Transforming Christmas depression into joy

Wednesday, 24. December 2008 by Renee Ellison

Did you know that William Bradford of the Plymouth Plantation made all the Pilgrims WORK on Christmas day, ‘cause they viewed it as a totally pagan holiday!!!!  We dislike what this holiday has become…a consuming focus on want, want, want.  It makes scores of people super DEPRESSED.  It centers on everything we DON’T have.

‘Tis a far cry from sitting in a chair and worshipping Him in spirit and in truth…feeding on Him, meditating on some nurturing portion of scripture, and being caught up to the heavens with SATISFACTION in Him.

For the past ten years, we as a family have occupied ourselves with some delightful project that day and been happy as clams.  I get to sew!  And we all sit around the table and do our projects right NEXT to each other, and hug each other lots.  Melanie will write college application essays, Todd work on taxes.  We LOVE being with one another, PRODUCING.  On some years we have met up with our materialistic relatives and neighbors later in the day.  They usually have long faces and are depressed, because they spent the morning tearing through presents and then sat on their couches depressed—because THINGS can never satisfy…they are like leeches saying more, more, more.

I did the same thing when I taught school…worked my little ones ‘til the day and the hour school closed…and because they were PRODUCING, they were the happiest kids in school.  The others walked around with sugar in their guts, aimlessness, and depression.

Blessings on alternative plans, to fight off the ways of our increasingly pagan world.  For further info on this, you can download our little ebook, Why We Got Off the Christmas Bandwagon.