A lesson this season

Is there a lesson to be learned during this Christmas season?

There are some people who have difficulty letting go of Christmas and all the traditions that follow. Once I began keeping the Torah I also had difficulty releasing my hold on some of the festive traditions I held tight since childhood. However, each ascending year I have removed myself further until this year I feel completely disassociated with Christmas. One may ask what is so wrong with Christmas? After all the reason for the season is Yeshua right? If that is the “real” reason for the season then why would we associate Messiah with idolatry and activities with pagan roots? A great article dealing with the issue of mixing between holy and secular is titled Why I don’t celebrate Christmas by Tim Hegg.

This year our Tzadik Class participated in a Christmas Quiz to test our knowledge of Messiah’s birth based on the text in scripture. It is astonishing how much of our knowledge of Messiah’s birth has been influenced by worldly traditions and embellishments from the media. The more I thought about the drastic difference between the text in scripture and my knowledge of the story the more I became aware of the trap we all encounter. Accepting an interpretation of scripture as truth. Everything I learned about Christmas was an interpretation of scripture and I lethargically accepted it as truth. How often do we listen to an interpretation of scripture without checking all the references, context, and the required cohesiveness with the Torah? The lesson we can learn this year is to abandon passivity and study the Bible for ourselves. HaShem certainly blesses people with wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. We should continually seek to learn from those around us, but weigh everything against the Torah and the literal text.