Should Christians Celebrate Christmas

Should Christians Celebrate Christmas

December 29, 2024

We’re going to take a break from our study in the book of Genesis this morning. Let’s talk a little bit about Christians and the celebration of Christmas. We can start this discussion by asking a few questions. “Should Christians celebrate Christmas?” “Do Christians have to celebrate Christmas?” A slightly different question – “Is Christmas a Christian holiday?” Or we could ask, “Is Christmas a Christian festival?” Think about that question for a moment. Over the last few years, many Christians have had various concerns about the celebration of Christmas.

Some are very concerned about what is often titled “The War on Christmas” – we have heard that phrase before, right? There’s a war on Christmas. Forces in our culture are trying to attack it, trying to attack the idea of Christmas and force it out of the public square. Actually this year I haven’t seen so many of these in news stories and cycles, but you have the idea of debates about whether nativity scenes should be displayed in public places, whether “happy holidays” or “Merry Christmas” is acceptable. Is it appropriate to say “Xmas” instead of actually writing out Christmas? These are things that over the last couple of decades have just popped up every so often this time of year. Some of that is a legitimate concern. Some of it is a way for news media to generate clicks and views in a time that’s kind of a quiet news cycle, but that’s just my opinion. But there are questions about that, and I’ve heard those things not just out there, but in our church – people have said things to me, very sweet things about that.

Some, when they think about Christmas, they’re concerned about the commercialization of Christmas. How many people have heard this phrase before – “We should put Christ back in Christmas”?  Too much stuff about selling stuff. Put Christ back in Christmas. Some are actually concerned whether Christians should even celebrate Christmas at all. Such Christians will argue that if you study the history of Christmas as a day, December 25th, they will say that it is pagan in origin and that Christians took pagan symbols and festivals and made it their own. They say that Christians have “Christianized” or baptized Christmas, which was a pagan holiday.

Still others are concerned about focusing too much energy on the birth of Christ and not enough about the rest of the life of Christ. Why do we spend this whole season focusing on the birth of Jesus without thinking about the rest of the life of Jesus? I mean, after all, there is a legitimate argument here – when you look in the Gospels, you only have 2 of the 4 Gospels that give any details about the birth of Christ – that’s Matthew and Luke. Mark just picks up when Jesus is starting his ministry at 30 years old! And John’s gospel does have this important theological prologue to his book where it says “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” But that doesn’t really talk about the birth of Christ, in terms of angels and shepherds and all of those things.

Still others are concerned about Christ-mas – the “mass” part. Maybe you’ve thought about that, that the term mass is included in Christmas, and they say that’s a Catholic idea that we’ve held on to today. There are other concerns as well, and I’m sure, if we talk to enough Christians, you’ll find one or more of these concerns being expressed. Actually, everything that I have listed, I have heard from people in this church over the years. These are not just ideas I’ve heard “somewhere”, but these are concerns of people here.

First of all, as we get started, I want to talk a little bit about the history of Christmas. It is obviously a historical event that Jesus was born. But we need to talk about the idea of using a particular day to celebrate the birth of Christ.

We know that the Bible does not show us that Jesus was born on December 25 or the Jewish equivalent in their calendar. And of course, there is no command anywhere in the New Testament saying “thou shalt celebrate the birth of Christ” or more specifically “thou shalt celebrate the birth of Christ on a particular day.” There’s nothing like that, so how did Christians begin to actually celebrate Christ’s birth on a particular day? There has been a lot of confusion about this history. There have been many arguments about the history of Christmas and whether or not it is connected with pagan rituals and festivals and even whether some symbols of Christmas are pagan. For instance, is the Christmas tree related to the Druids worship of trees? You may have heard that before, whether you believe it or not.?

One of the most common objections is that early Roman Catholics supposedly merged their Christmas festival with already established pagan feasts. This is a form of what we would call Syncretism, which is the blending of two religious ideas into one, in this case, a false idea and a true idea, and blend it into a new religious identity. So the argument here is that early Roman Catholics did this with pagan festivals, and it was a compromise, and that this merging and blending was done primarily to pacify the division in the Roman Empire and to make peace. That’s essentially the core of the argument. A similar idea sometimes put forward is that early Roman Catholics hijacked pagan feasts and used them to gain popularity and favor with the masses. You’ll hear one of those two things said.

Is this historically true? Well, we need to admit right away – there is actually no clear-cut reason to know with certainty why Christians began to celebrate Christmas on December 25th. If you meet someone who can tell you with certainty the answer to that question, I’m just going to tell you, I don’t think they’ve read very widely. Because this is one of those things that if you actually start doing serious reading, and by serious I don’t just mean the Wikipedia page – I mean actually start doing serious reading – you’re going to find out that historians, and people who aren’t even Christians, debate about this a lot. There’s just a lot of questions. We’re dealing with stuff here that’s 1700-1800 years old and there’s just not a lot of documents back then for us to identify and answer these questions.

What has been commonly suggested, however, is that Christians picked December 25th as the day because that was the day to celebrate Sol Invictus, which was the Roman or Latin phrase for the god known as the Invincible Sun or the Unconquered Sun. And when we hear “sun” here, we do not mean the Son of God – but rather S-U-N, the Latin word for that big orange ball in the sky. So there’s a pagan festival they say that occurred on December 25th that the Christians borrowed and used.

The Roman emperor Aurelian revived the Sun God cult in 274 AD and promoted Sol Invictus as the chief god of the Empire. From Aurelian onward for a little while, Sol Invictus often appeared on Imperial coins. The emperor was often shown wearing a sun crown and driving a horse-drawn chariot across the sky. Sol Invictus was prominent for a short time – largely that began to diminish under the latter reign of Constantine in the 300s AD. You might remember Constantine – really important figure in Roman history and actually world history – and over time that imagery began to disappear. But Sol Invictus’ birth as a god was celebrated on December 25th, so it is said, and thus they instituted pagan festivals around him.

This, some people say as they look back in history, was a time characterized by parties, banquets, and exchanges of gifts. That’s probably all true – they did that during that time. Then along comes the Christians, and especially under Constantine in the 300s, and they use that holiday and Christianize it. And according to this argument, Christians thought about the connection between the birth of a god and the birth of their God Jesus, and they took that holiday and made it their own.

Now it’s actually very difficult to know if that account is true. And here’s why – the biggest problem is we have no record of anyone talking that way about Christians taking over that holiday until the 12th century in an obscure Syrian document. That’s the 1100s, so we’re talking now 800+ years after the event. Someone said this is what happened. I don’t know if you’re good at math or not, but let’s just think a little bit about 800 years ago from our time now. What kind of things are we dealing with then? Word-of-mouth, right? We’re also dealing with, in Western culture, the latter part of the middle ages. Can you think of other ideas that over time, during the middle ages, began to be kind of fanciful in people’s minds, became kind of like the stuff of legend? For instance, think about King Arthur. Was there a King Arthur? Yeah, probably. Did he have a round table? Probably. How much more do we really know about him?

So think about somebody in the 12th century in Syria saying this is what happened. There’s literally no record before that of Christians doing that. Now, it is true that there was eventually a celebration to the Sun God that occurred on December 25th. It’s not certain how that came about and when it was actually fixed in the public’s mind. In fact, more and more historians over the last 30-40 years actually believe it might be the other way around – that as Christianity was growing in the Roman Empire, they may have already been celebrating the birth of Christ in December, possibly on December 25th, and the Romans, in order to rally nationalistic fervor, actually invented that to rally pagan ideas back around the Roman Empire.

If you know your history, at the end of the 200s the Roman Empire is starting to implode. It’s Constantine who comes along in the 300s and says we shouldn’t try so much with this pagan thing, let’s think about giving tolerance to the Christians. And by the end of the 300s, early 400s, they’re using Christianity to try to revive and hold together the Roman Empire. So many historians actually suggest it might be the other way around. We just don’t know – it’s sort of a chicken and egg question in some ways.

Now, early Christians celebrated first and foremost the resurrection of Jesus – that was their highest priority. We see evidence of this in the Bible – the Christians met on what day of the week, and why did they do it? They met on the first day of the week because that was the Lord’s resurrection day. Christians really emphasized the resurrection of Christ. Early Christians met there for that reason – every Lord’s day was a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.

Early in the history of the Christian church, Christians initially wrestled with a couple of concepts. The first one is who the person of Jesus actually is. Now as Christians today we take it for granted – I mean, Bible-believing Christians like we claim to be here and I think we are – we take for granted that Jesus is fully God and fully man, forever united in one person. That he is God in flesh – that just kind of rolls off of our tongues. We sing Christmas carols that describe that “veiled in flesh the Godhead see” – we sing it and we believe it automatically. And we should believe it, because it’s biblical, it’s true.

But if you were to rewind the Christian videotape and go back into the end of the first and second centuries, there were a lot of debates about that, even in the third century. The early Christian heresies that had to be combated – I should say not really Christian heresies, but early heresies against Christianity – were almost exclusively about the person of Jesus and whether or not he was fully God and fully man.

Now that probably got Christians thinking a lot about the incarnation. And so it’s very likely that Christians begin to think about the birth of Jesus more in the second and third centuries. And in fact, in some of the early Christian literature, we have evidence of that – that they were thinking about the birth of Christ more than the Christians were in the first century.

As a side note, this topic isn’t so much of a concern now. One topic that is more of a concern for us now is the topic of Biblical Anthropology or “What does the Bible say about humanity and about how we are people made in the image of God?” Why is this a concern right now? Because right now we have questions about sexual identity. 

In the late 100s and early 200s, Christians were thinking a lot about the incarnation of Christ, and so they thought a lot about the birth of Christ, and how God became human. Beyond that, Christians are people who believe that their account of things is the Gospel. Remember that the “gospel” is the “good news”. News is something that happens in time and space. It’s reality, it’s something that actually happened. The gospel of Jesus is good news and that means that real events happened. Early on there were questions about when Jesus rose from the dead and there were also questions about when Jesus was born. 

We do have references to a December birthday that go all the way back into the late second and early third century, Christians suggesting that’s when Jesus was born. There were also a lot of other proposals as well as to when Jesus was born that were made in this time period and there was a great deal of debate about it.

The earliest clear document that we have that dates the birth of Christ on December 25th comes in 354 AD. However, there’s also some evidence that the Donatists, who were a group of Christians in North Africa, were celebrating Christ’s birth in the early 200s in December as well. That’s about the best we can do.

Christians gave lots of different reasons and arguments as to when and why this would have occurred and placed December 25th. They looked at historical records such as when the census took place that brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, and they looked at supposedly when the shepherds would have been out in their fields and so on. At present, all of this just isn’t really clear. 

By the time you get into the late 300s and the early 400s, Christians were largely settled on a date – a December birthday or an early January one. Now this helps us to understand something else about the Roman Catholic Church – Christ-mass, mass equals Catholics in people’s minds, and so they say therefore we should not celebrate it as Protestants at all.

Well, what we know today as Roman Catholicism was not in fact developed in the 400s. Roman Catholicism as we think about it today doesn’t happen until after 1570 at the Council of Trent. The Latin word for mass comes from the 400s AD – it means dismissal or sending forth. It was the last word or phrase that would be used in a Christian gathering on Sunday morning. It was a missional term – “go out, go forth.” That’s what the word means – mass – and it was used to encourage the worshipers to go forth for Christ.

Christians also developed another important marker on January 6th. Does anybody know what important Christian marker is on the Christian calendar on January 6th every year? Three Kings Day – very good. It’s also known as Epiphany. That’s the marker that was used supposedly to be the day on which the wise men came and celebrated the birth of the Messiah.

In fact, over time, Christians began to see the period between December 25th and January 6th as the 12 days of Christmas. “On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me” – that did not come from giving gifts. That actually came from that period from December 25th to January 6th – the 12 days of Christmas do not, for the historic Christian calendar, come before Christmas, but they come after it.

The historic Christian calendar had a clear division that occurs on Christmas Day. The word that Christians use for the 4 Sundays before Christmas is Advent. This is a word that means coming, and the design in the Christian calendar was for 4 Sundays where we would as Christians set our hearts for the longing of the coming of Jesus. And it’s designed to say, let’s think first of all about His first coming, and  in light that, let’s think about His second coming – just as people before Christ longed to see him come, the Messiah to be born, that we’re all still longing to see Christ come again. Christmas Day was to be a day of celebration where we celebrate the birth of the Messiah, all the way up to the Three Kings, the Wise Men, the Magi, who would come, and honor the Lord Jesus Christ. Historically, Christians actually viewed advent more as a time of longing and even mourning. It was only from December 25 onward that there would be a time of celebration. 

Now the trouble is that sinful people can ruin something like that. That’s what happened with the celebration of Christmas. Eventually, as Christianity spreads among the West, Christmas became a time of raucous parties and drinking. There is another historic Christian calendar event where this has happened. That would be Mardi Gras, and it is debauchery at the end of Lent. During Lent people give up various things, and then at the end of Lent they celebrate and start doing all the things they gave up. 

By the time you get to the latter middle ages, there are a huge number of people that have viewed Christmas as just a time to feast and party. This led many reformers in the 1500s into the early 1600s, and especially a group known as the Puritans, to ban celebrations of Christmas.

Strong Puritans early in America outlawed Christmas from 1659 to 1681. It was not allowed to be celebrated in the American colonies. Anyone caught celebrating was fined 5 shillings. This rejection of Christmas in early America actually helped the Revolutionary War – on Christmas Day of 1776, George Washington surprised German soldiers who were celebrating Christmas and were engaged in a drunken celebration of the event.

Moreover, after the Revolutionary War, Americans were especially suspicious of any English tradition. Congress was in session on December 25th, 1789 – the first Christmas under America’s new constitution. Early Americans did not actually celebrate Christmas very much, largely because of the Puritan influence in America.

Christmas was not really celebrated largely until the early 1800s. There were two large developments – one was immigrants coming from non-British places increasingly in the United States, like Germans and other people that were bringing with them their Christmas traditions. But then there were two important books that were released, one in America and one in England.

The one in America was written by a very famous American author, Washington Irving, who published “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon,” which was a series of stories that included some about the celebration of Christmas at an English manor house. Irving essentially invented Christmas traditions – he portrayed the English squire as a kind man who invited peasants into his home for a traditional Christmas celebration. There was no such thing – he made it up in this fiction novel, but it captivated the imaginations of people.

It was also in the 1800s that a very famous British author invented a good deal of Christmas tradition with his most famous book. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which has only a couple of very, very minor references to Jesus. The book invented the idea of warmth, happiness, gift giving, and simple kindness. . German Christians and later, English Christians, along with these two books, brought the idea of Christmas to America. It’s also the Germans and the Christians who bring the idea of a Christmas tree. Of course there’s a lot of debate about the symbolism of the Christmas tree. I don’t think it’s as bad as some people make it. It’s just like anything else. We’ve lived on the planet for a few thousand years and just about everything has been a worshipped item at some point. There’s also really good evidence of some plays and books that were written in the middle ages that used an evergreen tree to highlight the idea of newness of life in a very Christian sense. Martin Luther may be playing off of that idea when he had the idea of putting candles on the tree because he liked the idea of representing the stars in the sky. 

How do we think about Christmas today? Well, first of all, I want to distinguish between three Christmases. The first is what we call cultural Christmas – that’s the lights, the parties, and the decorations. And I’ll just say, I love all of that. I’ll tell you why I love all of that – we live in an ugly world, and it is okay at times to make our world beautiful. That’s a good thing. We need it – it’s a common grace, not just to Christians but to all humanity that they have a desire to make something beautiful out of the ugliness around us. 

Second is what we would call commercial Christmas. That’s an invention that goes back to the Sears catalog in the late 1800s and other things. American retailers, especially, and now that’s spread all over the globe, capitalized upon Christmas as a thing to rally people to buy stuff. They pushed the Christmas season not to the 12 days after Christmas but before it. They did it on purpose because they recognized they could have a longer season to sell stuff, especially in a season of the year where life slows down.

And then finally what we call the Christian Christmas – that’s the careful celebration of Christ becoming man. We can do that all year round, and in fact, I’ve been tempted over the years when I’m preaching through a text of scripture that talks about the incarnation to actually sing a Christmas hymn. One of these days I’m going to do it – please  don’t tar and feather me when I do.

Here are some conclusions. First of all, there is nothing holy about Christmas Day. I said we’re going to get to scriptures, but let me just reference Colossians 2:16-17 and Romans 14. You can read those texts and they are very, very clear – there are no holy days for Christians. Every day is holy to the Lord.

Second, we must always be careful about taking a good celebration and turning it into something evil. That can be done with anything – you can make birthday parties evil. You can do the same thing with Christmas.

Third, the modern reinvention of Christmas as a time of warmth and gladness – I don’t think that’s actually a bad thing necessarily. Again, it’s an evidence of common grace – the fact that this time of year, even unbelievers tend to open up their wallets and give generously to people is a good thing.

Fourth, I think the Christmas season can be a good time to remember Christ’s birth. That’s important as we think about the incarnation. If you notice, I take Advent every year to take time to highlight either the birth of Jesus or prophecies about the coming of Jesus.

Fifth, the Christmas season is just a good time to encourage family closeness and even to foster family traditions. There’s nothing wrong with that – that’s not a bad thing at all. Especially as increasingly our culture and families are spread out, having an intentional time to gather back together is a good thing.

And finally, churches may celebrate Advent and Christmas, but only under the clear regulation of scripture.