Keeping Christ in Christmas?
It has become almost a habitual thing that every year as Christmas approaches for Christians to constantly speak, shout, and rant: “Keep Christ in Christmas!”
As I have been pondering this and wonder just how Christian it is, I did a little investigating. And what I found is we need to “Put Christ in Christmas” far more than we need to “Keep Christ in Christmas.”
Nearly all aspects of Christmas observance have their roots in Roman custom and religion. Consider the following admission from a large American newspaper (The Buffalo News, Nov. 22, 1984): “The earliest reference to Christmas being marked on December 25 comes from the second century after Jesus’ birth. It is considered likely the first Christmas celebrations were in reaction to the Roman Saturnalia, a harvest festival that marked the winter solstice – the return of the sun – and honored Saturn, the god of sowing. Saturnalia was a rowdy time, much opposed by the more austere leaders among the still-minority Christian sect.
“Christmas developed, one scholar says, as a means of replacing worship of the sun with worship of the Son. By 529 A.D., after Christianity had become the official state religion of the Roman Empire, Emperor Justinian made Christmas a civic holiday.”
Consider these quotes from the Catholic Encyclopedia, 1911 edition, under “Christmas”: “Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church…the first evidence of the feast is from Egypt.”
Further, “Pagan customs centering around the January calendar gravitated to Christmas.” Under “Natal Day,” Origen, an early Catholic writer, admitted, “…In the Scriptures, no one is recorded to have kept a feast or held a great banquet on his birthday. It is only sinners (like Pharaoh and Herod) who make great rejoicings over the day in which they were born into this world.”
The Encyclopedia Americana, 1956 edition, adds, “Christmas…was not observed in the first centuries of the Christian church, since the Christian usage in general was to celebrate the death of remarkable persons rather than their birth…a feast was established in memory of this event [Christ’s birth] in the fourth century. In the fifth century the Western Church ordered the feast to be celebrated forever on the day of the Mithraic rites of the birth of the sun and at the close of the Saturnalia, as no certain knowledge of the day of Christ’s birth existed.”
There is no mistaking the origin of the modern Christmas celebration. It was 300 years after Christ before the Roman church kept Christmas, and not until the fifth century that it was mandated to be kept throughout the empire as an official festival honoring “Christ.”
So as we remember that it was the Christian Church that chose to put Christmas on top of existing pagen holiday celebrations, maybe we need to be less offended and more understanding that others celebrate at this time of year as well. And maybe we need to be more Christ-like in how we behave at this time of year. And maybe we need to focus more on how and who WE celebrate at Christmas.
The late Harry Reasoner of CBS’s Sixty Minutes penned some thoughtful words about the meaning of Christmas, a smattering of which are as follows:
“Almost nobody has seen God, and almost nobody has any real idea of what he’s like, and the truth is that….the idea of seeing God suddenly and standing in the very bright light is not necessarily a completely comfortable and appealing idea.”
“But everyone has seen babies, and most people like them. If God wanted to be loved as well as feared, he moved correctly here. If he wanted to know his people as well as rule them, he moved correctly, for the experience of birth and family hood is our most intimate and precious experience.”
“So it come beyond logic. It is either all falsehood, or it is the truest thing in the world. It is a story of the great innocence of God the baby, God in the power of man; and it is such a dramatic shot toward the heart that if it is not true, for Christians nothing is true.”
“So, if a Christian is touched only once a year, the touching is still worth it. And maybe on some given Christmas, some final quiet morning, the touch will take.”
It is my prayer that you will find the touch of God in this Christmas season and you will put Christ IN Christmas. May the babe of Bethlehem reign as your Savior this holiday season and for eternity!