A quarterly magazine for the proclamation and defense of the Gospel
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A quarterly magazine for the proclamation and defense of the Gospel |
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Vol. 4, Issue 1 | Spring 2010 |
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Primum Mobile is a quarterly web magazine. This issue and all its contents are © Copyright 2004-2010 by the editors. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.
by Paul Lytle
And the angel said to them, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.-Luke 2:10
We have just come out of the Christmas season, which, I must confess, is easily my favorite time of year. I’m the type to extravagantly decorate my cubical at work and to put so many lights on my apartment’s porch to distract passing drivers.
That being said, the way I celebrate the actual holiday has changed quite a bit in my life. Early on, it was all about getting presents. Let’s be honest — for a young, unregenerate kid, that’s what it’s going to be about. Later, I began to view it more as a chance to get together with family. And get presents.
Since I became a Christian, my attention has increasingly been focused on the birth of Christ. I am reminded of an essay by C. S. Lewis, in which he explains the strange Winter practices of a place called Niatirb (Britain in reverse). Most people there, he explains, celebrate a holiday called Exmas, in which everyone hurries about in a panic, getting gifts and sending cards. We could add, tragically, trampling people at Wal-Mart. But there is a small portion of the population of Niatirb that celebrates Crissmas on the same day. These people, rather than rushing around in such a display of commercialism, rises in worship and thanksgiving.
Looking at it in those terms, my life as a Christian has gradually moved me from the Exmas to the Crissmas camps.
Now, of course, there is a great debate raging (and has been for some time) over whether Christians should celebrate holidays like Christmas, Easter, or Halloween. In this Christmas season, I witnessed a little of that debate, so I thought I would give it a good response before Easter comes around.
In the end, I think we must come to this conclusion — that the celebrations of holidays is a matter of Christian freedom. The celebration of the holiday itself is neither sin nor required by Scripture, though in the way we celebrate may be said to be wrong or unhelpful.
To begin, I believe that everyone would agree that the holidays of Christmas and Easter are not at all mentioned as holidays in the Bible. The birth and resurrection, of course, are mentioned, but not the holidays.
Very few would take this to mean that they were automatically forbidden. There are some reasons why someone may think that absence of this topic equals forbidding it, and the best one, I think, is that God has commanded the ways in which He wants to be worshipped, and He does not want to be worshipped in other ways. He does not want Old Testament Israel, for example, to have pagan feasts in addition to the ones He has declared.
This is a great reason not to celebrate Christmas, but I think all Christians would agree that God, in fact, does want us to celebrate both the birth and resurrection of Jesus; therefore, whether we do that on a specific day or not has nothing to do with adding feasts days to the Bible and everything to do with worship style. We would agree — where the Bible forbids certain styles or commands others, we must obey. Where the Bible is silent in word or principle, we have more freedom. The absence of direct word here does not automatically mean that Christmas and Easter are forbidden.
The absence of the topic also does not give tacit approval. No, the Bible gives us principles by which we can discern the properness of an issue.
So we will not be able to find a verse that will tell us absolutely that Christmas is expected or forbidden. Let’s use the principles, then, to discern something of the issue.
One thing I hear from those who oppose the celebration of Christmas and Easter is that we should not pick out one day to celebrate these events, but should remember them every day.
And that is true. Every day should fill us with thanksgiving for a loving God who sent His only begotten Son to live and die on our behalf. In every moment should praises be on our hearts and tongues. Does that then exclude a specific day to focus on the birth or resurrection?
In the same way, Israel in the Old Testament time should have thanked God every day for rescuing them from Egypt. And yet, God instituted an annual Passover celebration. Obviously He wasn’t telling them to forget about their escape from slavery every other day of the year, but one day was set aside specifically for that celebration.
Similarly, Communion was established to be a remembrance of Jesus’ crucifixion (1 Corinthians 11:24-25).
Of course we should remember these events, and yet God in both the Old Testament and the New establishes reminders for us, celebrations of specific events.
On the other side, we have no warning against such remembrances. Certainly we can take it too far, such as the person who only attends church on Easter and Christmas. There should not be a forgetting between the remembrances, but we cannot say that the Bible is opposed to remembrances on the whole.
Now, Paul does have a warning for us that needs to be considered:
One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.-Romans 14:5-6
He writes this in the context of food. Some, he says, will hold fast to Jewish dietary laws, while another will eat as he wishes. This is a matter of Christian freedom. If you keep kosher dietary laws, then do it for the honor of God. If you don’t, then eat pork for the honor of God.
So he makes an analogy with days. If you observe the Sabbath, then be convinced of it and observe it to the honor of God. But it is not required. It is a matter of Christian freedom. (Again, celebrating an expressly pagan holiday is not within that freedom, but a Sabbath or a feast day would be.)
Certainly celebrating Christmas is not required of a Christian. It is not a sin to not celebrate. But can we say that it is a sin to celebrate it based on these passages? Of course not.
But it is a sin to elevate the holidays to some sort of new law. Paul’s admonition to the Galatians (which at first seems to contradict his instruction to the Romans, but we will see that it does not):
But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years!-Galatians 4:9-10
To understand this, we must understand the context of the epistle. Paul was writing to the Galatians because they were being taken in by false teachers who were convincing them that Christ alone could not get them to Heaven, but that they needed to follow the Mosaic Law in addition to having the Cross.
For this reason, Paul criticizes them for holding so fast to the Sabbath as a matter of salvation.
In the same way, the Judaizers were telling people that you had to be circumcised to be saved. “Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you” (Galatians 5:2). Did Paul then sin when he had Timothy circumcised in Acts 16:3? No! It’s not a sin to be circumcised. It’s a sin to rely on circumcision for salvation, or that it will somehow please God.
In other words, while it is a matter of freedom to set aside one day of the week or month or year for worship and remembrance, it is not okay to believe that observing these days will save you, or to practice them under that belief.
This happens a lot in Christendom. We have a lot of people who consider themselves Christian because they go to church on Easter. Those people must be warned that they are following a new law that cannot save them!
This is the very reason why God told the Jews that He hates the very feasts and offerings that He commanded them to make (Amos 5:21-22). It was not that these days were wrong, but it was that they were observing them as a matter of tradition or as a way to cool the wrath of God, but it was not out of true faith and love.
In the end, these feasts and assemblies are but a shadow:
Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.-Colossians 2:16-17
Let this be a stern warning for those of us who do celebrate holidays. They are not a matter of law. They are not required, nor do they even have the endorsement of the Scriptures. If we celebrate them, let it not be as a matter of tradition or meaningless rote, as pagans do. We so often fall into this, worrying more about finding an “Easter outfit” and making sure we get to church than the act of worship. Better to not celebrate at all than to be distracted!
Following this, let us look at two more objections to the celebration of holidays. The first of these is as follows: There is a pagan root to our modern Christian holidays.
To an extent, that is true, but only to an extent. Christmas was placed on December 25 to correspond to a pagan holiday. The word “Easter” is not a Christian word, but one associated with Eostre, a pagan goddess.
In the case of Christmas, we of course do not know the date Jesus was born. It would have been just as easy to place it on July 18, but there was a pagan feast on December 25, which at the time was the Winter Solstice. As an alternative to the pagan celebration, the celebration of Christmas was placed on that day.
That’s an important point to make. Christmas was established as an alternative to paganism. While this technically does establish a connection to paganism, it is a very weak one. In the same way, churches all over America will have a celebration on October 31 as an alternative to Halloween. Does this mean that those churches are influenced by witchcraft? While these alternative celebrations are technically influenced by Halloween, they are only influenced in so far as they were established to be an alternative! The whole argument then that “Christmas was originally a pagan holiday” is very weak.
What of Easter? Well, we do know the date of Jesus’ crucifixion because of its proximity to Passover. This, by the way, is the reason why there is not a set date on our calendar for Easter — it is placed in proper proximity to Passover, which is established on the Jewish calendar, not the modern one.
We were celebrating the resurrection of Jesus for centuries before it took on the name of Easter. There were no root of paganism for the celebration of the resurrection; there were only pagan roots to the name we give it today. That name has come to the holiday more because of the evolution of languages than anything.
In essence, the pagan roots of these two holidays has been greatly overstated.
But if that connection still causes you to stumble, then in Christian freedom, do not celebrate the dates.
But are we, as Christian, allowed to take any pagan influence at all for the sake of the Gospel? Of course we are. Paul proved this well in Athens, when he began his sermon in this way:
Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, “To the unknown god.” What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.-Acts 17:22-23
In that sermon, he also quotes a pagan prophet and a pagan poet. Many Christians would cringe if we did that today. Other churches, of course, go too far and only quote from the culture and not the Bible.
By referencing their altar, their poet, and their prophet, Paul is trying to draw out what they already believe about spiritual things and turn them, based on the understanding that they already have (see Romans 1:20), to Christ.
Do you realize how easy it is to get people to talk about Jesus at Christmas time? It’s part of the vocabulary of the season. It is such a simple thing to take this holiday and to turn it into a Gospel presentation. It is the same with Easter. People are already talking about Christ around these holidays.
Paul speaks to the “pagan original” question in 1 Corinthians 8. Here, the Corinthian church has asked him if it’s okay to eat the meat that has been sacrificed to idols. At the time, the meat would be sacrificed to the idol and then sold in the streets, so it was quite possible that you were getting food from your butcher that had just been lifted up to Demeter. There were Christians very worried about this, and so they asked Paul about it.
His reply was, “Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that ‘an idol has no real existence,’ and that ‘there is no God but one’” (1 Corinthians 8:4) and “Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do” (8:8).
However, he does advise us that if the meat is causing you to stumble, to not eat it. And if you eating that meat causing a brother to stumble, then don’t eat it when around your brother.
There are two very good lessons here. First of all, we can say of the loose pagan connection to these holidays that those old ceremonies are nothing, and we are not worse off if we participate. At the same time, we are no worse off if we do not, and if participating causes you to stumble, then don’t. If you have a friend who is offended by Christmas, then don’t celebrate with that friend around. Do not cause him to stumble because of it.
The last of the objections goes as follows: These holidays have become so worldly that there is too little of Christ left in them. Everyone is waiting for Santa or getting eggs left by the Easter bunny. They have become worldly.
Indeed they have. So have many churches. Shall we dispose of the church completely? Some sermons have turned into nothing but me-focused, wealth-focused, prideful diatribes that put houses and cars before God. Shall we throw out the sermon?
Christmas has become tainted in the world. But what do we expect from fallen people? They are going to act fallen. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t value in what they tainted if we only take the time to scrub off the grime.
We, of course, should consider the misuse of institutions and traditions when deciding whether to keep them, but that should not be the only consideration. In this case, we are not even speaking of doing away with Christmas or Easter, but merely to remove the religious aspect of them.
I can honestly think of no worse solution. It frustrates me that people only go to church twice a year, but it is at least twice a year more than if there were no religious holidays at all. That’s twice at year where the Gospel can be presented (and is, actually expected to be presented). Christ may be an afterthought for people after all of the shopping and food, but at least He is a thought! What an opportunity for us to spread the Gospel! A bunch of pagans are already thinking about Jesus! It saddens me that He is not the focus for people, but, if nothing else, holidays give me a good opportunity to ask people about their focus. Remove Christ and Christmas becomes completely pagan. Remove the Church from the celebration of her Savior’s resurrection, and we loss the opportunity of having millions come to us, sit down, and expect us to preach the Gospel to them.
If we were speaking of abolishing Christmas completely, then I would be sympathetic. But the Christians who say we should not take part in the holidays are not saying that the holidays should not exist, but that we should remove the only redeeming part of those holidays — Jesus.
But I think people make a fundamental mistake here in thinking that the Christmas of Jesus’ birthday and the Christmas of commercialism are the same holiday. Certainly, they land on the same day, but the resemblance ends there. Like Lewis’ “Exmas” and “Crissman,” there is a divide here. It is certain that Exmas evolved from Crissman, but that is not cause to abandon Crissman, but to proclaim it all the more, for here is the true Good News — not of a fictional fat man who gives presents, but of a real Savior who gives eternal life.
Let me make one point of clarification. If you do spend your Christmas season in a fit of greed and materialism, then we do have a problem. If you are lying to your children, telling them that Santa is real, then we have a problem with this. It is not a problem because of the holidays, but because of sin.
Let us not blame the season for this. Let us not say, “This is just what we do.” If you will celebrate Christmas, then let it be, as in all things, driven by Christ. Repent of your greed, pride, and your love of the world and accept the forgiveness He offers because of his birth and death, these very things we are celebrating!
As I have stated — this is a matter of Christian freedom. My goal here is not to convince people that they should celebrate Easter. If you do not, then be convinced in your own heart and honor God.
But I will point out a problem that must be addressed. I have known many people who have not celebrated Christmas, and inevitably they are asked by a great many people why they do not. And here is where we run into trouble, for, without fail, I have heard the response come something about pagan rituals or commercialism. Never once in all the times I have heard an answer to that question did I hear one word of Christ.
That is sin. I will not lie to you and say that such answers have any sort of value at all. They do not. Someone comes to you and asks you about your religious beliefs, and you respond out of your own wisdom rather than God’s? That is sin, and I will call you to repentance for the forgiveness of that sin.
These answers are historically educational and philosophically intriguing, but what good are they if they have nothing to do with Jesus? Ours is a faith that is founded and maintained by Him alone. It is not a faith where we work really hard to be good people so that we may be saved, but one in which we do not deserve to be saved, and yet by His Blood we can be.
If we are questioned in regard to Christmas, any answer is incomplete if it says nothing of the great mercy God had to send His Son to die on our behalf. And that is true whether you celebrate it or not. If someone asks me to speak of why I celebrate Christmas, then I should be speaking of Him. If someone asks you why you do not, then speak of Him.
We are not saved by whether we celebrate holidays or not. We are saved when we, convicted by the Holy Spirit, fall to our knees and repent of our sins, trusting in His sacrifice rather than our own good works. That is our message at all times, holiday or regular day, because that is what saved us. Sometimes we get saved, and then we get so into the details that we forget the real point, which is Christ. He came to earth, took the form of a man, died upon a Roman Cross, then rose again, and He did it in love for us. In sin we deserve death, but in love He took our place in death.
Christmas, Easter, and even Halloween make it so easy to speak to people about this message. While my family celebrates Protestant Reformation Day rather than Halloween (both are on October 31), even so we recognize what a great opportunity it is. Think about this — on Halloween, kids from the neighborhood will walk up to your door and take whatever you give them. No need to go door-to-door to witness — they’ll be coming to you. Put a tract with the candy you give them.
When someone asks you how you celebrate Christmas (whether you celebrate it or not), tell them how your decisions on the holiday are driven by the saving work of Christ.
It’s the same with Easter. Let your talk about the weekend be driven by Him rather than philosophy and history.
Your reasoning may be sound, but it won’t save anyone. Turn to Christ instead, whatever your decision about the holidays. Be fully convinced in your own mind and observe the day (or do not observe it) in honor of the Lord.
