I used to be more cynical toward holidays, not because of the holidays in and of themselves, but because of the way our culture has perverted many of them. Then I realized, the best way to respond is to reclaim the holiday for the sake of glorifying God.
In western civilization, people established many, perhaps most, holidays to remember what they believed to have been something God did. If we forget what God has done, especially His faithfulness in rescuing His people, then we are bound to repeat the same errors and swallow the same deceptions and curses that have plagued mankind since the Beginning. But if we remember God's faithfulness, His provision, and His might, we're more likely to advance His Kingdom in faith-stretching, god-glorifying, and world-changing ways. We won't need to be rescued from some moral disaster we've gotten ourselves into, because we will have been too focused on doing good and believing God to come through. This is how, as men, we need to lead our families, and how as brothers and sisters in Christ, we need to remind one another of His story.
3 Moses said to the people, “Remember this day in which you went out from Egypt, from the house of slavery; for by a powerful hand the Lord brought you out from this place. And nothing leavened shall be eaten. 4 On this day in the month of Abib, you are about to go forth. 5 It shall be when the Lord brings you to the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, which He swore to your fathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, that you shall observe this rite in this month. 6 For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a feast to the Lord. 7 Unleavened bread shall be eaten throughout the seven days; and nothing leavened shall be seen among you, nor shall any leaven be seen among you in all your borders. 8 You shall tell your son on that day, saying, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.’ 9 And it shall serve as a sign to you on your hand, and as a reminder on your forehead, that the law of the Lord may be in your mouth; for with a powerful hand the Lord brought you out of Egypt.—Exodus 13:3-9, NASB
