As we move closer to the return of Yeshua and the start of His everlasting kingdom, it seems natural that many of us are questioning what is real and important. If we knew that we would be kneeling in front of the judgment seat of Christ tomorrow, how concerned would we be about renovating our houses, our retirement fund or celebrating Christmas? It is this last one I want to focus on. Assuming most of the people reading this are believers, I won't go through all the details about the pagan origins of what we now call Christmas... that information is all to easy to get. For the few that have not studied it, here are the highlights:
1) The early church did not celebrate Christmas. It was not until the church age of Pergamos (in which the church married the world) that Christmas became a church honoured holy day.
2) December 25th was originally a pagan sun-worship day... the winter solstice. Many pagan gods were supposedly born on this day and subsequently had festivals attributed to them, but the Roman festival of Saturnalia seems to have been the most popular at the time that the Roman church created Christmas and "discovered" that the date of Christ's birth was... surprise, December 25th.
3) Some of the elements of the pagan solstice festivals included ivy, holly, mistletoe and were rife with immorality, revelry, drinking and gluttony... sounds like the average company Christmas party doesn't it?
4) The familiar Christmas image of Mary and baby Jesus really has its roots in the common theme of pagan goddess and child such as Isis and Horace or more notably the Babylonian pair of Semiramis and her "Messiah" like son, Tammuz
5) The Yule log tradition comes from the worship of the Scandanavian fertility god Jule who was honoured in a twelve day ceremony in which a log was kept burning and daily sacrifices were made.
It's probably not necessary to mention the very anti-Christian roots and meanings behind Santa Claus. It seems most bible-believing Christians are uncomfortable with this pagan elf anyway so enough said.
The question I want to raise is this. Does Christmas's clear pagan origins mean that we should not celebrate it? After all... no Christian I know openly honours Jule or Tammuz, so what is all the fuss? The point is this... I believe that the Father cares VERY much about the origin of things when they are used in the worship of Him. He was extremely explicit to the Israelites to not conform to any of the ways of her Caananite neighbours even to the point of being commanded to not wear clothing of mixed fabric. There are so many Old Testament verses about avoiding paganism that you couldn't swing a curly-toed toy-making elf without hitting one. What about the new Testament? Some would argue that our newfound liberty in Christ affords us the right do whatever isn't clearly against scripture and to let no man judge us in holy days.
If taken in context, those New Testament scriptures (1 Cor 8:4-13; 1 Cor 10:14, 18-21; Rom 14:1-13) speak of our liberty in terms of continuing with Old Testament (Yehovah ordained) holy days and feasts, many of which were pictures of Christ and have now been fulfilled. In other words, there is no longer a need for us to go up to Jerusalem three times a year to sacrifice but if you really wanted to... well we couldn't anyway so the point is moot. What Christian liberty does not allow is to absorb pagan idol worship into our worship of Christ. Mixing practices like this is an offence to Yahweh. I used to love Christmas as much as anyone but as it became more and more commercialized, stressful, expensive and hollow I started to question it. It became really hard to picture being in the new kingdom and seeing nativity scenes everywhere or drinking eggnog as a way of celebrating the birth of our Saviour. This led to a study of it's roots and a fresh perspective of what the bible has to say about it.
I hope you do the same. I don't think that celebrating Christmas will send a person to hell but I do think that if you really truly want to honour the gift of Christ, you will do it everyday thorough obedience and real heart worship and not by following the fish downstream in a tainted commercialized stressful 3-week construct that originally honoured a sun-god and his mother. We are called to be a peculiar people. What a better way to show your peculiarity?
Blessings.
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