Why My Christmas Tree is NOT an Idol ♠ Part Two

In my last post I mentioned that I discovered that many of the "Christmas is a Pagan Holiday" websites that were coming up in searches were also anti-Catholic. I am far from being a champion of Catholicism, their "coronation" of a Pope frequently gives more honor to a man than their other actions give to the Word of God; however, down through the centuries there have been many Catholics who loved and honored God. Satan has surely assaulted the Church's leadership with temptations of power and wealth, and while many succumbed to those enticements, it has also done enough things right that it has survived through the centuries and ministered to untold millions. In this post, I'd like to address the three undeserved criticisms made about the Catholic Church as regards the celebration of Christmas.

• The Catholic Church made up the holiday. Nowhere in scripture are we told to celebrate the nativity.

This is a common charge, and it was one of the Puritan's favorite denunciations of Christmas. It loses some of its punch when you realize that Jesus attended a festival that had not been instructed through Moses. "At that time the Feast of the Dedication took place at Jerusalem; it was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple…" John 10:22, 23. Today, we call this Hanukkah. It commemorates the Maccabean revolt (167-160 BC) and subsequent cleansing of the temple after it was profaned by Antiochus Epiphanes. Our canon does not cover this time period; nowhere in scripture was Jesus told to recognize this event. But apparently, the absence of a command did not cause Jesus to shun it.
Paul addresses a similar situation, "One person regards one day above another, another regards every day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind." Romans 14:5

• Jesus wasn't born on December 25^th. 

Once you understand why the Catholic church picked that date, you will see that they did not choose it to deliberately coincide with a pagan festival. They started with Luke 1:5, "In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah." They compared it with the list of priestly succession in Nehemiah 12. Abijah is found in verse 17. Abijah served during the eighth week and the 32nd week, and the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1950s reconfirmed¹ that those weeks remained a consistent assignment through the years. Zechariah, as a descendant in the division of Abijah, would have been serving in the temple week of Yom Kippur when the angel appeared to him. Zechariah and Elizabeth conceived John the Baptizer within a month after Zechariah completed his service. The Catholic Church calculated that St. John the Baptizer was born on June 24, and this remains his feast day on their liturgical calendar. When the angel visited the Virgin Mary at the conception of Jesus, he told her that her cousin Elizabeth was in her sixth, month. cf Luke 1:36. They reasoned that if the future John the Baptist was six months older than baby Jesus, then Jesus's DOB would be on December 25^th. Right or wrong, (and yes, strong arguments can also be made that Jesus was born during one of the Jewish fall feasts,) the date was picked using reasoning that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.

• The Christians celebrated the nativity during an existing pagan festival to avoid detection.

I first heard this theory in my high school Latin class, but there is no reason to think that the early Christians, who were willing to face lions, would shrink back and fudge the date of Jesus' birth to hide behind a pagan festival.  Of the two potential festivals sometimes named, neither are a perfect fit for the theory. One, the Saturnalia, concluded on the solstice, three days earlier. The other, Natalis Solis Invicti, was established by Emperor Aurelian, 270-275 AD, and was not continued by his successor Tacticus. It was started after the church fathers had calculated the December 25^th date and was not around long enough to make a difference.

The Catholic Church, for all its faults, and especially the early Catholic Church before either Constantine's conversion or the beginnings of the Dark Ages, was not yet willing to blend with pagan practices to make their religion easier to swallow when proselytizing pagan countries.

The hard, undeniable evidence that Christmas is pagan simply does not exist. If your heart's motivation in having a tree is to glorify God and to honor his incarnation on Earth, then that is the purpose of your Christmas tree. Don't let the devil steal your joy. 


¹ I have not checked this out personally. The research was reportedly done by Shemaryahu Talmon, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, published in 1958