Royal Generosity

Shopping

So have you bought all your Christmas gifts yet? Just a few days remain for the shopping season leading up to the Christmas holiday. I have heard of more and more people who are choosing to celebrate at different times in the year, maybe before Thanksgiving or in the new year so that they can avoid the hectic schedule, chaotic crowds, and inflated prices that come along with the holiday season. Maybe your family or group of friends have chosen to forego the gift giving part of the holiday tradition. I have often heard other believers complain that the emphasis shouldn’t be on the gifts but on the celebration of God’s gift to us in Christ. I myself just the other day told my wife that I would be just fine if at our extended family gatherings we just brought gifts for the kids and enjoyed good food, games, and fellowship. Sometimes I think that we may be tempted to think that this kind of non materialistic way of thinking is more spiritual, but I would like to explore some reasons why we can view our modern practices of gift giving as biblical, faithful, and meaningful.

Biblical Precedent

In the book of Esther, we are told that after the young woman, Esther, is chosen to become the queen, the King gives a great feast and gives gifts to the provinces with royal generosity (Esther 2:16-18).  Someone may respond with the question, “Should we be following the pattern established by a pagan king?” The answer to that would be no. However, we can establish here that even among the pagans the practice of great generosity motivated by an important celebration is common to humanity. 

There is another reason to take into account the events of Esther when considering how we will understand our holiday celebrations and festive generosity. At the end of the miraculous story of God’s gracious salvation of the Jews which He provided through the means of Mordecai and Esther we are told that the Jews celebrated with days of feasting and gladness. The text even says that they had it as a holiday (Esther 9:17-19). From these initial days of celebration the Jews established a obligatory holiday for their people when they would enjoy feasting and gladness and sending gifts of food to one another and to the poor. This holiday is called Purim. 

Doesn’t this sound very similar to the traditions that we have established around celebrating Christmas? Again someone might point out that this is in the Old Testament and we are not under that covenant anymore. Of course that is true. We are not those people and we do not celebrate their holidays. Actually even for them the Lord did not establish Purim, they did (Esther 9:20-28). God is not mentioned in the book of Esther. God did not command His people to keep these days like He did the sabbaths or the covenantal feast days that He gave to Israel. But that is exactly why it is so instructive for us! Just like they were free even under the Old Covenant law to celebrate the great things God did for them, beyond just what He had commanded, how much more are we under the New Covenant and the freedom we have in Christ free to celebrate the birth of our Savior, Lord, and King!

My point is simply that while we are not obligated by a command of God to celebrate Christmas or any holy day under the New Covenant, we do have a real biblical precedent for joyfully celebrating the amazing salvation we have from God as much as we want. We also need not keep this celebration to some kind of hyper pietistic inner tranquility, we can feast and give gifts with exercises in hospitality and generosity for everyone.

So let me leave you with this thought for Christmas: if we are celebrating the birth of our King who came so that we could be made citizens in His kingdom and siblings in His royal majestic family then let us celebrate with lavish, extravagant, royal generosity and gladness!

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