What A Happy Time Of The Year

I'm writing about birthdays this week and haven't said a thing about the most famous birthday celebration of all, Christmas! Actually, I did post a bit of history about how we Christians came to celebrate Jesus' birth back in December, 2010. Here's my favorite part of that history. 

There are two theories for the origin of the Christmas (Christ Mass) holiday. In each, the central purpose of the holiday was to celebrate the birth of Jesus. The first theory was based on 3rd century ideas regarding the date of the Earth. It was held by some that the day of creation was March 25. This was arrived at through the a literal interpretation of the Biblical genealogies and some questionable logic (even so, it was a more sophisticated understanding of the creation of the universe and closer to the truth than those held by most cultures at the time). It was reasoned that God's perfection required the second great act of creation (Jesus' incarnation) should coincide with the date of the first creation. Therefore, they believed that Jesus was conceived on March 25. Add a perfect nine months to that, and you arrive at December 25.

It is curious to us who love Christmas and birthdays that Matthew and Luke did not give us more details about the date. But then we realize that it was not the date that was important. What is important is the fact that God has united Himself forever with us, becoming truly a human, born as we are, of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem us so that we might be adopted as the sons and daughters of God. And now that His Spirit lives within us, giving us that new life that can only come from Him, we joyfully call God "Abba! Father!" (Galatians 4:4-6; John 3:1-6).

Jesus first and then others with birthdays in December

In our family, we celebrate our son-in-law's birthday on December 24. We often tease him by asking, "Well, Derrick, whose birthday is more important, yours or Jesus'?" Sometimes we have two birthday cakes, one for him and one for Jesus. By the way, do you even know why we consider it vital to have a birthday cake with candles? There's actually lots of information about it on the web. Linda Stradley writes a History of Birthday Cake on her site What's Cooking America. She says that the cake was first a commemoration of Jesus' birth and later, in Germany, became a celebration for a young child's birthday.

The Wikipedia article on Birthday cake says that the old Romans served "cakes of flat rounds made with flour containing nuts, leavened with yeast, and sweetened with honey at special birthdays." The article goes on to say that the early Greeks put lit candles on cakes to make them glow like the moon, believing that the smoke of the candle carried their prayers to the gods.

Whatever there is to say about the history, it all reminds us of God's continued blessings, most especially the blessing of knowing that Jesus was born a human person and because of Him we are all a part of His forever family. That's why we taught our children to pray during our family's Advent prayers, "What a happy time of the year; Jesus birthday is almost here!"