What Do You Associate with Christmas?

For many peo­ple Christ­mas is main­ly a fam­i­ly cel­e­bra­tion. It is a day when the whole fam­i­ly is gath­ered and has a sense of togeth­er­ness. Child­hood mem­o­ries are evoked: gifts and car­ols around the Christ­mas tree, turkey and Christ­mas pud­ding. In real­i­ty, who is free from the stress of prepa­ra­tion? Usu­al­ly there is no time at all to think deeply about what would real­ly make oth­ers hap­py. Instead, peo­ple are under a lot of pres­sure, try­ing not to for­get to send any­one Christ­mas cards and New Year’s greet­ings and mak­ing sure they buy all the presents in time.¹

Prepar­ing the fes­tive meal, clean­ing the house etc.—there is so much work to do. Some peo­ple, of course, do take time for some con­tem­pla­tive hours, attend­ing Christ­mas con­certs, bak­ing cakes, mak­ing hand-made Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions and gifts etc.—but what is it real­ly all for?

As is vis­i­ble from the name (Christ­mas = Christ-mass) peo­ple orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to hon­our Jesus Christ with this hol­i­day. The ques­tion is, how­ev­er, whether the New Tes­ta­ment teach­es us to cel­e­brate Christ’s birth with a spe­cial fes­ti­val? If not we have to reject it as some­thing unchris­t­ian.

The Gospels Do Not Specify When Jesus Was Born

Jesus was cer­tain­ly not born in win­ter, nei­ther in Decem­ber nor in Jan­u­ary. There were shep­herds with their flocks in the field at night (Luke 2:8). Although it is true that in Pales­tine the win­ters are warmer than in Europe, yet from the end of Octo­ber, it is so cold out­side that the sheep are kept in a sta­ble. From the words of Jesus it is also vis­i­ble that the win­ters in Pales­tine were quite cold:

Pray that your flight may not be in win­ter or on a Sab­bath. (Matthew 24:20)

It is also improb­a­ble that the cen­sus Mary and Josef were respond­ing to, which required whole fam­i­lies with preg­nant women or lit­tle chil­dren to trav­el back to their place of birth, was held in win­ter of all sea­sons.

Christmas on 25th December Was Not Celebrated at All by Christians in the First Few Centuries AD

The cult of Mithra, the sun-god, was the most wide­spread reli­gion in the pagan Roman Empire. Its main hol­i­day was the feast of the win­ter sol­stice on 25th Decem­ber as the birth of the Sun. Even before the intro­duc­tion of the Mithra­ic Reli­gion, Roman Emper­ors ded­i­cat­ed tem­ples to “Sol Invic­tus” (the uncon­quer­able Sun god) and cel­e­brat­ed the vic­to­ry of the new ris­ing Sun.

Jesus Christ spoke of him­self as the “Light of the world” (John 8:12), and is wor­shipped as such by Christians—yet with­out a feast!

Emper­or Con­stan­tine the Great’s (285–337) desire was to con­scious­ly use ele­ments of Chris­tian­i­ty to strength­en the pagan Roman Empire. He suc­ceed­ed in redefin­ing the exist­ing cel­e­bra­tion of Sun wor­ship as the fes­ti­val of Christ’s birth.²

State­ments of cer­tain influ­en­tial per­son­al­i­ties in Church his­to­ry clear­ly assure us of the pagan back­ground of this hol­i­day. For exam­ple, the Church Father Ambro­sius said, “Christ is our new Sun”. Augus­tine ordered peo­ple not to wor­ship the Sun on this day, like the pagans, but rather to wor­ship the one who cre­at­ed the sun. Leo the Great crit­i­cized some peo­ple for cel­e­brat­ing the birth of the Sun instead of Jesus at Christ­mas.

How Does Jesus Want Us to Express Our Joy over His Coming?

It is quite nat­ur­al to want to express our joy and thank­ful­ness about the fact that God became man in Jesus, but we have to ask the ques­tion in which way Jesus wants us to do this. In the Bible we do not find the slight­est hint that this should be done in a spe­cial form or on a spe­cif­ic day. Such things are actu­al­ly quite sharply reject­ed (Gala­tians 4:8–11 and Colos­sians 2:16–17).

Jesus answered him, “If any­one loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14:23)

Our love for Jesus is expressed through our dai­ly rela­tion­ship with Him, earnest­ly seek­ing to know and prac­tise His will in our own lives.

And he said to all, “If any­one would come after me, let him deny him­self and take up his cross dai­ly and fol­low me. For who­ev­er would save his life will lose it, but who­ev­er los­es his life for my sake will save it. For what does it prof­it a man if he gains the whole world and los­es or for­feits him­self?” (Luke 9:23–25)

Our aim is not to reform the Christ­mas tra­di­tion but to invite you to embrace true Chris­tian­i­ty. Will you accept this invi­ta­tion? We would like to fol­low Christ togeth­er with you.

God’s great­est gift of love to us was Jesus, who came to “seek and save the lost”. He offers us the great­est gift—eternal life—and wants to teach us love, for­give­ness, joy and peace. What do you think about this pre­cious gift?

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribu­la­tion. But take heart; I have over­come the world. (John 16:33)

1. When we think about giv­ing, the focus should be on Jesus. The wise men from the East did not give presents to each oth­er but to Jesus (Matthew 2:11). What can be more pre­cious than giv­ing our­selves? “I appeal to you there­fore, broth­ers, by the mer­cies of God, to present your bod­ies as a liv­ing sac­ri­fice, holy and accept­able to God, which is your spir­i­tu­al wor­ship. Do not be con­formed to this world, but be trans­formed by the renew­al of your mind, that by test­ing you may dis­cern what is the will of God, what is good and accept­able and per­fect.” (Romans 12:1–2). ↩
2. “Constantine…continued to sup­port the Sun wor­ship through­out his life. He erect­ed two stat­ues of him­self, depict­ed as the Sun-god in (shin­ing) radi­ance. He affixed the fol­low­ing inscrip­tion to their pedestals: ‘To Con­stan­tine, the one shin­ing like Helios’. It is cer­tain­ly Constantine’s inten­tion to com­bine Sun wor­ship with the wor­ship of Christ, thanks to the exist­ing Christ-Sun sym­bol­ism.” Oscar Cull­mann, Der Ursprung des Wei­h­nachts­festes (The Ori­gin of The Christ­mas Fes­ti­val) Zürich 1960, Zwingli Ver­lag Zürich/Stuttgart, page 28. ↩