Do You Celebrate Christmas?

The Likely Origin of the Question and Answers for Today

 

          Following this introduction is a seven-part exploration of the issue of Christmas. It is a paper originally written for a Doctor of Ministry class at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and as such is longer than our other articles and comes with the usual scholarly footnotes. We hope that it will reward careful study and be of help to those who wish to understand some of the questions around this subject.

-- The Editors

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A Paper Submitted by John D. Edgar
DM 08: Biblical Worship
January 11, 2019

          In the congregation of my childhood, a Saturday evening in December would be chosen for the church Christmas dinner. The basement hall would be decorated in red and green, and after the dinner little booklets containing Christmas carols would be passed out. Favorite carols would be chosen and sung, accompanied by the piano. Then the booklets would be collected to wait unused for a year, and the piano would gradually go out of tune, untouched
save for children banging on it after church services.

 

This was the full extent of the church's Christmas celebration. There was no pageant, nor a service on Christmas Eve or Christmas. The caroling was done in the basement, not the sanctuary, for this was a dinner, and there was no piano in the sanctuary. I have heard that Santa Claus appeared at the dinners a generation earlier, but I certainly never met him.

 

Thus matters continued until the church enjoyed an influx of families who did not celebrate Christmas at all. The church absorbed them contentedly until one woman objected to decorating the fellowship hall in red and green for the dinner in December. At this point feathers began to be ruffled.

 

The following year the pastor addressed the issue in adult Sunday School. Tell us, he said, how your family celebrates Christmas, if at all. Four positions emerged: those who celebrated in full, those who abstained entirely, at least one family who kept Christmas as religious as possible, and at least one who kept it as secular as possible!

 

Exposure to such a wide variety in a small congregation made the necessary point: we don't have a church position on such matters, each household will set its own course, and we will have peace in this congregation. The dinners themselves must have continued as before, for my younger brother was recently at the piano preparing to accompany the carols. But one might ask: what should my family do?

 

I. The Puritan position on Christmas
          The Puritans and early Presbyterians had a very clear stance on Christmas: they forbade it. The Directory for the Publick Worship of God contained an appendix which stated, “Festival days, vulgarly called Holy-days, having no warrant in the word of God, are not to be continued.”

 

The case against Christmas rests in the first place on the regulative principle of worship: whatever God has not commanded in worship is forbidden, Deuteronomy 12:32. God has not commanded us to worship him on Christmas, or on any day besides the Lord's Day, so we are not to worship him on those days. If it be objected that surely it is good to hear preaching on Tuesdays and Thursdays, that would not establish the point, because those worship services could not be made mandatory. Nor could people be commanded to cease from their work on those days, since God commanded, six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God, in it you shall not do any work. If it be objected that the Bible at times calls for fasts and for celebration, this also can be conceded, but only when special acts of God call for special mourning or celebration. A standardized day, held every year, is clearly of human invention, not a human response to a contemporary event. [1]

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God commanded certain feast days in the Old Testament, but those days are a part of the ceremonial law that is no longer binding on the church. In the New Testament we read generally of the end of the ceremonial law:

Galatians 6:15: "Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but a new creation."

Acts 10:15: "What God has called clean, do not call common."

Hebrews 8:13: "In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the old covenant obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away."

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Most frighteningly:

Galatians 5:2: "If you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you."

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And in reference to feast days in particular, we read the following:

Galatians 4:10-11: "You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain."

Colossians 2:16-17: "Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These things are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ."

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While we read of the end of the ceremonial law, we do not read of the establishment of any new festivals. It would have been easy for God to delineate the new feasts that should be kept, but there is no New Testament equivalent to Leviticus 23 or Deuteronomy 16. By previously establishing festivals, God indicated that festivals are to be established by divine
right; absent any divinely instituted New Testament festival, the church is not to invent one. For it was for freedom that Christ set us free, therefore Christians must stand firm and not become slaves of men (Galatians 5:1). The liberty that Christ purchased must be guarded zealously by clinging to his word and not adding to it or subtracting from it. [2]

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Therefore, groups like the Brownists and Puritans argued, there is no day holy to God any longer, save the Sabbath. No one could rightly order them to stop working on Christmas, or any other holiday, since God has commanded that we work six days and rest one. Not only could no one require them to offer worship on a holiday, some would have maintained that worship should not be offered at times God had not commanded. But this was not the whole of the argument. Holidays were monuments to idolatry. Many were devoted to various saints, Christmas itself centered on an idolatrous mass (the Christ-mass), [3] and in any case any worship invented by men is by that very fact idolatrous. The obscure origins of Christmas may lie in a connection to the pagan festival of Saturnalia, the sun god, whose rebirth was celebrated on December 25, the winter solstice in the Julian calendar. Idolatry is to be fled, not co-opted.

 

Thus the Puritans and other early English Protestants maintained a clear ban on holidays generally. In Plymouth Plantation, there was evidently no notice taken of December 25 in 1620. In 1621, a new group told the governor it was against their conscience to work on Christmas Day, so he gave them leave to rest and took the others to the fields to work. But when he returned for lunch and found them playing games in the streets, he took their implements and told them it was against his conscience for them to play while others worked. If Christmas was a matter of devotion for them, let them keep it indoors, not revel in the streets. [4]

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II. Questions that arise when reading the Puritans

          Reading the Puritans closely reveals large differences between their situation and ours. They were dealing with a state church, run by an Anglican monarch. As Elizabeth I gave way to James I (VI of Scotland) and then Charles I, Puritan suspicions of Roman Catholic tendencies grew. They were not far removed from the Roman Catholic era, in which holidays had multiplied, holidays on which it was declared to be morally necessary to abstain from work and worship in the church. To be compelled to rest on so many holidays was an economic burden in a poor society, and to be told this was morally necessary before God a spiritual burden. The medieval Roman Catholic calendar had at length become oppressive and superstitious.

 

The American situation, however, is different in many ways. There is no state church. Christmas is a national holiday, but businesses may remain open. No one is compelled to rest or worship. The Puritan's cry against compulsion finds no opponent. His plea for liberty of conscience has been granted in this sphere. Nor is Christmas imputed a place of spiritual necessity. Few Christians would maintain that the keeping of holidays is necessary before God.

 

We may also note flaws in some of the arguments above. Condemning Christ-mass on account of its name fails for multiple reasons. The meaning of a word is determined by its current usage, not its etymology. [5] Furthermore, in other languages, mass does not appear in the name of the holiday. Nor should it: when a family gathers around a tree and opens presents, it is not celebrating a mass. If believers sing carols together, the mass is not present. As for the celebration of the Incarnation in churches, the celebration predates heretical Roman Catholic teaching about the mass.

 

Further reading into the Puritan situation sheds more light on their views. Their struggles against Christmas were related to their position on Sundays. [6] They viewed Sundays as the Christian Sabbath, and correspondingly read passages like Isaiah 58:13-14 as being directly applicable to Christians. [7] They wanted the whole day to be dedicated to God, either through public worship, private worship, or acts of mercy. Not only should people cease their labor and attend church, after church there should be prayer, sermon discussion, or visiting widows, not games or recreation. The Puritans thus urged both church and civil magistrates to forbid recreations on Sunday, not only during services, but also afterwards. Some Puritan magistrates enforced such prohibitions.

 

As one might expect, this policy provoked a backlash, and all the more in that day and age. In a poor, class-based agricultural society, people worked hard for six days and had one day for everything else, both worship and recreation. They also had the old holidays. Take away the holidays, as the Puritans tried to do, and recreation can only happen on Sundays. So the less pious in particular looked forward to Sunday for sports and leisure.

 

The kings, meanwhile, were quite ready to command church attendance on Sundays, but had an additional goal for the afternoon: archery practice. The bows of England had won a great victory at Agincourt in 1415 and on other occasions, and so the king, being military commander in an era of very small professional armies, wanted a citizenry ready to fight. So King James I decreed (but did not enforce) and King Charles I decreed (and tried to enforce) a Book of Sports that rebuked 'Puritans and precise people' for forbidding archery and other 'lawful games' on Sundays after church services were over. [8]

 

The Puritans, then, ended up on the wrong side of both many of the common people (if not on holidays and Sundays, when would they dance and play sports?) and the king (when would his archers practice?). A culture war broke out in England, which eventually became an actual war, with the Puritans winning the initial battles but eventually losing the war.

 

But before anyone judges the Puritans too harshly, consider an additional angle: gambling. In this period, gambling was forbidden to the common folk except during the twelve days of Christmas. [9] The upper classes could legally gamble twelve months out of the year (and they did in the court of Charles I), but regular people could only gamble at Christmas. One can see why the Puritans recoiled from the holiday. It was named for the Savior, but in practice was the occasion of licensed sin. One might compare it to St. Patrick's Day. Is either God or Patrick glorified by drunkenness and green beer?

 

The Puritans wanted to prohibit Christmas, in other words, because it was a season gone out of control. In some places, roving bands of drunken carolers, sometimes in masks, would barge into homes and demand further refreshments. [10] Rejecting the holidays was thus a part of a general campaign to reform England. King, Parliament, and church were to be mobilized to stamp out holidays, purify Sundays, and roll back recreations of all sorts (both the brutal [11] and the harmless). Christmas was a part of the popish past, re-imposed more recently by power-hungry church hierarchies and celebrated with idolatrous services and riotous behavior. 

 

Very little of this cultural background is familiar in America today. With a five-day workweek, there is no shortage of time for recreation. Few Christians are fighting for six days of work and one day of holy rest. With a large professional army wielding fantastically advanced weapons, there is no call from the chief executive for weapons practice. And gambling is hardly restricted in any way at any time.

 

Christmas simply functions differently in America than it did in 17th Century England and Scotland. The entire American calendar of festivals is thin by old English standards, which were themselves thin compared to European standards. [12] The festivals themselves are celebrated in a variety of ways, which means no one way is culturally overwhelming. Whether due to Puritan and Quaker opposition or not, Christmas in America has always been a reduced version of the past European Christmas. [13]

 

In the present American environment, Christmas arrives as a time for the name of Christ to reenter the naked public square. An old carol may sing the hope of the gospel as it is piped into (or sung inside) a shopping mall. Perhaps the lapsed or the curious may visit a church. At a more general level, at Christmas scattered families gather, lights twinkle festively, the Salvation Army rings a bell for charity, and the mood changes. Is it really a good idea to assist the secularists in driving Christmas underground? In America today, ditching Christmas would seem to further the unbelievers' goal of driving Christianity into the closet.

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III. The wider Christian consensus in favor of Christmas

          Reflecting on the differences between the Puritan situation and our own current American situation should also drive us to read more widely. The Puritans are not the only Christians to have lived before us. Not only was the Reformation broader than England and Scotland, the Reformation itself was not the beginning of the Christian church.

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As Daniel Hyde details, the continental Reformed churches largely retained not only Christmas but also other evangelical feast-days.[14] They disposed of saints' days and excoriated any notion that keeping a holiday contributed to our standing before God. But once they reduced the church calendar to the holidays that commemorate the greatest deeds of our Savior, most of the continental Reformed churches found them a useful way to celebrate Jesus and encourage piety.

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To be sure, the Reformed Churches felt their way forward. At first in Strasbourg only Sunday was celebrated, but then Martin Bucer began to defend Christian festivals against the Anabaptists. John Calvin rebuked the larger crowd he saw at Christmas for not attending church on other days. Francis Turretin spoke of holidays as a thing permissible, in part for reasons that will be explained below. The Dutch Reformed Church required church participation in celebrating holidays. The Synod of Dordt directed that churches shall observe Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, with the day following, and the Christian Reformed Church in 1926 upheld a classis {similar to a presbytery -ed.} rebuking a consistory {the elders and deacons of a local church -ed.} for not calling a church service on January 1. Such actions seem as extreme in their own way as the Puritan position, but they do demonstrate that one cannot honestly say, “The Reformed position is against Christmas.” If that were true, what would one say about James Boice of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia? He taught Reformed theology with great warmth and clarity, and found something new and evangelistic to preach every Christmas Eve. [15]

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The Puritan condemnation of Christmas as a pagan insertion also shows little respect for the ancient church. One can find sermons by Jerome and Augustine on Christmas Day. Accounts of its origin differ. One hostile account asserts that December 25, the winter solstice in the Julian Calendar, was set in 270 as the Natali Invicti, the birth of the Unconquered Sun. The church, the reasoning goes, took over this holiday as Christmas, the birth of the Son of God. But another account declares that March 25 was already known as the day of the Annunciation; the early Christians then reasoned that Jesus would have been conceived on the same day, and nine months later is December 25. In any case, the hostile account shows no sympathy whatsoever for the practical problems church leaders faced in a pagan environment. If Christians are being drawn away to riotous behavior on a pagan holiday, is it not right and good for the church's leaders to provide a godly alternative activity?

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Whatever the origin of Christmas, the same Augustine who is read with such profit preached many Christmas sermons available today. Jesus was born today, he says in one, and we should celebrate. We should rejoice, both men and women. Men, for God came as a man, woman, for he was born of woman. Both sexes have been honored. [16]

 

No one can accuse Augustine of indifference to paganism. January 1, being New Year's Day then as well as now, was the occasion of pagan revelry. So, in one Christmas sermon he warned his congregation not to enter into the riot of the coming day. This is a Christian city, he said. There are two kinds of people: Jews and Christians. Let there be nothing odious to God, no odious games, no shameless amusements. [17] And in a sermon delivered on January 1 he went farther: How can you sing 'Save us, O God, and gather us from among the nations' (Psalm 106:47), and then party like the nations? When they run to the theater, you run to church. When they give presents, you give alms. [18]

 

Jerome, possibly preaching in Bethlehem, also preached on Christmas Day. “I marvel at the Lord,” he said, “Creator of the Universe, born, not surrounded by gold or silver, but by mud and clay, yes, in the midst of dung, in a stable! He was found by shepherds keeping watch by night, for Christ is not found, except by the alert. Pride never brings salvation, but humility does.” [19]

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When the Puritans condemned Christmas, they were combating an oppressive state church, a medieval mindset, and a riotous occasion for gambling. But the holiday called Christmas in English dates back to the late third century and enjoys support from the giants of the church fathers. Since the ecclesiastical compulsion that oppressed the Puritans is gone, and the cultural situation is tremendously changed, we should imitate the Puritans in a deeper way. Rather than simply adopting their critique of Christmas, we instead should return to the Scriptures as they did to seek the Lord's will for us in our own day.

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IVa. The Scriptural teaching on festivals

          Philosopher Josef Pieper wrote an entire book on festivals, In Tune with the World, A Theory of Festivity. [20] In this work he notes the prevalence of festivals throughout the many cultures of the world, and uses festivals both as a window into ultimate realities, and as a way to critique the totalitarian impulses of the twentieth century. He uses Nietzsche as a useful foil [21], and quotes church fathers like Origen, Athanasius, and Chrysostom.

 

To analyze the festival, Pieper says, you must analyze everything. Why is this day different than other days? Why are people having a good time? What is a good time? Why are they sacrificing the utility of the day to something other than work and profit? Why are they spending so much money? Who told them to celebrate?

 

Having begun with such fundamental questions, Pieper then relates festivals to God and our response to him. On the festival day we celebrate the joy of being a creature created joyfully by God. The reality celebrated on the festival is in fact always present, but can only be affirmed and celebrated on certain occasions. Festival days presuppose working days, many working days, or they are not truly festive. The idle rich cannot properly celebrate a festival, but the working poor can. For on the festival day we raise our eyes from our daily drudgery, we perceive ultimate realities, and we rejoice in them. “Joy is the response of a lover receiving what he loves.”[22] “There can be no more radical assent to the world than the praise of God, the Creator.”[23]

 

All of this could easily be dismissed as the subtle reasonings of a sophisticated Roman Catholic philosopher, but for the following considerations: God himself ordained festivals in the Old Testament, and Jesus Christ used feasting as a figure of the kingdom of God.

 

Even before God led the people of Israel out of Egypt, he told them to always remember the day and to celebrate it in set ways, treating the redemption won in the past as having been done for them.[24] At Sinai he spelled out additional days, beginning with the weekly Sabbath, and including the feasts of unleavened bread, weeks, and booths. The start of the New Year and of each month was to be noted and celebrated, and also the Day of Atonement.[25] Thus God employed the human impulse to celebrate to unite his people in worshiping him.

 

Israel did not actually keep these feasts very well. 2 Chronicles 30 notes that when King Hezekiah celebrated the Passover, it had not been kept in a long time (30:5), and had not been kept so joyfully since Solomon (30:26). Reading canonically, the Passover is not mentioned from Joshua 5:11 to 2 Kings 23:21. But the feasts cannot have been entirely forgotten, for Jeroboam was afraid that his people would continue to go up to Jerusalem for them. He not only built his own golden calves and instituted his own priesthood, he also invented a feast “like the feast that was in Judah” and is condemned for celebrating in “the month which he had devised in his own heart” (see 1 Kings 12:26-33), a feast likely devised to replace the Feast of Booths.

 

The Puritans noted God's prescription of ancient feasts, his condemnation of Jeroboam for devising another, and the Apostle Paul's frustration at the Galatians' observing days, months, seasons, and years. Putting these things together with the Regulative Principle, they forbade Christmas and Easter. But we are not yet finished with the relevant Bible passages.

 

The book of Esther famously never mentions God, yet records a miraculous deliverance of God's people, which occurred after they fasted and Esther acted. Esther and Mordecai, high-ranking civil officials in a pagan empire, then obliged the Jews to keep the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar year by year. They were to make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and to the poor (Esther 9:21-22). The Jews accepted what they had started to do (9:23), called the day Purim (9:26), and firmly obligated themselves and their offspring and all who joined them to keep it forever (9:27). Queen Esther then reaffirmed all of this in writing (9:32).

 

The language used differs from the Torah's language about Passover. Leviticus 23 prescribes the  מוֹעֲדֵ֣י יְהוָ֔ה , the feasts of the LORD. Deuteronomy 16 terms the three mandatory times for the men to come to Jerusalem as  בְּחַ֧ג הַמַּצּ֛וֹת וּבְחַ֥ג הַשָּׁבֻע֖וֹת  וּבְחַ֣ג הַסֻּכּ֑וֹת  the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Booths. (The Hebrew for feast changes from moad in Leviticus to hag in Deuteronomy, a change not reflected in English translations.) But in Esther we read that they are to keep 'the days', because the month had been turned from mourning into a holiday (literally a 'good day'). Even the word translated feasting in Esther is not the same root as either of the words used for feast in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

 

The distinction in language between the days appointed by God in the Torah and the days appointed by Mordecai and Esther in the Writings is maintained in the Septuagint. The original days are termed ἑορταί, feasts, while Purim is called a good day, or these days.

 

So we have in the Old Testament an example of the civil authority calling for a day of deliverance to be celebrated forever. The Scripture carefully keeps the language describing Purim distinct from the language of Passover and Yom Kippur, and the days, while obligatory, did not originally involve going up to Jerusalem. But we cannot simply attribute Purim to Esther and Mordecai. The book of Esther is now part of the canon, and thus their celebrated actions receive divine approval.

 

While we cannot be dogmatic about whether Jesus Christ celebrated Purim, [26] we do know he was in the Temple for Hanukkah. The origin of Hanukkah can be read in 2 Maccabees 10. The first Hanukkah was celebrated over eight days in the manner of the Feast of Booths, since the warriors had been living in caves at the time of Booths. But then they “decreed by public edict, ratified by vote, that the whole Jewish nation should celebrate those same days every year.” (2 Maccabees 10:8, Jerusalem Bible)

 

This makes Hanukkah sound a great deal like Purim, only without canonical status. God miraculously delivered his people from a military threat; they responded by establishing a holiday to remember it always, taking care not to put the new holiday on the same level as the feasts in the Torah. And a little less than two hundred years later, Jesus walked in the colonnade of Solomon during Hanukkah (also called the Feast of Dedication, see John 10:22-24) and was asked if he was the Messiah. Given that his home was in Galilee, his presence in the temple indicates a deliberate going up to Jerusalem for the feast. In short, Jesus seems to have accepted Hanukkah as a legitimate innovation.

 

So there is Biblical warrant for the people or their civil leaders to create holidays to commemorate a deliverance from God, so long as care is taken not to give such holidays the same status as the feasts God appointed in the Torah. The condemnation of Aaron and Jeroboam that we read in Exodus 32 and 1 Kings 12 is a condemnation of idolatry and falsifying the worship of God, not a condemnation of every special day some human authority may choose to celebrate. There can be a place for national celebrations that give glory and thanks to God. There cannot be a place for adding pages to the Torah or alleging additional requirements for peace with God.

 

With Purim and Hanukkah in mind we can return to Pieper and the Puritans. Reading the Puritan works on the Sabbath gives the feeling of a movement going too far. Six days you shall labor and do all your work – so six days are for working – and the seventh is a sabbath to the Lord your God – so spend the whole day on the duties of worship and mercy. Do not celebrate holidays. The whole of life then becomes work and worship, without festivity. Rejoice in God, but without undue expense, singing, or dancing.

 

But Jesus, who certainly worked extremely hard, also reclined at table with many on a regular basis. Levi made a great feast for him (Luke 5:29). He ate and drank often enough to be charged with being a glutton and a drunkard. Indeed, when a wedding feast ran out of wine, he famously supplied more (John 2). While some of these things are to be attributed to his physical presence, which we do not now enjoy, he also spoke as though his followers would be giving banquets (Luke 14:12-14) and gave directions on how not to be embarrassed at a party (Luke 14:7-11). Most powerfully, he repeatedly pictured the Kingdom of God as a great feast to which we must come, so that we can sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and not be cast out into miserable darkness. Many of these occasions are specifically called wedding feasts, but not all. Banquets were a part of his culture, and he attended them. He critiqued those who used them to seek status or reciprocity, but not the celebrations themselves.

 

Fasting returned upon Jesus' departure from this world (Matthew 9:14-15). But to assert that feasting departed with Jesus is to assert that he acted in a most confusing fashion and gave directions that were not meant to be kept (Luke 14:12-14). Therefore a too-rigid insistence on no days of celebration, because we labor six, worship one, and God has ordained nothing else, does not fit the actual life of our Lord.

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IVb. The Scriptural teaching on festivals, continued

          The writings of the apostle Paul appear to point in different directions on the celebration of days. What appears to be contradictory, however, will prove to be helpful when we analyze "celebrating Christmas" into component parts. Let us look at some relevant passages:

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Romans 14:5-10: "One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each
one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in
honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if
we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are
the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

 

"Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all
stand before the judgment seat of God."

1 Corinthians 10:19-21: "What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is
anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be
participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the
table of the Lord and the table of demons."

1 Corinthians 10:25-31: "Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of
conscience. For 'the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.' If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and
you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience – I do not mean your conscience, but his. For why should my liberty be determined by someone else’s conscience? If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks?

 

"So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God."

Galatians 4:8-11: "Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not
gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to
the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe
days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain."

Colossians 2:15-18: "He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over
them in him.

 

"Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind."

 

          There are several things to note. One is that there is a kind of observing days and months that is utterly at odds with the gospel. This kind of observation constitutes slavery to the elementary principles of the world, and puts us in danger of losing our salvation (Galatians 4:10-11). Yet we must also note that we are to shun judgment where days are concerned. We are not to let others judge us in questions of festivals or Sabbaths (Colossians 2:16), nor are we to judge our brothers about observing days (Romans 14:5,10). God is the judge, and he will judge between his servants when they differ among themselves in regards to days (Romans 14:5-6). What matters most is that whatever we do, we do it to God's glory (1 Corinthians 10:31, Romans 14:8), being fully convinced in our own minds (Romans 14:5).

 

What must be elucidated is the relation of the Galatians passage to the others. In Galatians, we are not to observe days, months, seasons, and years. In Romans, we are not to make an issue of them. In Colossians, we are to refuse to let others judge us in regards to them.

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The seemingly different instructions must be rooted in different situations and contexts. The Galatians were abandoning their faith in Jesus in order to follow the works of the law. This was outrageous, since they had received the Holy Spirit through faith in Jesus (Galatians 3:1-2). They had to be warned that the law had been a tutor, to bring God's people to Christ, but that in Christ they had received their adoption, and were no longer slaves to the tutor (Galatians 3:23-4:7). Their observation of days constituted a return to childhood slavery, and an abandonment of their Lord. They did not, in fact, need to celebrate Yom Kippur or Passover. To assert that God still required the feasts was to misrepresent God and misconstrue the basis of their relationship with him.

 

To apply these words to Christmas requires first an interpretive step. In context, the days the Galatians were wrongly observing were most likely the feasts of the Torah, given the polemic about the Mosaic law that we find throughout the letter. But we can move to Christmas through applying the how-much-more reasoning we meet so often in Jesus. If they were not to observe days God had established, as if they were necessary, then how much more are we not to observe days the church has established, as if they are necessary. The Holy Spirit guided Paul to write generally of 'days and seasons' so that the words would have this wider application.

 

We must not think that the observation of Christmas is necessary to our salvation. It is not a work that brings us closer to God, or that earns merit before him. We are not to be in any way enslaved by the day, bound in conscience to do one thing or another. Celebrating Christmas with church or family is not connected with our justification, and bears no necessary connection to our sanctification.

 

So, holidays as a salvific necessity is forcefully rejected in Galatians. But if anyone would insist that we must celebrate the day for some other reason, we are in the area addressed by Colossians 2. We are 'not to let anyone judge us', which being at one level an impossibility, must mean that we are not to be controlled or inhibited by the judgment of others. We answer to God, not to them, so we are not to give them a position of authority, which is not theirs to assume.

 

But once the notion of spiritual necessity is removed (Galatians), and we understand and live out our freedom as God's children (Colossians), then we are in the area described in the book of Romans. To observe a day in honor of the Lord is a thing indifferent. One brother will observe the day, another will not. We must leave judgment about such matters to God. If one observes the day, let him observe it to God, and God will be his judge. If another does not, God is his judge as well. We are not to judge our brothers, or be controlled by their judgments of us.

 

In this way we bring together the related Scriptures: special days are not to be observed as a thing necessary, or in fear of man's judgment, but may be observed by God's free children so long as they do so in faith and for God's glory.

 

But there is an additional Puritan concern that must be addressed: the question of idolatry. One can raise the question in a historical vein. If Christmas in fact stems from Saturnalia, then must we not flee from it? If the Christmas tree has a pagan origin, should we not shun it? The Israelites were not to compromise or even ignore the Canaanite idols; they were to destroy them. One can also raise the question theologically: whatever its origin, Christmas is man-made, therefore idolatrous, and idolatry is to be destroyed, not adopted.

 

These questions are in part dealt with via the canonical status of Purim and the Lord's participation in Hanukkah. But they are also addressed by passages in 1 Corinthians 8 & 10. In that day, much if not all of the meat for sale in the meat markets had been previously sacrificed to idols in pagan temples. A bull might first be offered to Zeus in the temple, then its remaining meat sold at the market. Given the Biblical injunction to flee from idols, could a Christian possibly eat that meat?

 

Perhaps surprisingly, the Holy Spirit directed Paul to write that a Christian could eat it, so long as he was clear in his conscience that idols have no real existence, received his food with thankfulness to God, and wounded no other believer in the process. A Christian could eat whatever was set before him, so long as eating was not explicitly tied to the worship of idols. [27]

 

If meat that had been roasting in Zeus' temple three hours earlier could be received with thankfulness, then concerns over the origin of Christmas and its tree are misplaced. If past pagan usage does not stain the steak, it will not stain the tree or the date. What must be avoided is any return to pagan worship, or weakening of the faith of our brother.

 

However, the Puritan concern about worship not required by God has considerable force. God shows his concern for his worship in the second commandment, as well as in many other places. The issue then becomes the relation of Christmas to worship. We are not to worship God in any way not commanded in his Word. But we are also not to judge our brother for observing a day, so long as no one is enslaved by days and years. Where does worship end and observing a day begin?

 

V. Christmas must be analyzed into its component parts

          As we have seen, the Puritans met Christmas in a different context from us. They were not far removed from the enforced Roman Catholic calendar of the Middle Ages. We in America have never lived under such a calendar. They were forbidden to work and required to attend church on Christmas by king and state church. We have neither king nor state church, we are free to attend the church of our choice, we do have a national holiday that closes schools and most offices but does not close stores. In some cases, they were told it was a sin to work on a church-appointed holiday. We do not labor under such teaching. They lived in a culture that used the holiday as an excuse for riotous drunken excess, gambling, and becoming a public nuisance. Our culture does not see such roving bands in the second half of December.

 

Celebrating Christmas thus must be analyzed into its different parts. If a family celebrates Christmas, they likely buy presents, put them under a pine tree specially brought indoors for the occasion, buy, cook, and eat large amounts of food and drink, hang stockings by the fireplace, and perhaps tell lies about Santa Claus. They may play special music, perhaps Scripture set to music (Handel's Messiah), or hymns written for the occasion (Christmas carols), or an ever-expanding array of more meaningless popular songs about snow, love and home. They may decorate the house with red and green knickknacks or a manger scene. The family may or may not open the Bible and read Matthew 1 or Luke 2, but it is likely the family gathers in greater numbers than usual. Some combination of the above factors is suggested by saying a family celebrates Christmas.

 

If a church celebrates Christmas, that suggests a different array of activities. At one end would be a church such as the one I attended growing up: celebrating Christmas means a weeknight dinner at the church with carols, with the singing perhaps taken out into the neighborhood's streets. More common would be the church that calls a special service for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Most elaborate would be those churches that put on a Christmas pageant, complete with children in special garments and taught the roles to play. A church in my own city recently gave up on bringing animals into their manger scene – the cow kept wandering off and getting onto the highway. These possible activities can be described by the brief phrase 'celebrating Christmas,' but they are actually quite different things.

 

If a nation celebrates Christmas, this would at the least indicate a day that schools and offices are closed. The nation might go further and forbid work. The chief executive might issue a proclamation glorifying God for sending his Son. And if a culture celebrates Christmas, this might mean a time set aside for gambling (as in England in the sixteenth century), or a time for especially intense shopping (as in America in the twenty-first century), or a time when God is actually praised through public music (as in the school district of my childhood).

 

Do you celebrate Christmas? That may very well depend on what is meant by the phrase. Celebrating Christmas looks different in the church, in the family, in the state, and in the culture, and even families and churches that celebrate it may be doing different things. Keeping in mind both the breadth of Christian practice, and the incisiveness of the Puritan critique, let us attempt to analyze what options are open to a godly family and church.

         

VI. The component parts of Christmas analyzed in light of Scripture

     A) The nation

          If the Jews legitimately established both Purim and Hanukkah as national holidays giving thanks to God for his deliverance, then not only July 4 but also December 25 are rightly celebrated in these United States. Not only is the national celebration of Christmas legitimate, it is most good and right: a nation that remembers the birthdays of such deliverers as Washington, Lincoln, and King must honor the memory of its greater king and deliverer Jesus Christ. The closing of schools and offices and the issuing of public proclamations in his honor is a most proper action for any nation.

 

The only caveat to be made is that the conscience of the citizen should not be bound. The Brownists and Puritans should be heard and permitted to live as they believe is right in the sight of God. So, no nation should require attendance at a worship service on Christmas, or require that private citizens cease from their labor. God did command six days to labor, and one to rest, and while nations may establish special days as festivals, they may not insist that every citizen enter into the festivities.

 

     B) The culture

          Within the culture, we should do all to the glory of God. So let songs of gladness ring at Christmas – they did at the first Christmas.[28] If we buy presents for friends, let us remember what was written about Purim and also provide for the poor. There are numerous ways to do so. But let us shun what is sinful in itself. It was not to England's glory that it specifically permitted gambling to the common people during the twelve days of Christmas. Better to specifically ban it!

 

     C) The family

          It is sinful to tell lies. Therefore, Santa Claus should not be held out as in any way a real figure. Stockings may be hung by the mantle, but there should never be any idea that a fat man in a red suit will come down the chimney to fill them. Stories about reindeer may be read, but only in the same vein as stories about Zeus or magical Nutcrackers. Still less should we encourage blasphemous songs that attribute omniscience to the imaginary Mr. Claus. [29]

 

The wise family will also use the occasion to teach against greed, envy, and anger. If circumstances seem to overwhelm the teaching, change the practice so as to lessen the temptation. Fathers and mothers should not lead their children into temptation. But once these necessary guidelines are laid down, each family is to decide for itself how to do all to the glory of God. They are not to be controlled or judged by those outside. They are to honor father and mother, yet leave father and mother to cleave to wife or husband. As we are left free to observe or not observe days in Romans 14, so families are sovereign in their own sphere to observe Christmas as they see fit, if at all. Only, whatever they do, let them do all to the glory of God.

 

     D) The church

          Finally, we come to the church. Daniel Hyde, writing within the Dutch Reformed tradition, comments in a footnote that they need to think more about church discipline for individuals in churches that call for services outside of the Lord's Day. [30] Actually this should not require much thought at all. God alone is Lord of the conscience and has left it free from the commandments of men, which are in anything contrary to his Word, or beside it, if matters of faith or worship. [31] If a church member has a conscientious objection to Christmas, his session should leave him alone along the lines of Romans 14. Jesus is his judge in this matter, not his elders. To require his attendance is to claim too much authority for the church. The church has authority as far as Christ has given it authority, and no further. Therefore a church may propose, but not impose. It may call for a fast or celebration, but not discipline those who abstain. The elders are Christ's under shepherds, not legislators or drill sergeants.

 

As for whether a special Christmas or Christmas Eve service is advisable, that depends on local factors. It should not be an ordinary service which members are required to attend, for that exceeds the authority of the church. It should not be an extraordinary service that eclipses the ordinary service, lest a Christmas-and-Easter Christianity be encouraged. But an evangelistic service that calls us all to marvel in awe at the grace of God poured out in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ would not be out of place on December 25, because it would not be out of place at any time whatsoever. Such a service might be an excellent time to bring unbelievers to hear the gospel. Or, such a service might be an intolerable burden on a scattered and poor congregation. So, the local session should decide whether to have a special church service on or around Christmas, while modestly refraining from requiring attendance.

 

People the world over celebrate festivals, often in honor of their gods. The living God is not opposed in principle to festivals in his own honor, as we have seen. But every good gift is to be received with thanksgiving and reverence, and the worship of God is to be kept pure and entire. Both Puritans and Quakers quite reasonably objected to the riotous drunkenness and gambling of their own Christmas scene, and the state and church authority that sought to support it. But once compulsion and judgment are removed, we are not to judge our brothers in regards to days. Rather, whether we observe Christmas or abstain, we are to do all to the glory of God, as we anticipate in hope the day when we will recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus in the Kingdom of God.

 

Footnotes:

1. For these and additional arguments see George Gillespie, A Dispute Against the English Popish Ceremonies Obtruded on the Church of Scotland, Dallas TX: Naphtali Press, 1642/1993. He argues at length that the ceremonies, which include holidays, are neither necessary, nor expedient, nor lawful, nor indifferent.

2. See Ainsworth & Johnson, An Apologie or Defense of Brownists, Amsterdam: De Capo Press, 1604/1970.

3. But see Penne L Restad for a different etymology: Old English Christes maesse (festival of Christ) entered the language around 1050 with the Norman invasion. See Penne L. Restad, Christmas in America: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

4. William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647, edited Morison.

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5. The same should be said of holidays. The etymology is certainly 'holy-day' but that does not make every celebration of a holiday an illegitimate assertion that a given day is holy. It simply means schools and some businesses are closed, and some have a reason to celebrate. See D.A. Carson for more on etymologies and meaning: D.A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1984, pp. 26-32.

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6. See Alistair Dougall, The Devil's Book: Charles I, the Book of Sports, and Puritanism in Tudor and Early Stuart England, University of Exeter Press, 2011.

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7. Isaiah 58:13-14 : "If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

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8. See King Charles the First's Declaration to His Subjects Concerning Lawful Sports to be Used on Sundays 1633. Reprinted for Bernard Quaritch, 1862.

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9. John M. Findlay, People of Chance: Gambling in American Society from Jamestown to Las Vegas. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1986, pp. 17, 19.

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10. Consider the background that produces Here we go A-wassailing.

 

11. It is easy to mock the Puritans for limiting recreation, but those who know that bear-baiting and cock-fighting were regular parts of sixteenth and seventeenth century English recreation should realize they would likely align with the Puritans on some matters.

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12. Compare a Roman Catholic private school's calendar to a public school's.

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13. See Reston for further analysis, especially pp. 18-20.

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14. Hyde, Daniel. "Not Holy But Helpful: A Case for the 'Evangelical Feast Days' in the Reformed Tradition." Mid-America Journal of Theology, Vol 26, 2015, pp.131-149.

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15. See James Montgomery Boice, The Christ of Christmas, Phillipsburg NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2009.

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16. See Augustine, Sermons for Christmas and Epiphany, Westminster MD: The Newman Press, 1952, sermon 

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17. See Augustine, sermon 14. An editor's footnote informs us that the kalends of January were held in honor of Janus, god of beginnings and openings.

18. Augustine, sermon 17 (A New Year's Day sermon).

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19. See John D. Witvliet and David Vroege, Proclaiming the Christmas Gospel: Ancient Sermons and Hymns for Contemporary Christian Inspiration, Grand Rapids MI: Baker Books, 2004.

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20. Josef Pieper, In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivity. South Bend IN: St. Augustine's Press, 1999. 

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21. Key quotes from Nietzsche: “The trick is not to arrange a festival, but to find people who can enjoy it.” “To have joy in anything, one must approve everything.”  “If it be granted that we say Yea to a single moment, then in so doing we have said Yes not only to ourselves, but to all existence.” See Pieper 13, 26, 27.

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22. Pieper, p. 23.

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23. Pieper, p. 31.

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24. See Exodus 12:14-20, 24-27, 12:43-51.

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25. See Leviticus 23 and Deuteronomy 16.

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26. One can find online the argument that the unnamed feast of John 5 is Purim, based on the assertion that Purim in 28 AD is the only feast from 25-35 to occur on a Sabbath. I am not competent to evaluate such a claim, and would rather leave the feast as unidentified as John does.

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27. For an example of what 'explicitly' would mean, see 1 Corinthians 10:28: But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it.

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28. J. Harold Gwynne makes this suggestive point: we get four songs in quick succession in Luke 1 & 2. Isn't the Scripture showing us that Jesus' arrival was “intended to bring songs to the human heart”? (He includes Elizabeth's extended praise in 1:42-45) See J. Harold Gwynne, The Gospel of Christmas, Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 1938, p. 17.

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29. As in, “He knows when you've been sleeping; he knows when you're awake; he knows when you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake!”

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30. See Hyde, “Not Holy but Helpful.”

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31. Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 20, paragraph 2.