My Christmas Dilemma

I am not a big fan of Christmas, mainly because it is not in the Bible. Family and friends outnumber me, so I go along with Christmas festivities but not wholeheartedly. I have difficulty celebrating it as the birthday of Jesus. For one reason, Christians did not celebrate Christmas for at least the first two centuries after Jesus ascended to the Father. The seventeenth-century Puritans refused to celebrate Christmas during the Reformation because of its absence from scripture.

I read that in AD 245, when a group of scholars attempted to pinpoint the exact date of Christ's birth, a church council denounced their endeavor, declaring it wrong to celebrate the birthday of Christ "as though he were a King Pharaoh." Despite official disapproval, various people attempted to pinpoint the nativity, resulting in multiple dates, and Pope Julius formally named December 25th the day of Christmas in AD 349.

Here is the proverbial “kicker” for me. December 25th was a widely celebrated day in the Roman world. On that date, citizens observed the Natalis Solis Invicti (the Birthday of the unconquerable Sun) in honor of the Sun god, Mithras. The festival took place just after the winter solstice of the Julian calendar. Many modern Christmas customs, such as decorating a house with greenery, exchanging gifts, and enjoying festive meals, originated with this pagan celebration.

The Roman Empire collapsed in the fourth century. Constantine, a pagan Sun god worshiper, established Christianity as the unifying religion of the Romans. Scholars think he never fully converted to Christ and imposed Jesus onto his subjects. I understand that pagan priests became Christian priests overnight by Constantine’s decree. He “baptized” his army by parading them under priests in trees, sprinkling water on them as they marched under the branches. There are at least two problems with that. First, “sprinkling” is not “baptizing,” as the word means to immerse. Second, the soldiers may not have had faith in Jesus; they were merely “following orders.”

What bothers me is that the fourth-century Christians did not convert the pagans; they merely Christianized pagan practices. They overlaid the story of Jesus’ birth over the story of the birth of Mithras, and voila, we have a non-biblical holiday to celebrate. Many of our Christmas traditions arise from pagan practices in various parts of the world.

Let me change the pace. I don’t think that God will eternally condemn anyone for celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25. Many good things come from celebrating the birth of Jesus. One is that for at least a little while, people’s attention turns to the Savior. We are so wrapped up in ourselves that we forget there is one greater than we are. The story of the birth of Jesus is beautiful. The account reveals the love of God for us. God so loved us that He sent His Son to us. No other god would have done such a thing. The nativity reminds us that God put on flesh and lived among us. John 1:1-3, 14 (NKJV) read:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Another good thing about Christmas is how we treat others during this season. Not only are we more God-conscious, but we are other-conscious, too. You may remember the “Christmas Truce” story from WWI. I am sorry, I do not have a source for this story, but here it is.

On the first Christmas Day of World War I, British and German troops put down their weapons and celebrated peacefully in the no man’s land between the trenches. There was peace as war briefly came to a halt. In some places, festivities began when German troops lit candles on Christmas trees atop their barricades so the British troops a few hundred yards away could see them. Elsewhere, the British acted first, starting bonfires and letting off rockets.

Both armies had received comforts from home, and they felt generous and well-disposed toward their enemies in the war’s first winter before the vast battles began in 1915. All along the line that Christmas Day, soldiers found their enemies were much like them and began asking why they should be trying to kill each other. The generals were shocked and were concerned that this activity would sap the troops’ will to fight. The soldiers in khaki and gray sang carols to each other, exchanged gifts, traded names and addresses, and played soccer between the shell holes and barbed wire. They even paid mutual trench visits. This day is called “the most famous truce in military history.”