhood, I would not deny our enjoyment of worldly pleasures, good food, moderate drinking of alcoholic beverages (I have no experience of other drugs), music, singing and dance. Long live Christmas, God bless you all in Jesus's Name, and I hope you have had a Merry, Christ-oriented, Christmas.
For me as a child, Christmas was a marvelous and magical time. My parents, who were pretty well destitute and their guest house business was nearly bankrupt for eighteen years after the end of WW2, still provided for their children, me, my older brother (we were two war babies) and elder sister. We dressed the house with decorations held over from the previous Christmas, my brother and I went into the country to find a holly bush and dragged some branches back over several miles. My sister helped our mother with home-made Christmas cake, pudding (with embedded sixpenny bits put in it), mince pies, jam tarts, lemon-curd tarts, and coconut ice small cakes. On Christmas Eve my brother and I hung our stockings at the top of our bed, believing in Father Christmas, having placed a glass of whiskey and a mince pie by the chimney fire-side. We would wake at 3.00am on Christmas morning, empty our stockings, always with an orange and apple at the bottom, check that the whiskey and mince pie had been consumed, and wake everyone else up. On Christmas Day we had a roast chicken (I do not ever remember a turkey), and brandy sauce with the Christmas pudding, and I must mention the sherry trifle which we had later.
In our early years we had major presents. Mine were Meccano sets, and I received Set One when I was four years old and Set Six on my tenth Christmas, the last occasion when I received a major present. I was born in 1942, and after1951 my parents struggled even more to make ends meet. They bought very cheap toys for us, but we never felt disappointed with our Christmas experience. They never relinquished their efforts to provide a marvelous Christmas for us throughout our teenage years, and I have remained a Meccano enthusiast throughout my life.
Well, that's a bit about my childhood, but it does leave me with the memory of how my Christmases were spent. I do not think it was commercial or materialistic, but nowadays I have great reservations about how we should spend Christmas. Materialism, commercialism and the mass media have distorted all of our views. In my childhood we played board games, snakes and ladders, ludo, and monopoly, as well as tiddly-winks and I Spy with My Little Eye. We were supremely happy. I hope and pray that present day children are experiencing the joy which we experienced, but if it is because they are given fantastic gifts, bicycles, computers, expensive clothes etc. and would be just as happy with far less, I hope they also understand that millions in the world are under-privileged.
I move now to a short description of my Christmas times in later teenage years and throughout my adult life, until I became a fully committed Christian when I married my present wife. My father enjoyed his drink. His father kept a public house in a small rural village, my father sang tenor in the parlor room, and we, as children, spent several Christmases there. My father was not a Church-goer, he often said that those in the Church were hypocrites, but he was a deep believer in God, writing poetry whilst he patrolled the fields of our country-side during the war years. He was a police war reserve, being too old for the armed forces. Imbibing in alcoholic beverage was not anathema to me, taking a Double Diamond in my grandfather's pub at eight years old, and going into pubs at eighteen years old. I over-did the drink, was often drunk, vomiting, but never in a state in which I could not remember what I had done. I thank God for saving me on one occasion, a Christmas Eve. I was in bed, the bed spun, and I needed to get to the bathroom to vomit. At the top of the stairs I took a wrong turn and did a somersault down the whole wooden flight without touching a step. I landed on my back, slightly bruised but nothing more, and the wooden platform at the bottom of the stairs was split. In my hospital letters earlier in this blog I described a young man totally paralyzed for eighteen years after such a fall. Why did God save me? Well, here I am, trying to spread His Word, not the written words in any Bible, but a realization that to understand God's Word is a relationship with God through Jesus, who is God's Word.
My view of God and Christianity is simply this. God is the supreme creator of all time and space. This universe and life in it are far too complex for them to have been created by chance. He created man in his own image and gave him, and all angels, free will. The devil rebelled, took over the world He had created for man, and corrupted it. God knew this would be a consequence of free will, but gave man the opportunity to relate to Him only, knowing that he would not, and from the beginning He knew that He would come to earth as a man because mortal man would not relate to Him as a spirit. Man can now relate to God through Jesus, and develop a spiritual connection. I was an anarchist before I became a Christian, and my non-violent version of anarchy motivates my interest in Christian Anarchism as the only possible world-view which I could hold, but hold back from calling myself a Christian Anarchist because, like all other man-made versions of Christianity, it is susceptible to the wiles of the devil. Dorothy Day was apparently comfortable with being known as a Christian Anarchist, but I am not.
I think we should all enjoy Christmas, celebrate the birth of Jesus (even though the date may be questionable), but we live in this world and to celebrate with other Christians, as long as we are not obsessed with the materialism and consumerism of our wicked world, is what we should do. If I was a young man and had obtained a place in an intentional community (see Wiki) I would encourage the members of my community to live frugally. However, as I experienced in my childhood, I would not deny our enjoyment of worldly pleasures, good food, moderate drinking of alcoholic beverages (I have no experience of other drugs), music, singing and dance. Long live Christmas, God bless you all in Jesus's Name, and I hope you have had a Merry, Christ-oriented, Christmas.
