Matthew asked: Is God happy with his people having Christmas trees and celebrating Christmas?
I suppose the answer to your question is, like so many other answers, “it depends.” I don’t think God cares one way or another about trees being used for such things.
There are some people who believe that the answer to your question is NO. Unfortunately, those people have a very hard time providing evidence for that belief. The real question is, ‘What DOES make God happy?’.
I would suggest that when we remember His goodness to us, that might make Him happy. Celebrating the biggest event in history – God coming to Earth as a man, living as our example, and dying in our place – seems like a good thing. I would also suggest that when we sincerely give gifts to one another as a way of demonstrating our own love for each other, that might make God happy too.
I don’t think God is happy when we get off-track and turn those good things into meaningless rituals, or when we focus more on the value of the gift than on the one who provided it. I don’t think God is happy when we substitute anything for Him, or for His message that each person in the world is worth more to Him than they know.
Sometimes, Christmas is that good thing where we see His hand at work. Sometimes, Christmas is an escape from reality, wrapped in materialism and selfishness. Whether God is happy probably depends on which Christmas ends up happening.
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