SHOULD CHRISTIANS CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS?

​The Need for Discernment
There is a tremendous need for discernment. We must study the Word of God daily to see if these things be true.

Applying the Lordship of Christ to all Areas of Life
Nowhere in the Bible are we commanded to celebrate the Lord's birth, although we are commanded to remember His death. We are also commanded to apply the Lordship of Christ to all areas of life.

SHOULD CHRISTIANS CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS?
by Dr. Peter Hammond

Reforming our Calendars
Rather than celebrate humanistic pagan festivals such as Halloween, May Day, Worker's Day, Youth Day, Woman's Day, Freedom Day, etc. it certainly seems more appropriate to focus on essential doctrines such as the Incarnation of Christ, the Atonement of Christ, the Resurrection of Christ, the Ascension of Christ, and Authority of Christ, the Power of Pentecost, Reformation Day and other meaningful events of a Christian calendar.

Practical Discipleship
There is no doubt that the world has secularised, paganised, perverted and distorted everything it possibly can, including churches and Christian holidays. That does not stop us from seeking to disciple our children on a thoroughly Biblical basis and bring them up in the love and admonition of the Lord.

Keeping our Focus
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. We dare not allow ourselves to be distracted into fighting fellow Christians who are sincerely trying to honour the Lord in all areas of life. We cannot know another person's motives. Let us deal with the big issues and the facts.

Solid Foundations
We are talking about thoroughly Christian festivals, celebrating the Incarnation of Christ, the Atonement of Christ, the Resurrection of Christ, the Ascension of Christ, the giving of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. These are great and important events in the history of the Church and vital doctrines for us to build our lives around.

A Christian Calendar
To integrate them into our calendar in a thoroughly Christian manner is not to celebrate a pagan festival. We must reject the world and apply the Lordship of Christ in a thoroughly Biblical way in our lives and families. We want to have nothing to do with the pagan trappings of secular holidays. What we should celebrate are the truths and doctrines of Scripture.

Celebrate Christ
We can have nothing to do with fairy tales such as Father Christmas and it is unacceptable for any parents to lie to their children about some mythical creature. Christmas is not about Santa Clause. It should be a festival of Christ celebrating the Advent of Christ and the Incarnation. He is Immanuel - God with us. Jesus is the Reason for the season.

Rejecting Occultism
The Church needs Reformation and Revival and so do our calendars! All too many people thoughtlessly adopt occultic calendar events such as May Day and Halloween, and celebrate humanistic holidays such as Woman's Day, Human Rights Day and Youth Day. Many happily celebrate their country's Independence Day and their own birthday. Let us rather celebrate things that are thoroughly Christian. Put Christ back into Xmas!

COULD JESUS REALLY HAVE BEEN BORN on 25 DECEMBER?
 
One of the more recent Christmas traditions has been the repeated assertions, on the internet, in the press and from some pulpits, that the 25th December could not have been our Lord's actual birthday.

Examining the Historical Record
According to this position, He could have been born on almost any other day of the year, except 25 December. It is asserted that 25 December had originally been the pagan winter solstice festival, which had been taken over by the Christians to promote the new Faith. In doing so, many of the old pagan customs crept into this new Christian celebration. Numerous articles, booklets, radio programmes and T.V. documentaries have been produced asserting this position.

The Myths of Time
However, this opinion is itself based upon historical myths, incomplete research and ignorance of history.

Christmas Predates Constantine
Christians have celebrated the Incarnation and Nativity of the Lord Jesus on December 25 since the earliest centuries. Long before the conversion of Constantine in A.D. 312 and the end of the persecution by the Roman Empire, 25 December was already established as a venerable and tenured tradition for celebrating Christmas Day. 
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Christmas Predates Catholicism
The assertion, that Christmas is a creation of the Roman Catholic church and that it has something to do with the mass, is false. The tradition of Christmas, the Christ Festival, long pre-dates the establishment of what became Roman Catholicism.

Pagan Attempt to Hijack Christmas
It is true that one Roman Emperor, Aurelian, did attempt to inaugurate 25 December as a pagan festival "the birth of the unconquered Sun." This was in A.D. 274. Aurelian was attempting to breathe new life into a declining paganism devastated by the advances of Christianity. However, the Roman pagan festival was instituted after the Christians had already been celebrating the birth of Christ on that day for many decades. Their pagan festival was an attempt to create an alternative tradition, which already was associated with the birth of Christ and of significance to the Roman Christians. This is not a case of Christians imitating the pagans. The pagans were attempting to imitate the Christians, by celebrating the Sun on the day when Christians celebrated the Son of God.

The Biblical Evidence
What does the Bible say about the date of Jesus’ birth? Luke 2:6 tells us “the days were accomplished that she should be delivered,” so we assume Jesus was a full-term baby, born nine months after His conception.

Luke 1:26 says the angel Gabriel announced the conception of Jesus to Mary in the sixth month of her Cousin Elizabeth’s pregnancy with John the Baptist. So Jesus was conceived about six months after John the Baptist was conceived.

So when was John the Baptist conceived? The Scriptures inform us that John’s father was Zacharias, a Levite priest “of the course of Abia (Abijah)” (Luke 1:5). According to I Chronicles 24:7-19, King David had divided the priests into 24 orders and these orders took turns serving in the Temple for a period of eight days twice a year, separated from their wives and children. Zacharias and the other priests of the course of Abia served during the 10th and 24th weeks of the Jewish year. 

The angel of the Lord spoke to Zacharias “while he executed the priest’s office before God in the order of his course” Luke 1:8, that is, while he was performing his service in the Temple. After his time of duty was completed, he left the Temple, returned to his wife Elizabeth and John was conceived (Luke 1:23-24). If this were after the second course, that is, the 24th week of the year, John would have been conceived around September, or October and born around June, or July. Jesus’ conception six months later would have occurred around March, or April and His birth around December, or January. Based on the Scriptural account of Zacharias’s service in the Temple, it is well within the realm of possibility that Jesus was born in December.

The Extrabiblical Evidence
St. John Chrysostom (347-407 A.D.), whose status in eastern Orthodoxy is comparable to that of Augustine in the western world, argued strongly for a 25 December birthdate because of the course of Zacharias’s priestly service. But he also based his conclusion on the findings of Bishop Julius of Rome. Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem (348-386 A.D.) had asked Julius to ascertain the date of Christ’s birth “from the census documents brought by Titus to Rome” after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Julius then determined the date of Christ’s birth to be 25 December.

Julius, Cyril and Chrysostom were not alone in their conclusions upon the census documents. Justin Martyr (100-165 A.D.), in a detailed statement of the Christian Faith addressed to Emperor Marcus Aurelius, stated that Jesus was born in Bethlehem “as you can ascertain also from the registers of the taxing.” (Apology, I, 34). Likewise, Tertullian (160-250 A.D.) wrote of “the census of Augustus - that most faithful witness of the Lord’s nativity, kept in the archives of Rome” Contra Marcion, Book 4, 7).

Unfortunately, we do not have access to these ancient census records today. But perhaps the better part of wisdom bids us to assume that these Church Fathers had access to information that we do not possess today and that they were closer to the events in question than we are.
Some have said that Jesus could not have been born in December because shepherds did not keep their sheep in the fields past late autumn. But Alfred Edersheim, in his classic work The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), cites ancient Jewish sources to the effect that flocks of sheep “remain in the open alike in the hottest days and in the rainy season - i.e. all the year round” (Book 2, p. 186).

There was also a special class of Levitical shepherds who kept sacrificial lambs in the field all year round because they were used for sacrifice every month of the year. 
Winters can be cold in Palestine, but they vary greatly, and some Decembers are rather mild. A recent study of stalagmites and stalactites in caves near Jerusalem strongly suggests that the average annual rainfall dropped nearly 50% from about 3.0 feet in 100 A.D. to about 1.6 feet in 700 A.D. Average winter temperatures may have varied as well. If Mary could have given birth to a baby in a Bethlehem stable, then hardy shepherds could surely have watched their flocks in the fields at the same time. 

Edersheim concludes, “There is no adequate reason for questioning the historical accuracy of this date (25 December). The objections generally made rest on grounds, which seem to me historically untenable.”

 Comparing Calendars
Already in the 2nd Century, church councils had established the date of Christ's birth and the dates of Christ's Death and Resurrection. Because Scripture identifies Christ's death at the time of the Jewish Passover, the time of year could be known with precision. However, differences in the Jewish, Greek and Latin calendars and the discrepancies between the Lunar (moon) and Solar (sun) calendars caused intense debate over whether to observe Easter/Resurrection Sunday on a fixed date, no matter which day it fell on, or to ensure that it always fell on a Sunday, the first day of the week, as identified in the Gospels.

 The Annunciation
On the basis of records available to them at that time, the early Church established 25 March as the Feast of Annunciation to mark when the Angel first appeared to Mary and as the date of Christ's conception. They also came to consensus that Christ was born 9 months later - on 25 December.

 25 March the first Day of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere used to be New Year's Day

It needs to be noted that, from the earliest days of the Roman Imperial calendar, the New Year was celebrated on 25 March - the first day of Spring (in the Northern hemisphere). This is why September, October, November, December derived from the Latin words, Septem (7), Octo (8), Novem (9) and Decem (10).

 The New, New Year's Day
The celebration of the New Year on 1 January dates back to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1600, in Scotland and 1752, in England. From the 17th Century, 1 January began to be celebrated in Christian nations as a day of Renewal - a renewal of vows, vision and vocation. It was on this day that guild members took their annual pledge, that husbands and wives renewed their marriage vows and young believers recommitted themselves to walk in the Grace of the Lord. 

In the Darkness
25 December occurs in the northern hemisphere in the darkest time of the year. 25 December is during the longest nights and shortest days of the year. So, the early Church establishing that the Incarnation, when Christ was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, occurred on the first day of spring, 25 March and that His Advent occurred when He was born at the darkest time, during the longest night of the year, 25 December.

A Light Has Shone

"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined… For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His Name shall be called, Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His Government and peace there will be no end." Isaiah 9:2-7

 New Covenant
1 January, as the first day of the New Year, follows 8 days after the birth of Christ, on the day when he would have been circumcised and come officially under the Covenant. 

 An Age of Presumption
It is remarkable how so many people today, with no historical research and next to no knowledge of the historical realities and complexities of 2,000 years ago, can assume that they know better than learned men and Church councils convened much closer to the events in question for the express purpose of ascertaining the most accurate dates of Christ's birth, Crucifixion and Resurrection. But then, we live in a world where everything is being questioned - even God's Law and the Word of God.

 Victory Over Paganism
Instead, we should celebrate that Christ's Coming did replace desperation with joy, oppression with celebration, human sacrifices with Christmas Festivals; Christ replaced Baal, Molech, Apollo, Mars and Thor. At the time of greatest darkness, Christ came. 

"The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it." John 1:5

 Christmas is a time to celebrate Christ's victory over paganism. New Year's Day is a time to renew our vows, vision, and vocation and the first day of spring to celebrate the Life of Christ. Christmas presents us with tremendous opportunities for Evangelism and discipleship of family, friends, neighbours, and strangers. Let us remind them whose birthday we are celebrating. Jesus is the reason for the season. 

Wise men still seek Christ!

 "For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the Government shall be upon His shoulder.
And His Name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of His Government and peace, there shall be no end…" Isaiah 9:6-7