LSM: To observe Christmas, its doubtful you’re a new creation

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by GraceAlone

As ridiculous as they are (yet very typical of WL's hyperbolic style), it does help me to better understand why not celebrating Christmas was a hill that so many, including my family, chose to die on. I've found that dogmatic anti-Christmas stance to be increasingly hard to grasp, especially given how very thin the scholarship is supporting the idea of pagan roots. But reading those quotes reminds me of why they might believe so strongly in abstaining from this and other holidays. I don't have to agree with it, but I can understand where the belief is coming from.

I too climbed that hill and fought too many stupid battles there. Lee's anti-Christmas stance followed that of John Darby and the Plymouth Brethren, and was mostly cultural. The "spell" was broken for me one day thinking about how one of Lee's "Seven Feasts" was on Chinese New Year. Why did Lee and the Chinese folks get to use that holiday to preach the gospel and have get-togethers, when us Americans could not celebrate our Christian holidays?

Pagan roots? Oh please. Do you know how many nasty pagan roots surround CNY? That never stopped WL and the Chinese saints from celebrating it, eating moon-pies, and yet he condemned Christmas every winter training. His lines of reasoning were so manipulative, robbing us of our freedoms. I was promised that if I took a stand for the LC and reject Christmas, then all my family would be saved into the LC.

Just because that day is so commercialized and used as a celebration for worldly parties, that was sufficient reason for us not to use that day to worship God and celebrate His birth into humanity?