Do You Celebrate Birthdays?

1/3/2007

It’s our friend’s birthday. Do you celebrate birthdays?

We kind of do, for fun—

Sometimes :)

Sometimes! We do not want our children to expect it, however. We don’t want to train our children from the time they are babies to expect it. “Yeah! This is your day to be selfish and prideful. Yeah! You get to control everybody around you and you get to be materialistic and make people give you things. And then you can be sad if you don’t get what you want.” We’re never going to train our children to be materialistic. That’s not “their” day. It’s just “a” day.

Now show me Jesus’ birthday in the Bible. Mary didn’t celebrate her own son’s birthday, apparently. Show me one time where Mary later in years celebrated Jesus’ birthday. James and Jude grew up with him; they were half-brothers of Jesus. When did Jude write, “Now we are celebrating Jesus’ birthday”?

But they do mention his age.

Yes, He did have a birthday. He had an age!

Yes, and we know our children’s birthdays. We’re not afraid to say, “We’re so glad you were born seventeen years ago, this day. It was about three o’clock in the morning. You kept us up all night, turkey! :) By the way, I meant to spank you for that, but you were too young at the time. So lean over—I’m going to spank you for keeping me up all night seventeen years ago.” (laughter) :) See, it’s out of love.

There’s creativity and each year it’s different. Some years we don’t draw attention to it because that’s not what they need. To an adult we might send a text message, “So glad you were born. I needed you in my life.” You don’t sing, “La, la, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you!” You say, “I am so glad you were born. Thank you for being here.”

More importantly—and think about this for a minute—you know when your own physical birthday is, and you know when some other people’s birthdays are. But do you know when your second birth birthday is? Most people don’t. Most people know exactly what day they were born physically, the first time. Yet, Jesus was so clear about the second birth being so much more important, but most people don’t even remember that date. And no one text messages you, “Happy Second Birth Birthday.” Why not? It’s ten thousand times more important. But we’re slaves to our thinking. We grew up being brain washed—actually, brain dirtied—so our first birth was, “Yay! Yay! Yay!” In reality, if that is really true, the second birth ought to be ten thousand times more celebrated because that’s the one that matters. And people don’t think of that.

So that means the first one is a fraud. The first one is counterfeit and “of this world” because the second one is very seldom noticed. You might know because you wrote it in your Bible or something like that. But in reality no matter what culture or language it is that does anything with birthdays, people’s minds gravitate towards first birth even if they’re believers. It’s because their brains were dirtied from birth in the sentimentality thing and they never stopped to question it.

When I was twenty years old, I stopped burning incense and lighting candles on St. Blaze day, and I stopped kissing bishops and pope’s rings. “Because,” I said, “I will not be a slave to the religion of men or the traditions of men. If it’s something that is in God’s heart, I want it. But if it’s something that men have added and used God’s name to justify, I don’t want it anymore. Jesus said the traditions of men nullify the Word of God. They make us blind to a living and active word and I’m just not going to do that.”

We do love our children, and they do know how old they are. :) All of our children know how old they are. But they don’t wait in eager anticipation every year for their birthdays to come around so they can “own” people and everybody can worship them for a day and give them gifts. “Oh! I want this for my birthday!” We haven’t heard that kind of thinking in fifteen years. Not even one child has ever said, “I want this or that for my birthday.”

Because you’re giving all of the time.

That’s right. It’s not less, it’s more.

That’s right!

They wouldn’t even tie a gift and their birthday together.

•  Do You Celebrate Birthdays?