I do not know about everyone else, but this July Christmas was everywhere I turned. Several places seemed to be doing something for “Christmas in July”. I saw ads for stores having sales and I saw movie providers having a section dedicated. It is something I have never noticed before. Even during the time I was BIG into Christmas.
I wanted to do this one due to that and because it fits into last week’s as well. God gives instructions on how we are to worship Him and we have several accounts, including ones I didn’t add to the list such as the golden calf that was in last week’s comic, where His people decided to worship in their own way, and He punished them for it. The thing to remember is God created us in His own image. He created us good and without evil. Then we sinned. Knowledge of both good and evil entered us. We saw things that He never intended us to see. We now had to learn to live with this knowledge. He showed us how to live with it, and eventually it was written down for us, and when that still didn’t stick, He sent His Son to walk it out as an example so we could look back and see what we are to do.
A few of the verses listed talk about not seeing what the nations do and do that for God. I have included text over some of the objects in the picture giving the origin. I got these origins not from anti-Christmas sites, but ones that pro-Christmas and are dedicated to it, like whychristmas.com. The pagan nature of traditions in Christmas has been long known. It was even outlawed in the USA at one point because of those origins.
https://www.livescience.com/32891-why-was-christmas-banned-in-america-.html
http://mentalfloss.com/article/89733/when-americans-outlawed-christmas
http://calltoworship.org/spurgeon-on-christmas.html
I think in all of this, especially for Christmas, the key to remember is James 4:4 “You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” Then ask yourself, who is it that loves these traditions? Is it God, or is it the world?