Christmas Tree Poll

Will there be a tree in your home this year?

  • Yes

    Votes: 52 57.1%

  • No

    Votes: 35 38.5%

  • Not sure

    Votes: 4 4.4%
  • Total voters
    91
  • Poll closed .
Status
Not open for further replies.
Actually, I already have a Christmas tree in my house. It's been there all year. My neighbor threw it out when he moved, and my former roommate's fiance thought she wanted it. He got married and left it, it is still sitting in his old bedroom as decoration. Has lights and everything.


Jeff_Bartel said:
So if we take the goblins and witches out of Halloween, is it ok to trick or treat?:candle:
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That's what I call Reformation day!
 
BobVigneault said:
That's a christmas tree???? Well then.....
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Bob...obviously that is not a Christ Mass tree because the Christ Mass superstition wasn't around in Jeremiah's time. The principle remains though.

Jer 10:2-4 Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.
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The Christ Mass is a Roman Catholic invention that has totally pagan roots. It was learned from the heathen and their sun worship (signs of heaven). The Christ Mass custom is therefore vain along with the practices attached to it.
 
No, but it has more to do with being an environmentalist and loathing plastic plants. And money. Not loathing it. Having to do with it.
 
I won't be promoting superstition, paganism, teaching heathen myths, worshipping the sun or returning to my RC roots by celebrating a mass. I'm just going to enjoy my children around a sweet smelling spruce decorated with memories and building more memories. May the Lord be exalted in all our fellowshipping. :pray2:

"To the pure, all things are pure."
 
BobVigneault said:
I won't be promoting superstition, paganism, teaching heathen myths, worshipping the sun or returning to my RC roots by celebrating a mass. I'm just going to enjoy my children around a sweet smelling spruce decorated with memories and building more memories. May the Lord be exalted in all our fellowshipping. :pray2:

"To the pure, all things are pure."
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:amen: Well said Bob.:cheers:
 
BobVigneault said:
I won't be promoting superstition, paganism, teaching heathen myths, worshipping the sun or returning to my RC roots by celebrating a mass. I'm just going to enjoy my children around a sweet smelling spruce decorated with memories and building more memories. May the Lord be exalted in all our fellowshipping. :pray2:

"To the pure, all things are pure."
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You will be performing pagan customs that are vain and in doing so you will be promoting superstition, paganism, and teaching heathen myths by practicing those customs. Why do you put a tree in your house for the Christ Mass? Why not put one up in July? It's because you are observing what the RC Church invented which has no biblical warrant, and is a purely pagan practice. You are to be pure by removing yourself from superstition, not practicing it.
 
PresReformed said:
You will be performing pagan customs that are vain and in doing so you will be promoting superstition, paganism, and teaching heathen myths by practicing those customs. Why do you put a tree in your house for the Christ Mass? Why not put one up in July? It's because you are observing what the RC Church invented which has no biblical warrant, and is a purely pagan practice. You are to be pure by removing yourself from superstition, not practicing it.
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And add to that...why does one feel they have to decorate a tree once a year to make memories. My fondest memories are those without a tree. Just bring on the eggnog! (which I would drink year round if they sold it year round)
 
Thank you Greg and dear sister Colleen for your concerned exhortations. I have read them and I will think on them. Blessings to you.
 
I do want to mention something that an ELCA friend of mine mentioned to me. She said that of all ppl she expected Presbyterians to avoid the Christmas Tree and was shocked to hear that it runs neck and neck who does and who doesn't. Hmmmm.....
 
I had to vote yes because Hubby is not inclined to agree with the whole pagan roots thing to that degree. I am inclined to think I could do without it. The holidays are a "sentimental journey" to be sure and we all love it but I do have a pricking in my conscience about it that I can't shake. I just obey my husband until God either does or doesn't prick his conscience as well.
 
Yes, because I don't fear a Roman Catholic under every tree...

"Ahh...turning Roman Catholic...must RESIST...."
 
Actually, some people don't take their lights down to July where I live. We don't call them pagans around here. We just call em Rednecks! :lol:

PresReformed said:
Why not put one up in July? It's because you are observing what the RC Church invented which has no biblical warrant, and is a purely pagan practice. You are to be pure by removing yourself from superstition, not practicing it.
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Gregg said:
Can't imagine those things in sunny Florida.:lol:
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Its REALLY hard to do that in sunny FL. We have to make INSIDE look like Xmas because outside definitely doesn't.


Jeff,

I don't think that will work. The day itself is tied to the "Halloweeness" of the occult nature of what makes Halloween, Halloween.

With Xmas, you divorce the Romanist Christ-mass. I'm with what Bob said, but without the sap. Sap is messy. But for those who get it on your hand - try Goo-Gone. Works great.
 
rjlynam said:
I'm waiting for the Reeder's to weigh in on this. Just like them to stir things up and then sit on the sidelines and watch the fun. :lol:
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Bob,

I asked my husband to emailed our pastor this morning with a few questions. I am waiting on his reply. I want to totally think this thing through. I honestly love my tree, artificial of course, because of husband’s allergies. But I do use a plug in that smells like pine for that somewhat pine smell!!!

Normally, in the past we have our house all decorated. One year we even had a neighbor ask us to start using a timer, seems he thought the lights needed to out by 10pm. :lol: Of course, my husband told me 4 flood lights were a little extreme. After being blind for a few days we did cut back to 2. :rofl:

We have lights, Big wreath on our center window, swags of pine with red bows on every window, candles in every window, three fake trees on porch, pine garland up the stairs w/ more red bows, stockings, more pine, more bows, hand made Christmas blanket from my grandma spread across the couch, pictures of Christmas' of the past. Music playing non-stop on the CD player, the smell of fresh baked cookies (not a plug-in) :D Really the works.

However, for some reason we started thinking this year. Where we should stand concerning the tree. And that is the reason for my post.

Until we make a decision. Let the comments continue.
 
OH I know I may lose my Puritan card for this one.

But, I am all in favor of remembering God's wondrous acts of deliverance for the children of men!

The Israelites had smooth stones in rivers, and altars set up at Bethel, and Passover and the Sabbath.

The Christian has the Lord's Day, the sacraments, Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension Day and the whole Schmeer. Yes, it is truly a horrible thing to thank God for his wondrous acts to the children of men. :cheers: :cheers: :cheers: :cheers: :cheers:

Save the Puritan arguments, I know them all! Maybe because I grew up Dutch Reformed, I am therefore tainted by the festive spirit. We just aren't quite pure enough for some folk!:pilgrim:

While you all are, like my dear friend Jonathan Edwards wrote in his journal for Dec 25, "listless, dull, and dry" (or words to that effect), I will be merrymaking! :candle:

Okay, hurl your insults now: why, I may just be found to be a Lutheran!

One man has days, the other esteems every day alike.

But, at least I'll be a happy, warm, toasty, and celebrative Lutheran!
 
Well said, Ken. :cheers: :cheers: :cheers:

I am inclined to believe that the presence of a television set comes closer to hitting the idolatry threshold in our homes, than a tree.

If it becomes an idol, tear it down. I'll never forget our pastor preaching on idolatry when I was a kid. He had this huge console tv up behind the pulpit and after posing the question "What must Christians do to idols?" Tear them down! He then proceeded to take a sledge hammer and smash up this huge console tv to smithereens. I think a couple of elders passed out when he did it. :lol: This was in an OPC church too. :lol: And I think it was right after he was installed in the pulpit. :rofl: But he did make his point.
 
No tree for me, but it's mostly that I don't want a tree shedding all over new carpet in my puny condo. Maybe when I get a house and children.
 
C. Matthew McMahon said:
Jeff,

I don't think that will work. The day itself is tied to the "Halloweeness" of the occult nature of what makes Halloween, Halloween.

With Xmas, you divorce the Romanist Christ-mass.
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I don't know....it seems a bit inconsistent to me. Both are days of worship to some at least. It seems that one could argue that

The day itself is tied to the "Christmassness" of the popish nature of what makes Christmass, Christmass.

​
Just trying to see the consistency of rejecting one in it's entirety, while divorcing the "acceptable" from the bad on the other.
 
Not sure if there will be or won't be. There was last year. Probably will be.

I have no problem with a tree in the home as a expression of culture, since the home is not fundamentally a setting for the corporate worship of God's people. Just as I have no problem eating an Italian meal of seven fishes on "Christmas Eve", also as a cultural expression.

I do have a problem with Christmas trappings (or Reformation Day trappings for that matter) in the church, which is the focus of the RPW. Annual days, be they "Roman" or "protestant", have no place in the worship of God's people.
 
Ditto to Mr. Albrecht...

We don't have a tree for the reasons my husband listed above. We used to have a little one which I knitted a cap for (and we named it Balin, not Baal); but our little tree and our little string of sad lights looked so pitiful that I stopped decorating. However when I was little we celebrated with all kinds of things which would probably be very silly to me now but which then did teach me in a very shiny and expectant way that the incarnate Jesus was the joy and the hope of the world, and that it is breathtaking that God became a baby. Christmas is a Christian holiday to me; I can't avoid it whether I decorate or 'celebrate' or not; and it is precisely because my parents made it that way all the years I grew up and all those memories are inextricable from the present and stand in and for joy. I would not want to convince those who felt that they were offering things to idols to celebrate Christmas by any means; but I don't feel the least bit idolatrous when they want to convince me: most of them watch shows every day which are offered to much more real and potent idols in our own culture. I for one couldn't avoid the joy of December and of trees if I tried - it was a tree that first occasioned the fall of man, and it was a tree on which Christ was lifted up and planted in the ground, at the center of redemptive history. If He's turned all the idols on their heads by redeeming even the tree I can't feel like anything I love about trees, at any time of year, is offered to idols.

[FONT=Arial, Geneva, Helvetica]12 let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy 13 before the Lord, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness.[/FONT]
 
Jeff_Bartel said:
I don't know....it seems a bit inconsistent to me. Both are days of worship to some at least. It seems that one could argue that

The day itself is tied to the "Christmassness" of the popish nature of what makes Christmass, Christmass.​
Just trying to see the consistency of rejecting one in it's entirety, while divorcing the "acceptable" from the bad on the other.
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Jeff, I think, though, brother, you are making the point. Just pull it out from behind the bushes.

The popish nature of the "holy-day" is definitely Christ-mass. But the secular "holiday" is Xmas - which has nothing to do with the Mass at all. Or at least I haven't found Jack Frost in there, or the Romanists beckoning Frosty. (Although I might not put it passed them!)

Its the difference between Christ-mass (Halloween) and Xmas (Reformation Day). They are mutually exclusive.

That is the whole point I make in the article on the Regulative Principle and Christ-mass. Take Christ out of Chirst-mass, and keep Him where He should be - all year round, and worshipped corporately on the Lord's Day.

:cheers: "...so have a cup of cheer!"

BTW - 36 "YES" 26 "No" thus far.
 
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