For many of us, Christmas is our favourite time of the year. But each year it grows more difficult to navigate the suffocating commercialism and secularization of the season to arrive at the genuine reason for the celebration: the incarnation of God as a human to become the sacrifice for our sins and make possible our reconciliation to God.
I’m afraid we’ve lost our sense of meaning at the unfathomable miracles that made possible the advent of our Savoir. The question is, does the celebration of Christmas contain elements that are pagan in origin? Absolutely. There is no doubt about that whatsoever.
It was originally a totally pagan midwinter festival celebrating the ‘rebirth’ of the sun. The people burned yew logs, sang carols, and ate and drank too much. When the first missionary, Augustine, came to England he sent word back to Rome saying that he was unable to get the people away from this pagan festival.
Pope Gregory said that the best policy would be to turn it into a Christian festival, and that is what has happened, with questionable results. Today the Church universally celebrates this pagan festival, despite the fact that it is nowhere commanded or even encouraged in the Bible.
Syncretism
This mixing of Christianity with other ideas is known as syncretism, and the apostle Paul in his letter to the Colossians knew that it could destroy the faith of the church, for when the Christian faith is mingled with human tradition (men’s idea of the material rather than the spiritual world), the teaching and message of Christ is disregarded (see Colossians 2:8-9).
So Paul has a very important message for the Church, for it reminds us of the dangers of religious practices entering the Church, whether these have apparently biblical or pagan roots. These practices are merely rituals, with little attention paid to the Jesus of the Bible.
Paul also mentions two essentially non-Christian practices that had become part of their lives. The Colossians had begun observing annual, monthly and weekly festivals, even though there is no trace in the New Testament of Christian observance of a calendar – indeed, the calendar that the Church observes is largely a pagan one mixed into Christianity.
Observance of Calendars
There is no corresponding Christian calendar in the New Testament, no instructions about observing Christmas or Easter, but for the Jewish people a calendar was a vital part of their walk with God.
Most Christians are hostile to the idea that Christians should not observe Christmas, but not one verse in the New Testament commands Christians to do anything special at Christmas.
In fact, the Christmas season is based on a pagan mid-winter festival celebrating what they saw as the ‘rebirth’ of the sun on 25 December.
This ritual was made ‘Christian’ when Augustine was sent from Rome by Pope Gregory to evangelize Britain in 597, and he found that the locals would not change their celebrations. They included yuletide logs, carols and orgies.
Every village elected a ‘Lord of misrule’ for 12 days, who was able to have any young girl he wanted for the ‘12 days of Christmas’. So the Pope’s advice was to ‘Christianize’ the festival.
The legacy of this decision is that Christ is reduced to a baby in a manger, and is often dismissed as such. Furthermore, there is no specific instruction to celebrate Easter either.
Christ is risen ‘every day’, and his life should be enjoyed and celebrated as such. Even Sunday observance is never actually commanded in the New Testament.
We are free to keep Sunday special if we want to, and we are free to count every day as the Lord’s Day if we want to. We are not under any law about Sunday, Christmas or Easter, and yet so many Christians seem to think that we are.
My personal view in this season is to ensure that we take human traditions, worldliness and self-indulgence out of our celebrations and exalt Jesus Christ as the exact likeness of the unseen God (the visible representation of the invisible). He was born as a Human something we ought to celebrate on any day of the year.
He is the Firstborn of all creation. For it was in Him that all things were created, in heaven and on earth, things seen and things unseen, whether thrones, dominions, rulers, or authorities; all things were created and exist through Him by His service, intervention and in and for Him. He is the exact likeness of the unseen God the visible representation of the invisible; He is the Firstborn of all creation.
And He Himself existed before all things, and in Him all things consist (cohere, are held together). He also is the Head of His body, the church; seeing He is the Beginning, the Firstborn from among the dead, so that He alone in everything and in every respect might occupy the chief place (stand first and be preeminent).
For it has pleased the Father that all the divine fullness (the sum total of the divine perfection, powers, and attributes) should dwell in Him permanently. And God purposed that through (by the service, the intervention of) Him the Son all things should be completely reconciled back to Himself, whether on earth or in heaven, as through Him, (the Father) made peace by means of the blood of His cross (see Colossians 1:14-20 AMP).
In the next video, David Pawson goes into a lot of more detail about the true meaning of Christmas.
