hristmas is a big deal in our culture, but how much of what we do is actually related to the birth of Christ, which it purports to celebrate? In fact, it might be surprising to you as we examine the real origins of the symbols and traditions that we have come to know as Christmas tradition.
Part 1
As the song says, “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” Everywhere we go we see the lights, the decorations, the advertisements, and of course, we hear the songs. How should a Christian react to the traditions and events of Christmas, especially in light of a culture that is increasingly hostile to anything during the holiday season that is actually related to the Christ? In this article, we will examine the history of the holiday that we call Christmas and how a Christian might best use this time of year to present the true message of the birth of the promised Messiah, Jesus.
As with so many other things, our search for the origins of Christmas begin in Ancient Babylon. Some experts in Chaldean language believe that their word for infant was “Yule.” This was used, then, in connected with their annual celebration of the incarnate son of the god Ba’al. The celebration took place right around our December 25th. According to the celebration custom, Ba’al’s son Tammuz would appear as a baby to redeem a world bound in darkness. The Babylonians used evergreen trees during this time of year as a symbol for Ba’al coming to life through the incarnate Tammuz.
This might immediately inspire you go home and throw out your Christmas tree, but wait. Things might be a bit more complex than they seem at first glance. The claim of the anti-Christian world, of course, is that the Bible writers simply borrowed pagan stories and cast Jesus into the leading role of a new Christian mythology. At first glance that may appear to be the case, but that would be the wrong impression. We must not forget that a promise of a child savior was with the world since the garden of Eden (Gen. 3:15), so it would actually make sense to see mythologies from around the world that bear remarkable similarities to the birth of Jesus Christ, even though they come from before the birth of Christ.
As we move forward into world history, we land in Scandinavia. The Norse celebrated Yule (it is possible that the word and some traditions had survived from the ancient Babylonian pagan practices) from December 21st, the winter solstice, through to January. The men would bring large logs, known as Yule logs to burn for the new year. Each spark that came off of the log represented a good crop or a new animal that would be born in the coming year. The feast generally lasted twelve days and this was usually the only time all year when they would have fresh meat (as they didn’t want to feed cattle during the winter) and the wine and beer would have fermented and was ready for drinking. The primary god that was honored during this time was Oden, who bore many resemblances to the ancient god Ba’al. Oden inspired great fear among the people due to his nocturnal flights through the sky in a sleigh. During these flights he would observe the people, deciding who would prosper and who would perish in the coming year. Does that sound familiar?
The next place we will look is at the pagan festivals of Rome. Saturnalia was a celebration and festival held in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture held during the winter solstice. It was a hedonistic time of food, drink, and excess, and was celebrated on the 24th of December. The 24th was the shortest day of the year, so the 25th was when the sunlight began to increase, which signaled rebirth. The Romans dressed up fir trees as part of this new birth celebration (a common practice in the pagan world - see Jeremiah 10:1-4). During the festivities, slaves would act as masters to honor the golden age of Saturn when there were no slaves and masters and everything was easy (sounds a bit like the garden of Eden, doesn’t it). People ex changed presents as part of the celebration and public gambling was allowed. Also, most businesses and schools were closed so that everyone could join in the revelry.
There were two other Roman celebrations during the winter solstice that are important to consider. The first was Juvenalia. This was a feast that honored the children of Rome and exalted their importance for a day. The second was the celebration of the birth of Mithra, the sun god. This took place on December 25th and was a holiday that was mostly celebrated by the upper class. Mithra was often depicted as an infant god, and was said that he was born of a rock. For many Romans, especially the most influential in society, this was the most sacred day of the year.
Next week we will examine the history of Christmas, as it becomes an official holiday in the Church and its celebration from the fourth century up through today.
Christians and Christmas, part 2
Last week we looked at a sample of the long history of pagan celebrations during the time of winter solstice. Many of the practices and beliefs of those traditions have carried over into what we now know as Christmas. Today we will continue on our journey through the history of Christmas by examining the history of the Christmas holiday in Christianity and how it has developed into the holiday celebrated by our culture.
It is interesting to note that two of the four gospels make no mention of Jesus’ birth at all, and the two that do, Matthew and Luke do so for theological reasons and do not make the birth a main thrust of the gospel message. It is not an aspect of the gospel that is specifically mentioned by Paul as being of any particular importance.
The birth of the Christ was not celebrated by the early church. It was, in fact, the Passover, and the death and resurrection that were celebrated and given importance. It wasn’t until the 4th century that the Church decided to celebrate the birth of Christ as being a time of special significance. The Church had tried desperately to rid their culture of Saturnalia, but had failed miserably. Their hope was that by choosing December 25th as a day of celebration, people would embrace the celebration of Christmas and Saturnalia would disappear. It worked but not nearly as quickly as the Church might have hoped. It wasn’t until the middle ages that Saturnalia completely died out. It is also true that rather than completely wiping out the celebration of Saturnalia, people simply took elements of Saturnalia and gave them Christian terms. What was hoped to be a deeply pious and religious holiday, became a day where people would go to church and then celebrate the rest of the day in a Mardi-Gras-style party.
Two elements of Saturnalia in particular that remained popular in Christmas celebrations involved the switching of normal societal roles. One was the act of choosing one beggar who would be crowned “the lord of misrule,” and eager celebrants would play the part of his subjects. It was also quite popular for the poor to go the houses of the rich and demand their best food and drink (this could get nasty if they were refused). Christmas became the time of year when the upper class could repay their ‘debt’ to society by entertaining the less fortunate.
During the early days of the Protestant Reformation, the celebration of Christmas, particularly the pagan aspects were strongly rejected. John Calvin argued that holidays should be rejected because of their pagan roots, and that the Church should only engage in holidays expressly sanctioned in the Bible. John Knox, the Scottish reformer, wholly rejected Christmas, saying that it was a tradition of men not God. Thus, the holiday of Christmas was banned from the Church of Scotland. When Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans took over England in 1645, they got rid of Christmas in an attempt to rid England of indecent decadence, which characterized Christmas at that time. When Charles II was restored to the throne, he quickly brought Christmas back due to popular demand. Bringing back the holiday, it should be noted, had nothing to due with reverence for Christ.
In America, the Pilgrims did not celebrate Christmas at all. It was the irreligious that kept alive some semblance of Christmas celebration. In fact, Christmas was against the law in Boston (an early Pilgrim stronghold) until 1681; before that, anyone “exhibiting the Christmas Spirit” was fined five shillings. In Jamestown, a non-Christian settlement, Christmas was celebrated from the beginning.
America did not begin to embrace Christmas until the 19th century. Alabama became the first state to officially celebrate Christmas in 1836. When and where Christmas was celebrated, it fed into the great class conflict and turmoil that was evident in much of America. Christmas celebrations often were closer to riots than holy times of reverence and reflection. In 1828, the New York city council instituted the city’s first police force in response to a Christmas riot.
This began a change in thinking that the Christmas celebration needed to be changed. Influential Americans felt that the lower classes needed to be controlled and they needed to rid Christmas of the Saturnalia mind set of reversing the roles of rich and poor during Christmas. So, they began to re-invent Christmas, changing it from a raucous, decadent, carnival holiday into a family-centered day of peace and nostalgia. Washington Irving wrote “The Sketchbook of Geoffery Crayon, gentleman.” In it, the classes intermingled effortlessly in a holiday of peace and goodwill. This story was not based on anything close to fact; He actually invented tradition by claiming that it described the true customs of the season that had been lost. In England, Dickens wrote the Christmas Carol with the message of charity and good will towards man. It struck a cord in the U.S. and England, and showed members of Victorian society the benefits of celebrating the holiday in a new way.
During the 19th century, the family was becoming less disciplined and more sensitive to the emotional needs of children; Christmas was a perfect time to lavish attention and gifts on children without appearing to spoil them. Over the next 100 years, America built it’s own traditions (many seemingly coincidentally harkened back to the pagan Roman traditions) including customs like tree decorating; holiday cards, and gift-giving. They once again took pagan symbols like the tree and dressed it up with religiously symbolic items like ornaments (which were given significance of representing the fruit of Eden), candles (the light of Christ), holly (the thorn of crowns), and candy canes (blood and purity of Christ). Although most families quickly bought into the idea that they were celebrating Christmas as it had been done for centuries, Americans had really re-invented a holiday to fill the cultural needs of a growing nation.
Christians and Christmas, part 3
It was a quiet night out in a field when a group of shepherds were suddenly shaken out of their sleepy stupor by the presence of the glory of the creator of the universe. Their natural reaction was one of fear. “But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger’” (Luke 2:10-12).
Luke gives us quite a bit of information that he wants us to see in that short passage. Why were they in Bethlehem, the town of David? Because Caesar, the ruler of the known world, had waved a finger and made a decreeing necessitating the fact that Joseph would need to go there. Luke is contrasting the incredible power and flash of Caesar with the most humble of beginnings for the the baby that would make claims to be the true King of the world. He began his life in the same humble manner that he would end it: wrapped in cloths, lying in extremely humble circumstances.
From the viewpoint of the world, there was nothing about the birth, life, or death of Jesus that would come close to putting him in the same league with Caesar. Christ did not bring a message of worldly power, wealth, status, or anything else that would impress anyone seeing things from a worldly point of view. He came to announce that God, who had promised that he would do something about sin and death that ravages the world, had finally acted. God had made a way for His people to escape the tyranny of evil that has dominated the world.
Despite that great truth, Christmas, as we have come to celebrate it in our culture, is all about gifts, wealth, and status. There is a great debate currently underway in our society over when and where it is appropriate to celebrate Christmas. This debate can get quite heated, but does it really have anything to do with the message that God was sending to the world on that quiet night in Bethlehem?
As we have seen, the holiday that we celebrate as Christmas has traditionally had next to nothing to do with the great reclamation project that God began in the person and life of Jesus Christ.
Clearly, the Christian should not blindly take part in the materialism and consumerism of Christmas without carefully thinking of the message that we are sending as Kingdom people, called out of the world to show the nations what God is like.
So, does that mean that we should summarily dismiss Christmas and declare it a pagan holiday that should be avoided by Christians? I don’t think that this is the answer. Paul gave a great deal of freedom in such areas, though, so if someone chose to discontinue their observation of Christmas, that is a decision that should be respected by the rest of their Christian community (Romans 14:5-8).
The answer then, I believe, lies in finding the middle ground between wholesale acceptance of the 21st century American version of Christmas and complete rejection of the day that purports to remember the birth of Christ.
It certainly does not appear to be very helpful to get up in arms because the check-out clerk at Target says “happy holidays” rather than “merry Christmas,” or because your kid’s school calls it “Winter break” rather than “Christmas break” or even because your local city hall bans the yearly nativity display. Those things can really get under our skin, but are they really that important?
We must ask ourselves, “is the issue about requiring people to engage in cultural expressions of a holiday that is only vaguely connected to the real importance of the birth of Christ?” Who cares if the young lady at Wal-Mart says, “Merry Christmas,” if she has not committed her life to the true King of the world, the Christ of Christmas? What does it matter if the school board declares this year’s “Christmas break” and every child and parent in the district reads those words on the school calendar? If that’s not followed by a true announcement of the Kingdom of God and that each person has been called to lay down their life and submit to Christ, then will it really matter? Did Christ come to earth, laying aside His heavenly glory, be born to a lowly virgin, and die a gruesome death at the hands of the Romans on a cross so that city hall could put up an historically incorrect nativity display that is about as close to the real birth of Christ as the movie “ Braveheart” is to the actual life of William Wallace?
In Romans 1:16-17, Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed.” This is what the birth of Christ is really about. It’s not about empty slogans and fancy yard displays. It is about us going out into the world and declaring in creative and confident ways that God has done something about all of the evil that exists in the world. He has proven true to His promises. He has sent His son to do something about the suffering of the world now. It is our job as His people to go do something about it.
Let’s not become entranced by the lights and unimportant things of Christmas this year. Let’s commit to not getting uptight about the spectacle of lost individuals rejecting a cultural expectation of the God that they don’t know in the first place. Let’s be resolved to going out into the world and announcing the true Kingdom of God by showing those people what our God is really like and what He really cares about. Let’s see Christmas as a spiritual opportunity for the glory of God not another pawn in a culture war.
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