If everyone would take a moment and close their eyes…I am going to say a word and I want you to tell me what you picture when I say it. Ready?
Christmas.
What came to your mind when I said the word, “Christmas”? Christmas trees, presents, lights, candles, food, parties, snow, decorations, the star, angels, Santa Claus…wow! There are about a zillion symbols we have for Christmas, aren’t there? What I find interesting is that, in this group of believers, the one symbol that didn’t seem to come to mind until very late was The Nativity. Hmm…we’ll talk about this in depth later.
For the next little while, we are going to look at the celebration that we call Christmas – where it came from, where the symbols we use come from, what they mean, and things of that nature. I hope that you will find it insightful and enlightening, and that you will gain a deeper appreciation of the birth of Christ in the process.
From November onwards, it is impossible to forget that Christmas is coming. Colored lights decorate city streets and shops, shiny decorations and artificial snow will adorn shopping displays and store windows, and Christmas trees – real or artificial – will be decorated with lights and Christmas ornaments.
Pictures of Santa Claus begin to appear and television advertising begins to include elves and reindeer.
Shopping centers become busier and busier as December approaches and stores begin staying open until very late. Christmas carols will be played on PA systems everywhere, and radio stations will devote the bulk of their music programming to Christmas-oriented songs. Thanksgiving comes and the very next day, now known as “Black Friday”, begins a shopping frenzy that overtakes millions.
By the middle of December, most homes will be decorated for Christmas with Christmas trees festooned with a myriad of bulbs and ornaments and decorations and strands of colored lights. The rest of the house may very well be decorated as well, and many, many homes will have outside colored lights and sophisticated yard decorations, too.
A good number of businesses will hold a short Christmas party for their employees a week or so before Christmas. These will be attended with lots of food and not a little drink in many cases. Work will be pretty much out of the question for the rest of the day.
We are entering that time of the year when we become surrounded with the trappings and symbols of Christmas. For many, this is their favorite time of year. The reasons for it being their favorite holiday are as varied as there are people around the world that celebrate Christmas each year. For some, Christmas is the time of year that depresses them the most or that they despise the most. Wherever we stand, and for whatever reasons, Christmas has a significant place in American society.
In the majority of American homes, Christian and non-Christian alike, you will find a Christmas tree with presents underneath. Why do we do this? Where did this ritual come from? What does it mean? What is the significance of all of the different accoutrements and paraphernalia that surround the celebration of Christmas? Some believe that this celebration is pagan and evil while others believe the opposite: where should we as Christians stand on the matter?
How many of us know why we call this season “Christmas?” Do we know why we celebrate it on the 25th of December? And why do we feast? Why do we cook the foods we do at Christmas? Why do we exchange gifts? What do wreaths and garlands of evergreens and holly have to do with it? Why have a Christmas tree? What is the significance of the Christmas lights that decorate our trees, homes and city streets? Who is Santa and how does he fit with the birth of Christ?
I’m not sure what you know about the origins of the holiday we call Christmas or of all of the things that are associated with its celebration today. What we have in America is a hodge-podge of traditions from multiple nations over thousands of years. There really is no “one-thing” beginning for it like there is for the Lord’s Supper (also known as Communion). Some would argue that this, too, is a conglomeration of different events into one, but it isn’t, really. We can discuss this another time. For now, let’s see if we can unravel Christmas and its place in the lives of believers today.
“Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child. While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn (Luke 2:1-7).”
These words are oh, so familiar to us. These are the words that will be read or recited thousands of times over the next several weeks, especially in the last days before Christmas – probably more than any other passage of Scripture. But, what do they have to do with the Christmas that we have today?
Let’s go back to a time when the church first began to celebrate Christmas, which literally means “the Mass of Christ”. Christ, which is based on the Greek word “Christos” for “Messiah” or “Anointed One”, is the official title for Jesus, the only Natural Born Son of God. “Mass” simply means a religious festival or celebration, except within the Roman Catholic Church where it signifies what is known as the Eucharist, which is their interpretation and application of the Lord’s Supper.
In the fourth century, the bishop in Rome wrote and asked the bishop in Jerusalem what the date of Jesus’ birth was. No one knows for sure – the records of the Jews were destroyed in 70 A.D. when the city of Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed by the Romans. The bishop of Jerusalem wrote back stating that December 25th was the date of Christ’s birth. This is a date that he pulled out of the hat, but it fit well with the wide-spread decadent Winter solstice celebrations that permeated Roman society and other pagan nations.
For the pagan religions of the world throughout history, the time of the Winter solstice is a time when the Sun and its warmth and its life-giving properties wane the most. From that point on, however, the Sun begins to gain in brilliance and power, moving toward the spring when it will bring dead things back to life and it will bring food and cattle and better health, and warmer days will be ever more abundant.
There are dozens of pagan “gods” whose “birthdays” coincide with this time of year, especially the festival of Saturn, known as Saturnalia, in ancient Rome. For the first hundred-plus years after Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension, the Church didn’t celebrate His birthday at all. But when Christianity became the official state religion of Rome with the conversion of Constantine in the middle of the 4th century, multitudes of unconverted pagans flooded into the Church. They brought all of their festivals and celebrations with them because being Christian was the thing to do, so something had to be done to counteract the pagan influences.
Let’s look at the date that Christmas falls on a little closer. December was an exceptionally important religious month for almost every nation and people. In Egypt, December 21st marked the date of the celebration of the death and resurrection of Osiris, the god of the underworld and judge of the dead. Osiris was the husband and brother of Isis, the queen of heaven, the mother of gods, and goddess of magic, fertility, nature, motherhood, and the underworld. December 26th saw the observance of the birthday of Horus, son of Isis, the sun god and proto-type of human rulers, with a twelve-day festival conspicuous for its decorations of palms with twelve shoots for the twelve months of the year.
In northern Europe, the Norse held a twelve-day feast of the solstice at the end of December. Jews throughout the Empire observed Hanukkah, or “the feast of lights” during December. Greeks worshipped Apollo, Attis, Dionysus, Helios, Herakles, Perseus, and Theseus in December.
The celebration of the Roman Saturnalia, or “Saturn (god of the grain harvest) Festival,” was a seven-day fair and festival of the home which began on December 17th (Saturn’s birthday) and ran through the 23rd. It was an emotional time of feasting open to everyone, celebrated with the exchange of gifts, merry-making, and decorating with boughs of laurel and evergreens. Lamps and candles burned continually, and a feeling of “goodwill” towards man prevailed. Schools were closed, the army was “at ease,” slaves were let off their duties and allowed to “replace” their masters as ruler of the home for the week, friends visited each other, processions of people danced through the streets in masks, hats or blackened faces—there was a Lord of Misrule who presided over the festival—and each household chose a mock king to preside over the festivities.
December 25th, the winter solstice by the Julian calendar, the day of the least sunlight of the year, was the day on which many sun-worshiping pagans worshiped the sun lest the sunlight should disappear altogether; they also held festivals shortly thereafter in gratitude for lengthening days.
This date, December 25th, had early been identified with both the Persian sun-god, Mithras, the god of light, truth and righteousness (represented by a bull) and the Syrian god, Sol Invictus, (the unconquered sun)—celebrated with feasting, masquerades, a relaxation of order and temporary role reversals. December 25th was also the birthday of the lesser known Phoenician sun and fertility god, Baal who was also represented by a bull.
After AD 274/5, the Emperor Aurelian combined the nativity/god-men/savior cult observances of Apollo, Attis, Baal, Dionysus, Helios, Hercules, Horus, Mithra, Osiris, Perseus, and Theseus, into one, the Dies Natilis Invictus Solis (“Birthday of the Unconquered Sun”) celebrated on December 25th and focused on the death and rebirth of the sun.
Though Christians themselves didn’t begin to celebrate the birth of Christ until between AD 127 and 139, by AD 320, after the last of the Christian persecutions, the Roman Catholic Church had made December 25th the date of its Nativity celebration. Why December 25th?
Secular speculation suggests that because the deeply rooted Sol Invictus had not been eradicated by Christianity, the Catholic Church purposefully chose to turn December 25th, the Natilis Invictus (“the birth of the sun”), into “the birth day of the Son,” that is, of Jesus Christ, the son of God.
Others would hold that this date was arrived at by a different line of reasoning: the Catholic Church, aware that March 25th, the Spring Equinox and a pagan feast-day, had long been regarded as the “birth of Spring” among pagan peoples, therefore appropriated that date to mark the “Day of Announcement,” the day that the Virgin Mary conceived the Lord Jesus; adding nine months to March 25th made December 25th the birthday of Christ. Either way, in one move, the Church assigned a specific date to the birth of Our Lord that introduced a Christian holiday into the pagan celebrations occurring in December that supplanted the Natilis Invictus.
After the Council of Nicea in AD 325, Emperor Constantine formally established Christianity as the recognized religion of the Empire. In AD 336, he declared Christmas an official holiday of the Roman Empire, and Roman Catholicism’s “Feast of the Nativity” became the only approved Christmas activity. The city of Rome was celebrating Christmas by AD 354, Constantinople by 380, and Alexandria by 430.
By AD 391, Christianity formally became the state religion; however, in the eastern sections of the Roman Empire, Christmas observances weren’t adopted until the middle of the 5th century AD. The Council of Agde, in AD 506, exhorted all Christians to take Holy Communion at the Feast of the Nativity. In AD 529, Emperor Justinian declared Christmas a civic holiday, suspending private and public business activities for that day.
By AD 1100, Christmas was the greatest holiday observed in Europe. During the 16th century the Reformation banned much of the excesses of pagan customs which had been incorporated into “Christian” Christmases.
In America, the Puritans banned Christmas celebrations because of their pagan origins, even going so far as to fine anyone caught not working on that day unless it was Sunday.
This is just a taste of what we know about the beginnings and growth of the holiday that we know as Christmas today. We could spend hours going over the hundreds of interwoven traditions from the various nations and civilizations that have contributed to what we know today as Christmas, but the reason we have this holiday today will remain unchanged – the reason we have the Christmas holiday in America and in most of the industrialized world is to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ, the Savior of mankind.
No matter where people stand on their beliefs, their feelings, or their priorities, this one fact is immutable and sure – Jesus IS the “reason for the season”, to borrow an old line.
Many people wonder today if Christmas has any real meaning at all and if Christians should even be involved with it.
Some say that it is far too commercialized and distorted and that it just fosters greed and stress and fear and anger and jealousy and all kinds of other personal and social ills. It is the time of year when the most suicides take place. Sex and marriage were originally perfect gifts from God above, and they have become way too commercialized and distorted. Sex has become so commercialized and decadent that it is no longer a special gift between two people, and marriage has become so temporary and transient that it has little value any more either. Should we not participate in those as God intended because the enemy has distorted those, too?
Some say that because its origins are so obviously pagan that Christians don’t have any business participating in most if not all of the “traditions” of the holiday. The things that had pagan meanings so long ago no longer hold those meanings, just like the names for the days of the week no longer hold the same meanings as they did originally. Each of those ‘celebrates” a different pagan deity – what should we do with that?
Still others wonder if Christmas is even redeemable and if a return to the main reason the church fathers of the fourth century sought to wrest the season from the clutches of the devil is even possible. They wonder if we should even pursue it since the Bible nowhere commands us to celebrate the birth of Jesus, and in some Scriptures it seems to be forbidden. They usually use several texts to make their point: Jeremiah 10:2-4; Isaiah 44:14-15; Jeremiah 3:13.
What do you think?
Let me share a couple of things and then you, being reasonable people, can sort it out for yourselves between you and the Almighty.
The first thing I would like to share is that our entire lives are filled with symbols. Simply put, a symbol is something that represents something else. The number 2 is a symbol for two, it isn’t two itself. The language we use to communicate with others symbolizes concepts and ideas but aren’t the concepts or ideas themselves. People wear certain types of clothing to represent where they see themselves fitting in within their society. People wear a variety of symbols around their necks, in their hair, on their faces, on their clothing and on their skin to represent what they think and believe and how they want to be identified. Much of this can be subconscious communication, but it communicates nonetheless.
A certain song can represent a time in our lives that was significant, a certain type of flower can represent a particular emotion, and a piece of jewelry can represent value and worth of a sentimental nature. Symbols saturate and inundate or lives and they communicate volumes to us and about us. Most importantly, however, is what the symbols in our lives cause us to feel and how they cause us to behave. That’s primarily what symbols are for.
When we look at the symbols that surround Christmas, it helps to understand what they represent today. For Christians, what we communicate and how we communicate it represents us, other believers, the Christian faith in general, and – most importantly – represents the One whose Name we bear.
For Christians, Christmas represents the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem – Jesus, who is the only Natural Born Son of God, who came to live and die and rise again so that man could have eternal life with God. He came to sacrifice Himself for us. So, for Christians especially, Christmas is about celebrating love and giving and peace and goodwill to all because that is what God extended to us when Jesus was born.
For all of mankind, and especially for Christians, Christmas and Easter represent the most significant events in all of human history. Whether people believe in Jesus Christ or not doesn’t change that fact. You can take any year in human history and look at it from the perspective of the perceived importance and the real importance and understand what I mean.
An example Charles Swindoll uses is the year 1809. The international scene was tumultuous and turbulent that year. Napoleon Bonaparte was sweeping through Austria on his quest to rule the world, and blood was flowing freely. Nobody cared much about babies being born in those days. But the world was overlooking some incredibly significant births.
For example, William Gladstone was born that year. He was destined to become one of England’s finest statesmen-reformers and four-time prime minister. That same year, Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born to an obscure minister and his wife. The child would one day greatly affect the literary world in a clear and noticeable manner. German-Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn was born in February that year.
On the American continent, Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Not far away in Boston, Edgar Allan Poe began his eventful, albeit tragic, life. It was also in that same year that a physician named Darwin and his wife named their child Charles Robert. And that same year produced the cries of a newborn infant in a rugged log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky. The baby’s name? Abraham Lincoln.
If there had been news broadcasts at that time, I’m certain these words would have been heard: “The destiny of the world is being shaped on an Austrian battlefield today.” But history was actually being shaped in the cradles of England and America. Similarly, everyone thought taxation was the big news of the day when Jesus was born. But, a young Jewish woman cradled the biggest news of all: the birth of the Savior.
Should we be involved in celebrating a holiday that is not commanded in the Bible and that has so many pagan contributions to it? Turn with me for a moment to John 10:22-23. What we read here is, “At that time the Feast of the Dedication took place at Jerusalem; it was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in the portico of Solomon.”
What is the “Feast of the Dedication”? This was the Feast of Dedication, appointed by Judas Maccabaeus and his brothers, commemorating the purging of the temple and the renewing of the altar after Antiochus Epiphanes had defiled them with an “Abomination of Desolation”. The feast lasted eight days, and began on the twenty fifth of the month Chisleu, which answers to part of our December.
Maimonides, the Jewish historian, gives us this account:
When the Israelites prevailed over their enemies and destroyed them, it was on the twenty fifth of the month Chisleu; and they went into the temple and could not find any pure oil in the sanctuary, but one vial; and it was not enough to light but one day only, and they lighted lamps of it for eight days, until the olives were squeezed, and they brought forth pure oil: wherefore the wise men of that generation ordered, that those eight days beginning at the twenty fifth of Chisleu, should be days of rejoicing and praise, and they lighted lamps at the doors of their houses; every night of these eight nights, to show and make known the miracle; and these days are called "the dedication"; and they are forbidden mourning and fasting, as the days of "Purim"; and the lighting of the lamps on them, is a commandment from the Scribes, as is the reading of the book of Esther.’’
The miracle of the one vial of sanctified oil – enough for a single day of keeping the lamp lit – replenishing for seven more days until more could be procured through the means prescribed in the Law of Moses is a miracle the Jews still celebrate today.
Today we know this holiday as “Hanukkah”. It is not one of the feasts that God had commanded the Israelites to observe, yet we find Jesus participating in the celebration anyway. Why do you think that is? Jesus recognized that the Children of Israel has instituted their own feast to commemorate the miraculous intervention of God in their lives – an intervention that was so significant that every generation to follow would be able to use it as a rallying point and point of identification as a people second only to the Passover.
So, again we ask the question: “Should Christians be involved in celebrating Christmas?” Maybe if I share a little bit of my own journey through this it will help – or, perhaps not. In any case, here goes. I have struggled with this back and forth a lot over the years. For a long time, it didn’t seem to matter. As I grew in my faith and in my understanding of the Word of God, I became more and more convicted of the fact that holy living and I were almost complete strangers. Something had to change – I knew God expected a cleaner and purer life from me and from the family I was leading.
Being specially familiar with the origins and meanings of everything that surround another pagan holiday, which we know today as Halloween, and seeing that there were many ties between the two as far as their origins and rituals were concerned, I made the decision and convinced my family that it would be spiritually better for us not to do the tree and stockings and all of that from that point forward. My boys were young then and, though they were somewhat disappointed, they had these things in their life still because of grandparents and friends and such. It was not at all feasible to deny little boys access to family and friends for a month and a half, and something in me said that I would do more harm than good if I tried.
I even had Scriptural grounds for my position, including the verses I mentioned earlier from Jeremiah and Isaiah. What I didn’t have in balance, however, was the difference between Halloween and Christmas. Halloween has always been what it is: a pagan, demonic festival that the Church – despite its best efforts – has been unable to snatch from the clutches of the enemy. Evil and demons and ghoulish things are part and parcel of that “holiday”. Not so Christmas.
Christmas, like Easter, may have it’s origins in pagan festivals and rituals, but the body of believers throughout the ages have transformed much of what these holidays were into beautiful celebrations about Jesus Christ.
Think about the other things people associate with Christmas, like family and charity and love and giving and a kindness toward others that is mostly unknown the rest of the year. That, to me, testifies to the moving and involvement of the Holy Spirit. There is a tenderness and a gentleness to many people at Christmastime to whom those things are foreign much of their lives. But something happens at Christmastime that seems to have no other explanation than that the same spirit of grace and love that God above extended to all of mankind by the giving of His Son invades the planet once again in a way that cannot be ignored and that becomes infectious.
So, should Christians be involved in celebrating Christmas? You will have to decide for yourselves. As for me and my house, we will serve God and celebrate the coming of the Christ to save us from our sins as often as He allows.
Let’s pray.
