Should Christians Celebrate Christmas?

I didn’t know that there was a debate about this.  I should have known better.  Never underestimate the ability of some rigidly legalistic thinking people to find reasons everyone else is wrong.

Should Christians Celebrate Christmas?  An article distributed to participants in one of our men’s groups suggested that there are plenty of reasons the answer should be “No!”. (Unfortunately I don’t have the name of the author of the article.)

1. The word Christmas doesn’t appear in the Bible.
2. The celebration was not instituted by an inspired apostle.
3. The date of Christ’s birth is disputed, and most certainly is not December 25th.
4. December 25th was chosen in 440 AD to replace pagan worship of the sun gods.
5. Pagan symbolism has been embraced in many Christian Christmas celebrations.
6. Many Christian traditions pre-date Christianity.

The author of the article concludes with the following paragraph:

Well, you must answer this question for yourself: Should Christians observe Christmas? For me, I am not going to add holidays or observances of any type originating from men and pagan sun worshipping to the worship of the church. This includes the observance of Christmas as well as other holidays such as Halloween. Apart from the church, I personally observe Christmas as any other national holiday – no different from Halloween, Thanksgiving, Labor Day, or St. Patrick’s Day. In this rests my liberty: I may personally observe anything good and moral unto the Lord (Rom. 14). But the minute I make my liberty part of the work and worship of the Lord’s church thereby transgressing the doctrine of Christ (I Cor. 4:6; II Jn. 9), I worship the Lord in vain – “teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (Matt. 15:9).

<Insert slow head shaking here>

There were two powerful and compelling arguments for the celebration of Christmas by Christians discussed at our men’s group that I think trump this unknown author’s reasoning.

First, why should we worry about Christianity “baptizing” and adopting for itself pagan practices, when each of us are “baptized” and adopted into the body of Christ “while we were yet sinners”?  Baptism and the work of the Holy Spirit makes the profane holy (called santification).  I am taken as a sinful and unclean person and made holy.  We can do likewise with symbols and signs that are relevant.  Jesus Christ is the light of the world, the light no darkness can overcome.  What more powerful time in the Northern Hemisphere is there than late December for the realization of this truth?

Second, the institution of the celebration of Christmas in the 5th century corresponds (if the unknown author’s dating is accurate) to a real tension in the church related to the doctrine of Christ’s “substance”.  There is no better way I know to affirm the incarnation of God in human flesh than to celebrate a birth.  Mary is the god-bearer.  The celebration of the birth of Jesus reminds us of his human nature, and at the same time, the miracle of it all reminds us of the divine nature.  Christmas (literally meaning the mass celebrating the birth of Christ) then is a holiday helping us keep the paradox of Christ being fully human and fully divine intact.

Oh, by the way unknown author … “Easter” doesn’t appear in the Bible either.

Pondering Pastor

A Foray into the “Real” World

I don’t think of myself as the typical over 50 year-old pastor.  I’m pretty aware of what’s going on around me.  I have interests beyond the narrow confines of the church.  I don’t think of myself as a moralist … although I do hold as a high value basic respect for others.  Last night has me re-thinking my perception of myself and the world I inhabit.  I attended the Sunday night Baltimore Ravens-Pittsburgh Steelers football game.

I enjoy football.  My spouse loves the Steelers.  We were able to obtain tickets from a friend of hers and decided to make it an evening together.  Watching a game with 71,000 fans in an NFL stadium is a dream come true.  It is part of the reason I love living in this area.  We’ve been to a couple of pre-season NFL games, but that didn’t prepare us for last night.

It started fine.  We met some of the people seated near us.  There was a good-natured give and take one might expect.  We were a little bothered by the two sisters who had flown up from New Orleans for this game.  They spent over $500 for tickets for this game, not counting airline tickets, hotel, food, etc.  That $500 went for tickets to a football game top section, end-zone corner.  Not exactly our priorities!  Even having attended high school with one of the players on the Ravens team didn’t seem to justify that kind of expense.  But, hey, everyone has different priorities.

By half-time, the alcohol kicked in.  The man seated next to me had season tickets and an arrangement with the beer vendor.  By the time half-time and the “last call” was announced, he had nearly a dozen beers on ice under his feet for he and a few of his friends.  His volume increased.  The language deteriorated.  And it wasn’t just him.  I’m generally accustomed to hearing profanity.  I’m not accustomed to hearing it multiple times per sentence … in every sentence.  Once, in the men’s room, someone shouted out, “Hey guys, there are children here.  Watch your mouth!”  Too late.  The children present learned that this is how “men” talk.

As the game went on, and the “neighbor” got drunker, the game was more and more uncomfortable.  Too bad, it was a good game.  We stayed through overtime.  The Steelers were defeated, and I had to run interference for my spouse who was all decked out in black and gold.  I created as much a buffer as I could, but it wasn’t enough to avoid hearing things like, “Victory!  Time to rape some women!” shouted on the ramp out of the stadium.  On the streets, walking to the car, the sexually-charged … no … sexually explicit language about what one woman was going to do to her friend before the night was over couldn’t be avoided.  Our way home was unusually quiet.

So, now I’m appreciating the “churchy world” I live in.  At the same time … is there any doubt that this world needs the kind of care for one another advocated by the church and sorely lacking in some of the lives of the people I encountered?

Pondering Pastor

Anxiety and Fear (Reflections on Advent 1C)

The Gospel lessons for the first Sunday in Advent have apocalyptic themes and in preparation for preaching I wandered around the internet to experience some of what people are writing about the chaos that is and is to come.  I couldn’t disconnect fast enough … and was strangely drawn to more.

The movie 2012 was as good a place to start as any, which soon led me to www.december212012.com.  Talk about dusting off all sorts of familiar themes.  In the mid-late 1980’s, I had an employer who started to talk about polar shifts and coming disasters.  He and another staff member quit their jobs, bought a farm in Iowa, equipped it for the coming catastrophe, and taught seminars about surviving the coming apocalypse.  He died never seeing the events he anticipated.  This website collects disparate “predictions” and pulls them all together. I’m a reasonable person, and I found myself starting to think about steps to survive the coming disaster.  (Prudent preparation makes sense and I have some emergency response items already stockpiled … more for our frequent power outages than anything else.)

I read about graffiti on the bathroom wall in a High School.  “It sucks to be in the class of 2013 … what’s the point?” (Referring to the “end of the world” in 2012.)

I encountered the Psalm 109:8 “prayer for President Obama” movement.  In case you haven’t heard about this one,  people are encouraged to pray “for” President Obama using Psalm 109:8 “May his days be few; may another seize his position.”  Plenty has been written in outrage about this prayer, especially in light of the verses which follow: “May his children be orphans, and his wife a widow.  May his children wander about and beg; may they be driven out of the ruins they inhabit.  May the creditor seize all that he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his toil.  May there be no one to do him a kindness, nor anyone to pity his orphaned children.  May his posterity be cut off; may his name be blotted out in the second generation.”  I don’t believe that’s what Jesus meant when he instructed us to “pray for your enemies”.

From there my wandering spun completely out of control, and I felt like I was in a dark alley, late at night, ready to be mugged.  I got out of there as fast as I could.

Don’t people get that apocalyptic literature is a word of hope?  Oh, that’s right, if we are Biblical literalists then these are predictions of actual events rather than poetic imagry to describe a world that seems stacked against us!  The way I read Luke 21:25-36 gives me encouragement.  By listening to and following Christ, I don’t have to wring my hands at the sexually-charged singing/dancing of Adam Lambert, or drag myself into a survivalist camp armed to the teeth against the world.  God’s purposes will be fulfilled even in the face of those things which seem opposed to God.  In Christ’s power, we will live an alternative reality that flows alongside chaos.  The good news is that even though it seems as though evil wins … it cannot.  That theme is persistent in Luke/Acts.  Why, I think that it makes a lot of sense to invite people I care about into that same alternative reality.

Take a breath folks.  Christ is alive.  Now, let’s get busy living the alternative reality feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the imprisoned, and giving drink to the thirsty.

Pondering Pastor