Christian Heritage Month
On November 20, 2019 Brampton City Council voted unanimously in favour of declaring the month of December, each year, to be “Christian Heritage Month”: “Whereas Christian faith groups in Brampton embody the beautiful and diverse threads that mirror the Canadian social fabric, and therefore be it resolved in recognition of the valuable contribution of Christians to the spiritual, philanthropic, cultural and economic well-being the City of Brampton, that the Mayor and Brampton City Council endorse the proclamation of December in 2019 and beyond as Christian Heritage Month.” The Brampton Ministerial of Christian pastors and leaders is thankful to our city leaders for this declaration and are grateful for the opportunity to celebrate God’s gift of his divine Son, Jesus Christ, to come to earth as a human to reconcile this broken world and its people to himself as the Creator of the human race. Christians believe that our world’s problems are mainly caused by our human failure to fully love one another. But according to the Bible, in John 3:16, God loved the world so much that he sent is Son, at Christmas, to pay for our human sin and brokenness, to reconcile human beings to God, and to lead us to serve God and others by encouraging faith in Christ and by loving people in helpful and practical ways. While Christians have not done this perfectly, and have sometimes made mistakes along the way, by God’s forgiving grace, Christians in Canada have done many things to encourage the well-being of all Canadians – from initiating both our Public and Catholic educations systems, to initiating many of our health care systems, to leading and joining others to insist on the end of Black slavery, to leading the fight for women’s suffrage, to challenging injustice for Canada’s indigenous people including our own historical injustice as Christians.
As individual citizens and churches, we celebrate what God has done and is doing through Christians and all people to contribute to the health and well-being of Canada overall, and of Brampton in particular.
To celebrate Christian Heritage Month, the following initiatives have been planned: 1) On December 1, Mayor Patrick Brown will open Christian Heritage Month with a declaration and by raising the Christian flag for the month of December. 2) Through the Brampton Christian Ministerial, Christmas lawn signs are being distributed to members of Brampton churches which say “Christmas is about Christ”, along with larger signs on the properties of some of our historic downtown churches that say “Celebrating Christian Heritage Month”. 3) The Peel District Public School Board will distribute curriculum to each school to inform our students about the Christian faith. 4) The Brampton Ministerial is encouraging individual churches to lead socially distanced “Drive-by Carol singing in their neighbourhoods. 5) Hundreds of churches in Brampton will be offering various, mostly on-line and socially distanced, celebrations of the gift of Christ at Christmas.