Where Did We Get Christmas Trees?
A lot of talk about Christmas Trees the last few years. Should we have them? Are they evil? Are we, unwittingly allowing ourselves to participate in an ancient pagan festival?
Even more interesting is the reality that there are some churches and groups that are opposed to observing Christmas at all! I've been approached by more than one Pastor that has been considering encouraging their congregations to ignore Christmas all together for two reasons: we don't know the actual date so observing an artificial date is in error and the orgins of the observance are supposedly anchored in a pagan holiday.
Let's think about this for a moment.
In spite of all the popular stories about pagan festivals and such (there were some around the end of December but there is little evidence to link them to our Holiday), the first evidence of Dec 25 being used to observe Christ's birthday was recorded by Sextus Julius Africanus, an early 3rd century historian. The date is exactly nine months after the traditional date of the incarnation, March 25, considered to be the original date of the vernal equinox and the creation of Adam. Dec 25 has appeared on early calendars as Christ's birthday as early as 354. In any event, as long as it has been observed, it has been known as Christmas (Christ's mass).
Christmas trees have been around since, at least, the reformation. Yes, there have been pagan festivals that included trees. I'm sure, that if you look long enough and stretch far enough, you can find a pagan festival that utilized just about anything. We hear the same kind of foolishness about the cross at times: "It's evil and a pagan sign!" 1 Cor 1:18 says, "For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. " nuff said about the cross but we don't have a Scriptural basis for the Christmas tree.
memory of the beauty of God's creation and our gift in Christ Jesus.Let's keep our eyes on Christ and utilize the strength of His might to love the unlovable. God does not need us to fight for Him but He does want us to tell the world about His Son. So let's decorate our trees, no matter what they call them. Let's decorate the church, no matter what they call the holiday. Let's open the doors and let the world in because, in spite of the protests, they all know it Christmas!
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There is another possibility for the origin of Christmas being celebrated on Dec. 25. Channukah, the Jewish Festival of Light also known as the Feast of Dedication is celebrated on the 25th of the Jewish month that usually corresponds with December. This holiday represents the rededication of the temple in Jerusalem by a victorious band of Jewish freedom fighters after it had been horribly desicrated by conquering Greeks.
ReplyDeleteIt was during the celebration of this holiday, when the temple was lit up for all to see, that we find Jesus standing in the temple announcing that He is the messiah in Jn. 10:22-23.
As with many of the Jewish holidays, this one is filled with images of Christ. This holiday revolves around a miracle of a holy light that God provided, a temple that was destroyed but later rededicated to the service of God,and victory over a seeminly insurmountable evil.
Many messianic Jewish commentators see Channukah as being the time when Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit (this is based on the details in Luke describing exactly when John the Baptist's father was called to serve in the Most Holy Place in the temple then calculating when the other events in the birth story would have occurred). This would have meant that Jesus was born nine months later during the Feast of Tabernacles -- another holiday filled with Christian symbolism (when all Jews are to come to Jerusalem and build stables for them and their animals to dwell in for eight days and when the priests take the sacred scrolls and parade around town rejoicing in the Word of God that has been given to them.)
It's reasonable that the Jews who formed the original church would have looked to the 25th of their "December" to commemorate God sending His son to be born of a woman. It's also reasonable to see how the Romans would have set aside the Jewish roots of this holiday and made it their own.
Doug Sachs