How do you celebrate holidays?
Ok, not all of them, but we did quit the major ones. In 2023, what had been our staple traditions as Christians, raising our family in a church, no longer worked for us. We lost our church home and an income. We started realizing just how far gone my mother was mentally and that our house was sinking.
These things were making the holidays look, well, depressing. We barely kept bills paid, and we were pretty traumatized by the experience of cleaning out my mother’s hoarder house. Not having the money for the holidays and definitely sick of “stuff,” I started looking intently into the Biblical Feasts mentioned in Leviticus 23.
Leviticus 23:1-2 NIV
[1] The Lord said to Moses, [2] “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘These are my appointed festivals, the appointed festivals of the Lord, which you are to proclaim as sacred assemblies.
https://bible.com/bible/111/lev.23.1-2.NIV
The Bible does give clear directives about these holidays, but a lot of it is left kind of open-ended. However, what they all have in common is that each one is a reminder of something God has done in the history of the Jews and Jesus was a Jew. He celebrated those holidays, and then, his death on the cross and resurrection was the fulfillment of them.
Do we still spend time with family and friends during the typical holidays? Yes, we cherish that time. But now, we chose to celebrate the Biblical Feasts by remembering all that God has done for us.
