Lisa
can you say what you heard was evil and worldly about it? was it referring to traditions - the Xmas tree and Santa and the like - or what??

Here's something else i'd love to see delved into, especially as the season approaches: what is the meaning of Christmas anyway? If you were to write a paragraph or two and tell someone who doesn't celebrate it what the meaning is to you - in general but also to you personally for this year and this time - what would you, today in this time, write?

I think I'll work on my own but I'd love to see other reflections in the comments or on the main page in the coming weeks/months.

But if you could also say Lis what you read/thought was wordly in particular, that would help. :)

oooohh... and I'd love to hear more about how anyone plans to celebrate
1. Thanksgiving
and
2. Advent

to make it Christ centered.

A rather long while ago I came across this essay, which questions particularly the value of telling a child lies about Santa Claus and passing them off as truth. I think the author has some excellent points there.
This is only somewhat related, but but the other day I was walking down the side of the road and thinking about this point of associating the true story of the birth of Jesus Christ with a mythologized lie about Santa Claus. I was thinking about how cool it would be not to give gifts at Christmas, but to create one's own cultural myth and celebrate that as a time of gift-giving instead. At Thanksgiving, I would encourage my family and my friends' families to tell the legendary story of the King of Thanksgiving, who comes on the night of the fourth Wednesday in November and flies through the sky on a magic robot, delivering toys to all the children who will be properly thankful for them. The King of Thanksgiving would have psychic powers, so he could tell in advance who would be grateful for his gifts. We would start a cultural revolution by imaginatively deconstructing holiday traditions and supplanting them with our own mythology.
The whole "King of Thanksgiving" idea is probably not really a good or practical idea, but it was pretty hilarious to think about. It certainly does nothing to address the issue Kristi has raised regarding how to celebrate Thanksgiving in a Christ-centered way.

also, my brother has good thoughts.

I haven't read any of this guy, so I don't vouch for him, but I've seen some of his books and I might read one sometime to see if he is more a C.S. Lewis or a J.S. Spong:

Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola

It seems like it is going to be couched in anti-churchianity terms, which sometimes rub me the wrong way, but I'm not sure that is a bad thing.

Dave's totally right.

When Christianity swept through Europe, oftentimes for the people involved it was a mere political change. They had a kind of fill-in-the-name worship: When a new king takes over your country, everybody take out your hymnals, cross out 'Thor' and write in 'Athena'. Next century, cross out 'Athena', write in 'Christ'.

I think that all throughout history, holidays have been celebrated mostly by people who don't care what they mean. Most of the pagans didn't care about Sol Invictus or Thor - They were in it for crass materialism, the same way most people are nowadays. People are people.

I think the main danger, and the main reason that we shouldn't have incorporated the pagan symbols into the holiday, is that it makes it look like Christianity is the same sort of thing as those pagan religions. And it's not. Using those symbols makes it look like worshipping Jesus is just another way of worshipping the sun - Which it's not. Most ancient religions are nothing more than fancy ways of worshipping the sun. But we have no need to worship the sun. We worship the One who made the sun.

So what should we do? We can't cut out every custom that the pagans once used to celebrate nature - We couldn't have a fire in the fireplace, or eat ham on Christmas, or sing 'The Holly and the Ivy', or give gifts.

I don't know what to do, I admit. Throw 'em out and have a dumb holiday? Keep 'em and ignore the pagan meanings? Keep 'em and try to redefine what they mean? Make up new ones? I don't know.