Nostalgia
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Noel
Noel
Most, if not all, of us just sang The First Noel, which begins with the line
The first Noel the angel did say
How many of us know what a Noel is?
It’s not a word we use commonly, even at Christmas-time, except to reference this song.
Noel comes to us from French, which in turn took it from a Latin word meaning birth. In its early usage, it was a birth song, or birthday song. In time, it became associated with Jesus’ birth and thus came to mean Christmas song. It can also just mean Christmas, depending on the context.
So when we sing it, we’re probably singing about singing a birthday song, or Christmas song, about Jesus. But now that we’re talking, I’m using it to refer to Christmas itself.
Gifts
Gifts
For most of us Christmas means gifts. We create and request Christmas lists so that we can give each other gifts. This is an admittedly strange way to celebrate someone’s birth (giving each other gifts), but it is how we roll. In fact gift-giving is so integral to Christmas that we cannot conceive of the holiday without it and will go to incredible lengths to give something—anything—to those we love.
Gift-giving has led to some abuses over the years, but it is not a bad thing rightly done. And there are certainly ancient traditions of giving gifts to significant people in our lives to mark special occasions, so it’s not really that strange.
The Gifts
The Gifts
To compensate for some of the drawbacks to Christmas and gift-giving, We typically emphasize the idea that Jesus is the reason for the season. I do not want to minimize that idea in any way; we need it. We sometimes miss that the Christmas season itself is a gift to us in many ways. We don’t need to emphasize gift-giving—it already gets plenty of attention—but we could unwrap some of the gifts that Christmas gives to us. While there are likely more we could think of, I’d like to focus on four gifts this season:
Nostalgia
Optimism
Empathy
Love
If you’re paying attention, you noticed the acrostic and I am discovered. It’s ok. I want us to notice and reflect on these gifts. I’ll explain as we go.
Transition
Transition
Nostalgia gets to the heart of our traditions. Traditions create nostalgia. Nostalgia fuels our traditions. There is an almost inescapable connection between traditions and nostalgia.
Illumination
Illumination
What are some of our traditions?
What are some of our traditions?
Christmas has more traditions than probably any other event/season of our year.
What are some of our traditions?
What traditions do we have that are so essential that Christmas just would be Christmas without them?
Are there any traditions that we used to observe that have changed or stopped altogether?
Audience Responses
The Pitfall of Traditions
The Pitfall of Traditions
of the 14 times the word tradition is used in the New Testament, 8 of them are in the Gospels and none of them are good.
9 He said to them, “All too well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition. 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death.’ 11 But you say, ‘If a man says to his father or mother, “Whatever profit you might have received from me is Corban”—’ (that is, a gift to God), 12 then you no longer let him do anything for his father or his mother, 13 making the word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have handed down. And many such things you do.”
The biggest pitfall of tradition is that it creates a scenario where we no focus on God and desire that God has for us. Could that happen at Christmas? Absolutely. For starters, God doesn’t plan for us to go into debt to feed our collective impulse to horde stuff.
8 Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.
The Plus of Traditions
The Plus of Traditions
2 Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you.
15 Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle.
The Power of Traditions
The Power of Traditions
The Preacher’s Notebook: The Collected Quotes, Illustrations, and Prayers of John Stott Nostalgia Is a Sign of Our True Situation
“Our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation.”
--C.S. Lewis from a message entitled The Weight of Glory delivered on June 8, 1941
While our traditions and the nostalgia they create cannot change the past, they generally help us to forget some of its pain. It is the healing element of time that causes us to reflect warmly on those elements that we want to recreate. As long as we do not become so inured in the past that we attempt to live in it, we can find that our present is made better by the reflection and recapturing of that nostalgia and those traditions.
Conclusion
Conclusion
In that sense, traditions are quite good and nostalgia is quite beneficial: it is a gift to us in our troublesome present.
Application
Application
28 Do not remove the ancient landmark
Which your fathers have set.
While they may seem unrelated, our traditions are the landmarks set by those before us us to provide boundaries and guidance to us that we need. We should keep them when we can, modify them where we should, and only remove them when we must.