Christmas, That Pagan Festival

While attending Bible class at a church we visit when on Christmas holidays in Colorado, one lady asked about the twelve days of Christmas. She wondered if it were Biblical or some tradition. Since that was not the main topic, I said in class that it was merely a tradition. What I did not have time to say is that the whole business of Christmas has its roots in paganism. May I refer you to a pagan website without offense? I do this only because the site has a fairly decent summary of how we believers in Jesus came to celebrate his unknown date of birth on December 25.
Here's the website: Astrology on the Web. The article: Yule – the Wheel of the Year. The author, Mike Nichols, lifts up some very interesting points. Examples include:

• the holiday of Christmas has always been more Pagan than Christian, with its associations of Nordic divination, Celtic fertility rites, and Roman Mithraism.
• the holiday is rooted deeply in the cycle of the year. It is the winter solstice that is being celebrated, seedtime of the year, the longest night and shortest day. It is the birthday of the new Sun King, the Son of God—by whatever name you choose to call him.
• in 320 C.E., the Catholic fathers in Rome decided to make it December, in an effort to co-opt the Mithraic celebration of the Romans, the Yule festival of the Saxons, and the midwinter revels of the Celts.
• if one wishes to use the New Testament as historical evidence, this reference may point to sometime in the spring as the time of Jesus’ birth. This is because the lambing season occurs in the spring and that is the only time when shepherds are likely to “watch their flocks by night”—to make sure the lambing goes well.
• for over three centuries, no one knew when Jesus was supposed to have been born! December 25 finally began to catch on. By 529, it was a civic holiday, and all work or public business (except that of cooks, bakers, or any that contributed to the delight of the holiday) was prohibited by the Emperor Justinian. In 563, the Council of Braga forbade fasting on Christmas Day, and four years later the Council of Tours proclaimed the twelve days from December 25 to Epiphany as a sacred, festive season.

Read the website for further historical information, not, however, for illumination about theology and the answers to life's questions through astrology. Permit one final comment on the thinking of the church fathers who adapted to the prevailing pagan culture by proclaiming December 25 as the date for celebrating the birth of Christ.

Some of those church fathers believed that Christ, in the perfection of his life, lived a perfect (complete) number of years. Therefore, the date of his death ought to be the date of his conception. Some early astronomers strangely reckoned that Good Friday was on March 25 in the year 34 AD and so the feast of the Annunciation of the Angels to Mary was March 25. Count forward exactly nine months and you have the Nativity of Christ on December 25.

I find it quite interesting that the Biblical authors, the apostles and their disciples, did not deem it critical to provide us these dates. The closest we can come to any dating of the birth of Christ is Luke's statement:

"In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register."

Why such neglect? The simplest answer is that the date is not the important point to be made. The significant fact is that . . .

". . . when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, 'Abba,Father.' So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir" (Galatians 4).

In Christian freedom we are permitted to celebrate this important fact anytime we choose. You may even decide that you don't want to get caught up in the pagan aspects of Christmas. Historically many Christians, like the Puritans, opted not to celebrate Christ's birth in December. Or you may decide that such celebrations and traditions can be useful for the instruction of children and others and opt to include them in your worship schedule. The critical factor is the celebration of the Good News. Christ was born of Mary; he lived, died on the cross and rose again. All this was for us so that we may now claim our full rights as sons and daughters of God and heirs of life eternal.