Christmas Tradition or Pagan Celebration?

Tradition has great value.  It has been one of the cornerstones of the church since its inception at Pentecost.  In fact I wrote about the value of tradition in a previous article (Why does our culture need the Church?)  Interestingly many of our traditions have roots that go back much further than we know and have very secular foundations.

Christmas is one of the holidays that tend to be recognized as “Christian” in origin.  Many people assume it is the day of Jesus actual birth.  But the reality is that no one knows the actual date of Jesus birth, (Like the info here, but you will find my conclusion in stark contrast to this web page) In fact, Mark (which is the earliest gospel begins with the story of Jesus at his baptism – indicating that for the early church, Jesus’ birthday was not as important as his life, ministry, death, and resurrection.

As I have been searching, there are a ton of sites out there with information about the origin of Dec. 25th as the birthday of Jesus.  Most of the information including Wiki articles point to its connection with the winter solstice, or Sol Invictus and the pagan celebrations of other cultures such as Babylonian, and Mesopotamian roots.  There is even more ancient traditions of tree decorating and hanging greens.  I guess the point is that Christmas is not really a “Christian Origin” holiday. It has roots in pagan history long before Christians began to celebrate the birthday of Jesus on Dec. 25th.

At this point we find staunch traditionalist or fundamentalists saying that the best thing to do is to throw out the Christmas holiday and not celebrate it at all.  I on the otherhand as a self-proclaimed “Striving for centrist” believe that we don’t need to “throw out the baby Jesus with the bath water.”  In fact I think that the Christmas holiday tradition is a perfect example of how the Christian church has learned to grow and adapt to secular / pagan culture.

Jesus himself exampled the transformation of an Old covenant for a New covenant at the passover meal / Eucharist.  At that point a new tradition began which took the symbolic bread and wine of the Jewish celebration and gave it a new symbolism (for the transubstantiationist reading this, Christ gave the bread and wine a whole new physical reality – no need to argue over Eucharistic doctrine in this article) Paul continued this practice of changing the meaning of cultural things into religious symbols and teaching tools when he taught in Athens at the Areopagus.  (Acts 17:23)

For me the highlight of understanding the roots of Christmas as pagan is in the fact that Christians transformed a cultural celebration into an opportunity to teach about the good news of Jesus.  It reminds me that Christianity is its best when, instead of running from culture, it embraces the secular culture it is a part of and impresses the truth of Christ into it.    Another good example of this (which will have to be another article) is how many of our traditional and most favorite hymns of today were originally BAR TUNES.  Yep, that is right, people like Charles Wesley learned that if they took familiar melodies and changed the words, they could teach people about Jesus.

Maybe the question we should ask ourselves this Christmas is; “Am I embracing the Christian meaning of Christmas, or am I just taking what the secular culture is throwing at me?”

If you don’t have family traditions that teach your children about the Christian meanings of Christmas, maybe this is a good year to try something new.  (Attend Christmas Eve Service as a family, read the Christmas story as a family (Luke 2) Sing some carols, share what gifts God has given you this year)

May God bless you and your family this Christmas!