{"id":389,"date":"2010-12-18T08:39:15","date_gmt":"2010-12-18T13:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/?p=389"},"modified":"2010-12-18T08:44:01","modified_gmt":"2010-12-18T13:44:01","slug":"the-christmas-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/the-christmas-spirit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Christmas Spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many Christians wonder if the true meaning of Christmas has been lost.\u00a0 I share this concern.\u00a0 There are people who have never been to church in their lives who celebrate Christmas.\u00a0 I bet you could even find atheists who celebrate Christmas.\u00a0 Of course, they celebrate it as a secular holiday.\u00a0 Of course, other religions also celebrate their own religious holy days during this time.\u00a0 So in the stores we see signs that say Happy Holidays<\/em> instead of Merry Christmas<\/em>.\u00a0 That is the store’s decision.\u00a0 But we<\/strong><\/em> can always say Merry Christmas<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

There are also, of course, the people who celebrate Christmas and it (and perhaps Easter) is the only time they come to church.\u00a0 Sometimes, we might think it is about time they came to church.\u00a0 When these people say “it was a wonderful Mass” at Christmas, you feel like saying, ‘Well, we have Mass every Sunday if you want to join us.’<\/p>\n

I could write about all the reasons people don’t come to church.\u00a0 Or I could write how we need to reclaim Christmas as a Christian holy day.\u00a0 In fact, I think I will write how we might reclaim Christmas but perhaps not in the way you think.<\/p>\n

How do we reclaim Christmas?<\/p>\n

Do we need to put posters up around town or run ads in the newspaper inviting people to our Christmas Masses?\u00a0 That’s not a bad idea.\u00a0 We should definitely let our family and friends know what the Christmas schedule is and invite them to come with us.\u00a0 But what are we inviting them to?<\/p>\n

Obviously, we are inviting them to Mass.\u00a0 First, we need to get them to church but that is not enough.\u00a0 We are called to make them feel welcome.\u00a0 This starts with saying hello when they arrive and Merry Christmas<\/em>as they leave.\u00a0 We need to make sure they know God\u00a0loves them.\u00a0 We need to celebrate Mass with joy.\u00a0 In short, we need to give them a reason to want to come back.<\/p>\n

Jesus welcomed all and made they feel wanted.\u00a0 We are called to do the same.<\/p>\n

We reclaim Christmas as a Christian holiday not by forcing it on people.\u00a0 We better reclaim Christmas by sharing with people what Christmas means to us, the story of our Savior Jesus Christ being born to redeem us.\u00a0 We reclaim Christmas by living as Christ calls us to live.\u00a0 At Christmas people become very generous in helping the less fortunate.\u00a0 This shows our faith.\u00a0 We help others because Jesus first helped us.\u00a0 It is all done out of love, love that we are called to share all the time.<\/p>\n

In all this we offer fertilizer to the seed of faith that God has given each person.<\/p>\n

Peace,<\/p>\n

Fr. Jeff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many Christians wonder if the true meaning of Christmas has been lost.\u00a0 I share this concern.\u00a0 There are people who have never been to church in their lives who celebrate Christmas.\u00a0 I bet you could even find atheists who celebrate Christmas.\u00a0 Of course, they celebrate it as a secular holiday.\u00a0 Of course, other religions also …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘The Christmas Spirit’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[62],"tags":[63,64],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMTPk-6h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":395,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions\/395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}