christmas school

In the month of December we begin our unit study on Christmas. This is our big break. We begin on the first of December and end on January 6th at Epiphany. Our entire focus for the season is on Christ, His character, our service to Him, and our opportunity to spread His light to others.
Through the month we have learned many symbols of Christmas, today was x-mas. Many have been taught that this was the way to take Christ out of Christmas, but actually that is not correct. It is part of the Chi-Rho cross which is the ancient Christian symbol formed by the Greek letters X (Chi) and P (Rho). These are the first two letters of Christ's name in Greek. X-mas really means "celebration of Christ".

The second symbol we looked at was the Shepherd's staff. We call it a candy cane. But truly it is a shepherd's staff. The colors symbolize the blood and purity of Christ. We only get the ones with green on them because that represents eternal life. We hang them on our tree and share the story of why we call them a shepherd's staff when people visit us and we give them one  from our tree to share our faith with others in a beautiful non-offensive way.

In our family we work very hard to maintain a "ritual" of traditions. Traditions serve to strengthen and solidify the ties of children to their parents and to the past generations. They also prepare the ground for strong relationships when your children have children. We must not weaken our greatest defense in the spiritual battles around us--the family. I encourage you to celebrate Christmas eve and day with traditions that have been or will continue to be in your family for years to come. God was the first to \establish "traditions" for His people, Israel, because He new the strength in teaching His ways to our children and our children's children.

I pray you have blessed and spirit-filled Christmas.