Finding Your Way In Christ

Why We Celebrate Christmas

December 26, 2012. Written by Langston.

This a post I wrote for my friend and his blog series, The Christmas Series, on his blog Loving Christ With Your Mind. He asked me if I would like to contribute; I said yes, and I got stuck with the posts for Christmas Day and New Year's (yay. :P). So, here's my post for Christmas day, titled "Why We Celebrate Christmas." God bless, and happy holidays!  

. . .  

Here in America, Christmas is an annual thing. Stores set up their Christmas layouts; people buy Christmas trees. Some even decorate their houses or yards—illuminating them with bright lights throughout the night. But what if I told you that not everyone celebrates Christmas? This might be hard to imagine—especially if you’ve grown up in America—but Christmas isn’t an international celebration. Some Americans don’t even celebrate.                

For example, if you visited India, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, or Israel, you’ll most likely find that in these countries Christmas isn’t very widespread. Why not? Well, Christmas is supposed to celebrate the birth of Jesus and His arrival into our world. Most Indians are Hindu, and simply have no reason to celebrate Christmas. Saudi Arabia and Turkey are Muslim countries, and Israel is largely a Jewish nation. So it would make sense that most people in these countries wouldn’t celebrate Christmas.

Even here in America, not everyone celebrates. Most Muslims, Hasidic Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Sikhs don’t celebrate Christmas, as they see no reason for it or it conflicts with their faith. People of these religious groups are in the minority when compared to the large number of professed Christians in America, but it does show that Christmas isn’t a total nationwide celebration—like many assume it is.

But what if someone asked why you celebrate Christmas? Assuming that you do, how would you respond? What would you say?

I imagine most of you would answer something like, “Because it’s the day that Jesus was born and came into our world,” or “We celebrate it because Christians like us have been doing it since Jesus’ time.”

I admit, before I started researching Bible history and learning more about the Bible, I used those answers too. Something else that might surprise you is that both those statements are actually false.

Let’s say you time-traveled back to the first-century. You’re staying at Thessalonica and bump into the Apostle Paul while heading to the market. It’s three days until Christmas; you ask Paul what he’s planning to get Silas and Timothy. All you get back is a blank, confused look.

Why the look of confusion? Christmas wasn’t celebrated back then.

In the early years of Christianity, Easter was the main holiday. Almost no one celebrated Jesus’ birth—probably because no one knew when it was. It wasn’t until the fourth century when church officials, under Pope Julius I, decided to institute Jesus’ birthday as a holiday. However, there was problem. The Bible doesn’t tell us exactly when Jesus was born. (It probably wasn’t anywhere near December though. Why would shepherds be out in the middle of winter?)

In spite of this, Pope Julius I chose December 25th as the official holiday for Christ’s birthday, which was celebrated with a great feast. It’s commonly believed that the Pope did this to parallel a widely celebrated pagan holiday known as Saturnalia—the celebration of the Roman god Saturn—that began in the week of winter solstice and ended in January. Also, December 25th was the birthday of the Roman god Mithra, which the Pope probably hoped would make Christianity more “appealing” to pagans.[1]

Originally called “The Feast of Nativity,” the celebration of Christ’s birth had spread as far as Scandinavia by the eight century—four hundred years later. However, after the fall of the Roman Empire and the plunge into the European Middle Ages, the celebration of Christmas changed. Christmas went from a peaceful feast to a drunken carnival-style celebration. It stayed this way until the 1800s, when the Americans completely reinvented the holiday.[1]