Sacrifices and Altars

On Christmas Eve, kids and their parents bake chocolate chip cookies, pour a glass of milk, and set it near the fireplace in hopes that Santa will be able to have a snack while visiting their home. My family never did this. It might have been because my sister and I figured out that Santa wasn't real pretty early on, the little detectives that we often tried to be.

But when the kids go to bed, the parents sneak out, consume the milk and cookies, and drop the presents under the tree and in the stockings. Then the children wake up, and--oh, look! Santa ate the snack and left a thank-you note (at least, that's what my parents would have done. They were big on thank-you notes)!

If there weren't parents to eat the milk and cookies, though, the food would still be there. There has to be someone deceiving the kids in order for it all to work. I grew up applying this sort of idea to instances in historical fiction about sacrifices and altars. That is, I thought that the priests or others crept into the buildings in the middle of the night, and ate all the food so when the unknowing worshipers returned, it would be like the deity received their offering.

Except, I'm pretty sure now that such a thing often didn't happen.

I think most Christians tend to panic a bit when they think of other religions and those religions' sacrifices and altars. While the more traditional Christian churches have altars where communion is blessed and incense is poured over it, any actual sacrificing is seen as weird or disturbing. I'm speaking of leaving food, animals, etc. at altars for God/the gods.

I bring this up because I have a friend that's a pagan, and I was asking her about altars recently. We had a little discussion about what's presented at the altar and what happens to it (and by discussion, I mean I was asking a lot of questions and she was answering them). For her, she puts some things she bakes there, particularly things the deity is known to like. She leaves it out, but she's not exactly sure how the offering is taken. Because of bugs and other pests, she has to throw it out (although some deities like rotting food). This is quite a foreign concept to me, so it was sort of puzzling, but the more I thought of it, the more my mind went back to the things I've been reading.

Mainly, this thing right here. -points-

There's tons of sacrifice in the Old Testament. Tons. But Christians don't really talk about this being a strange thing, because it's in the Bible and of course you're not supposed to question the Bible (at least, that's what they say, but I'm the girl who circles arguments and writes "stretch" if I'm not a fan of the rhetoric). But the Israelites would often offer grain, slaughtered animals, and other objects, much like the pagans. I believe that most of the time they'd burn the offering, though, because the idea was that the smoke ascends to the heavens. Also, it gets rid of the need to throw anything out.

But after the temple was burned down, they stopped doing that, and now there's prayer. I'm not sure, seeing as I'm not Jewish, but I think it was because the Ark of the Covenant, the place where God actually was, was lost or destroyed. Christians don't sacrifice because, as said in Hebrews, Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice. The high priests of Judaism would sacrifice to God as atonement for their sins, but Jesus, as the greatest high priest, offered himself as a sacrifice that lasts forever, because he was perfect.

Still, the concept of sacrifice is interesting. God doesn't really need food or animals. He can have anything he wants. If he wanted the atonement of sin, he could simply forgive everyone, and not have his son killed, right? But, for some reason, such an atonement is necessary. I don't quite understand it, but there is so much evil in the world that perhaps death and suffering is the only thing that can make up for it.

I don't pretend to have all the answers, but, then again, I'm not God. There's a complexity and mystery in the world that I can never understand. But someone far greater than I does understand, so honestly, I'm okay with that. I'll just keep on thinking.


(side note: When I first typed out Santa, I wrote Satan.)
(other side note: The milk must get lukewarm sitting out for so long.)
(other other side note: My friend also donates money to charities for children as a sort of sacrifice. You don't hear about that, do you?)