Who’s in the Manger?
Manger scenes at Christmas, prayer in school and “In God we trust” are all under attack in America. If the story of Santa Clause has become a religion of sorts, it is the fastest growing religion in America. The Christmas story of the birth of Christ has been replaced with the glamorous story of Saint Nicolas. Each year children await his coming religiously. They have strong convictions that they had better be good, because Santa Clause knows all things and can be everywhere at once. The attributes that belong only to God are shared with none other than Santa himself. His countenance is as the sun and his skin shines like the face of Moses.

Christian parents wouldn’t want to deprive their little ones of the magic of Christmas; after all its only make believe. Proverbs 22:6 instructs parents to, “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” The idea of encouraging a temporary faith in Santa Clause, is not, as the scripture says, ‘training up a child in the way he should go‘.

In times past the grace of God tolerated such compromise, but is now commanding that all men repent. We are to have no other gods before Him. If we don’t drive them out of our homes, they will invade us and overcome us.

This new version of the Christmas story is unlike any of the other fun stories that we tell our children because it robs God of the glory of Christmas and leaves His only begotten son completely out of the equation. Can you imagine having a birthday party for someone and then not inviting them to their own party. Most younger children do not even understand that Christmas has anything to do with the birth of Christ, but they know full well the meaning of Santa Clause.

If this were to be the case under the Old Testament, they would have stoned Santa; killed all of his rain deers and had them burned. God said, “I am the Lord God, I change not.’ He is a jealous God. The Bible tells us that the customs of the people are vain and not to be like them. We are to come out from among them and be separate saith the Lord and touch not the unclean thing. In Deuteronomy we are warned not to bring an accursed object into our house, lest we become a cursed thing like it.

Consider the Christian fish symbol. We use it to identify ourselves as Christians. The evolutionist comes along and reverses the direction of the fish symbol and adds feet to it. Do we as Christians think its cute and innocent and add it to our decorations.? Do we go along with the redefined meaning of the rainbow? If Saint Nicolas ever really existed do you think he would approve of whats going on with Christmas today?

Picture this: Your driving along the road with your family and see a manger scene. Its been a wonderful evening with the kids, looking at all the lights and Christmas decorations. The spot light has clearly been on Santa Clause all night; but now this manger. You are amazed at how well they built this manger scene and how authentic it looks. They have paid great attention to detail in the construction of it so you pull over to get a closer look. The kids are getting tired and fussy by now but this is incredible so you all get out of the car to see this wonderful sight. Upon approaching the manger, you get a sense of awe about the whole thing. Would you find it offensive to find that baby Jesus was replaced with a baby Santa Clause? If so why? What difference does it make in the grand scheme of things. As a Christian, you are already aware of how Christ has been X-mased from Christmas.

We Christians enjoy the light up Santa kneeling at the manger, but in effect Jesus has taken a back seat to Santa. It’s as if we have Jesus kneeling at the feet of Santa Clause. I say that because we the Church are representatives of Christ and if we bow before other gods by giving credence to them we desecrate the very Lord that bought us.

1 John 5:21 “Little children, keep yourself from idols. Amen.”

Pastor Tilson Shumate

Jesus was a June baby:
http://rt.com/prime-time/2008-12-09/Jesus_was_a_June_baby_.html?gclid=CNLf7c-W8p4CFQwTawodsHIEiQ
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/xmas/celeb.htm