Well, Rachel, Allen, and myself made it back from our week long Christmas vacation and are just getting ready to step out the door and head to Worship at Heritage…

But travels aren’t quite done. Tomorrow morning I pick up Pastor and Caleb Lovett, along with Ted and Elijah Brothers to head down to the Lingo’s in Georgia to load them up and move them to Centerville!

My wife will be here in Tennessee, but I won’t be back until Tuesday.

I know that I haven’t posted any pictures recently. The reason for this is that I have been very busy getting ready for the Christmas season. But now that I’m done with my shopping and crafts let me share some of the things Allen and I have been doing.

Allen enjoys boxes...they are just so useful.

Even though the musical toys can be annoying, Allen sure does love them. He especially likes dancing to the music on the toy piano.

Books are one of his favorite things, even though he can’t sit still to listen to a story he still likes looking at the pictures and turning the pages. Here he is reading with his uncle Levi.

He was very intrigued with the tree at first. Thankfully, he doesn’t bother it much.

Here are some of the projects that I’ve been working on - reusable gift bags with cross-stitched name tags.

What do you need to entertain a little boy while you cook? Sticks of frozen butter. He was taken with these for a long time.

So I’ve been reading some articles and blog posts in regard to the celebration of Christmas, as I am sometimes wont to do this time of year.

Many of you reading this may know that my immediate family has condemned Christmas as pagan and therefore does not celebrate. No festivities, no decorations, no christmas trees, nothing. In many ways I am glad for this as it gave me the opportunity to examine why we did not. I thoroughly evaluated the celebration of Church holidays, in particular Christmas. I came at it from many angles such as, should the Church be celebrating holidays other than the Lord’s Day, should we celebrate Christmas or is it a pagan holiday? I came to the conclusion that Christmas indeed should be celebrated. We should be joyful! If on no other grounds than this… we, God’s chosen people, of all people have cause to celebrate. We are the elect of God, we are his people, why should we do nothing while the pagans celebrate? The pagans bring out their “seasons greetings” and happy holidays” but we should celebrate CHRISTMAS! We celebrate the coming of our Saviour to the world, we celebrate his life and death for us. We should celebrate because the victory belongs to Christ, this world belongs to our Lord and we should celebrate that victory, not with silly tales of Santa Clause and reindeer, which is a diversion from the truth of the victory of Christ our Lord! It doesn’t matter what the roots of the day are, we can find something pagan that happened on every day of the year, so instead of letting the pagans have the day, we claim it in the name of the Lord as we do every day.

But there is something more thought provoking here that I came across and it made me think. I’ve been in a few different circles of thought in my lifetime. But at this point in my life I am proud to be a part of the reformed worldview. Now, everything has advantages and disadvantages. Everyone has weaknesses and strongpoints. And I think weaknesses and strongpoints come pre-wrapped in schools of thought as well, and the reformed school of thought is no exception.

And I believe in the reformed world that we sometimes have this little problem of wanting to be radical and different for the sake of being radical and different. And I can’t say that I have always escaped this tendency either. We absolutely revel in our radicalness. And, there is a place to be radical and different, we do after all desire reform, and that means being different sometimes. But our differentness should have a purpose and reason behind it, and not just any old reason either. When we as Christians are different or radical, it should be because we have the word of God behind us.

We are called to be a Holy (set apart) people, and this is why we are often seen as radical. And I applaud and endorse many of the “radical” notions within the reformed community such as Covenant Renewal Worship, Patriarchal Leadership of the home, Family Worship etc. All of these things are often seen as radical and often we are accused of being in a cult. No problem.

But, there is a tendency to be different for the sake of being different, and then we try to throw biblical justification in as an afterthought, and it just ruins the whole show! I believe holidays fall in this category for many reformed folk. But wait, the Bible actually does talk about Holidays doesn’t it? And it didn’t tell us to

Make certain though celebratest no holiday not defined in the New Testament. Make sure thou feastest not, except to partake of the Lord’s Supper. Be certain that ye celebrate nothing for I the Lord thy God am a Grinch, desiring that my people be dour and sour and that above all they celebrate not the victory of Christ in the world where he rules and reigns with a rod of iron.

No no no, we are commanded to REJOICE! (Psalm 32:11, Psalm 33:1 Psalm 35:9 Philippians 4:4… and the list could go on forever).

And then also we are told not to condemn either way the celebrating of some days above others, or not celebrating. (Romans 14:5-6)

And throwing all other arguments aside, why should we not have special focus this time of year on the coming of our Lord to this world? Why should we not celebrate that which is right and good! And isn’t it interesting that all the non-Christians are worried about this holiday? This is one of the main holidays that are attacked.

So to that I say to all you Christians, go forth and have a MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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Here are a couple of articles I was reading:

http://jeffreyjmeyers.blogspot.com/2007/11/christmas-time-is-here-again.html

http://jeffreyjmeyers.blogspot.com/2007/11/is-christmas-christian-part-ii.html

http://www.hornes.org/theologia/mark-horne/celebrating-a-calvinist-christmas-with-a-clear-conscience

First, a video of our trebuchet…

And now the pictures:

Isn’t he cute?

He wasn’t sure if he liked the hat.

Setting up the Trebuchet.

The winning team and trebuchet.

The winning team is vain enough for more than one picture.

In our outfits.

Allen liked the pumpkins.

Allen finally got tired of the hat.

Alrighty then, because we seem to have picked up a comment troll who can’t behave themselves, and because I’m still with blogger and can’t ban people, I have enabled comment moderation. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but if you comment, if the comment is useful, and nice, and not mean, or about subjects I have no interest in discussing on my personal blog, then it will be approved as soon as I can get to my control panel.

Someday I’ll get around to switching over to Expression Engine, then I can allow all comments and ban the trolls. I really don’t like Blogger that much.

I suppose some people just don’t have anything better to do, I pity them!