Should Christians Celebrate Christmas?

Christmas this year is beset with more controversy than ever. Witches and other pagans are actively promoting a substitute celebration of the winter solstice. In Cincinnati the Ku Klux Klan is again trying to co-opt the cross of Jesus Christ for their own evil purposes during the Christmas season.

In some areas pantywaist school administrators and other local government officials, fearing lawsuits by atheists and others, are forbidding any Christmas symbolism on the government property under their control. Some school districts have gone so far as to forbid teachers wearing Christmas jewelry or mentioning Christmas break, as opposed to "winter" break. Even Planned Parenthood is getting into the act with their repugnant "Choice on Earth" parodies of Christmas cards.

As if that weren't enough, some Christians are stepping up the intensity of their anti-Christmas rhetoric this year. People like Garner Ted Armstrong, a media evangelist, urge Christians to give up the celebration of Christmas. In response to my 1994 column on Christmas, I have received many emails over the years from those who agree with Armstrong that the holiday is a pagan celebration in which no Christian should be involved.

The people who've tried to convince me that Christians should abandon Christmas seem to have a sincere desire to do God's will. They honestly believe that Christians merely adopted pagan practices of sun worship when they began to celebrate Christmas at around 200 AD. This is, interestingly, the same claim made by modern witches and the like who object that Christians have "stolen" their pagan holiday.

In ancient times, trees were often cut down and made into pagan idols to celebrate the winter solstice. The traditions of gift exchanges and feasts (often orgies, in the case of the pagans), mistletoe, evergreen wreaths, burning of candles, etc. had their pagan counterparts as well.

I can sympathize with anyone's wish not to be associated with paganism in any form. But my family will celebrate the incarnation of Christ this year, as we do every year.

Christians believe that Jesus Christ participated with His Father and the Holy Spirit in the creation of the universe. He has complete dominion over that universe, including the little speck of space dust that we call Earth. That such a Being would humble Himself to be born of a poor young virgin, a member of a people long subjugated by the Roman empire, is an amazing miracle of love. As the Gospel of John says, "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

How can anyone who believes that this miracle really occurred not want to celebrate it? We celebrate our mothers and fathers, our war veterans, great presidents, and others who have given or sacrificed for our good. How can we not continue to set aside a day to praise God for the gift of His Son?

I think there is something to be said for understanding the roots of the various Christmas customs. We can then take pleasure in seeing that these once serious attempts at appeasing false gods have been trivialized to become mere eye-pleasing decorations.

The hanging mistletoe, once intended as a prayer to pagan gods to grant good luck, is now just a quaint excuse to get a kiss. The evergreen tree, once hung with pagan symbols, is now presided over by an image of one of the angels who announced the birth of the Savior.

On the other hand, what does it look like to others when Christians fail to celebrate Christmas? It looks like we aren't terribly impressed with the importance of the miracle of Jesus' incarnation. Maybe it even lends credence to those "Christians," like one of my college professors, who urged my theology class not to "take that business about the virgin birth too seriously." I don't want to be contribute anything to propagation of those views.

I pray with the ancient Christian Church, in the traditional Orthodox Christmas dismissal hymn, "Thy Birth, O Christ, our God, rose upon the world as the Light of Knowledge; for through it, those who had adored the stars were taught by a Star to worship Thee, the Sun of Righteousness, and to know Thee, the Dawn from on High, O Lord, Glory to Thee."