• Years ago, riding a train across Switzerland (some of you know this story), I met a gracious woman who was returning home from a Bible study. She invited me to stay a few days with her family in a small alpine village. As God would have it, I was there the day she and her mother met with the pastor of their decreasingly-biblical church to tell him they were leaving. It was an important moment in the life of that family and I have often marveled that God arranged for me to be in that home on that day.
• If I remember rightly, she was the first person who told me that Christmas was a pagan holiday. I had loved Christmas from boyhood and was dismayed to realize there was truth in what she said: the timing of our celebration of Jesus’ birth was based on pagan solstice festivals, celebrations of the “return of the sun.” So, the question comes up every year, is Christmas pagan?
• I don’t believe so. There are a couple of biblical principles at work here. First, consider Paul before the Areopagus in Acts 17: “The God who made the world and everything in it… gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.” So think with me. Couldn’t you accuse a first-century pagan of celebrating something God had done, by celebrating the return of the sun, the increase of light and the decrease of darkness? Couldn’t you even accuse them of “feeling their way toward him”? If God orders the seasons, which he does, the pagans had all along been celebrating God’s ordering of the Cosmos. The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it (Psalm 24:1).
• Also, the theme of light overcoming darkness is fundamental to the birth narratives of Jesus: Isaiah’s light shining on “the people dwelling in darkness;” the star followed through night after night by the Magi; the glory of the Lord shining on the shepherds keeping watch at night. I don’t think this proves that Jesus was born on December 25 (in fact we don’t know when he was born), but it does make December 25 (a few days after the solstice) a perfectly fitting day to celebrate “the light of all mankind” (John 1:4) shining in the darkness.
• In fact, you have to wonder, resting in the sovereignty of God, if Christmas hasn’t fallen into the exact slot God intended. I certainly believe this is the case. Not only that, but I believe the reason we think Christmas lights and candles (think of our own Christmas Eve service) are beautiful is not because of something inherent in light itself, but because a light shining in the dark is an intentional portrayal of Christ, the one who banishes the darkness of Satan’s rule. In other words, we should think the beauty of a light in the darkness comes from Christ himself, rather than thinking God created light, was surprised by its potential beauty in certain applications, then later decided to borrow it as a metaphor. You wouldn’t be describing God in that storyline, but someone more like Zeus.
• No, you’re safe celebrating Christmas. Yes, it has issues: crass materialism, busyness that defeats the purpose of reflection on the gift of the Christ-child, sugary sentimentalism that betrays the rough-edges of the Gospel accounts. But that’s where we come in, living the truth of Christ, shining that we might “give light to all in the house” (Matthew 5:15). Rejoice and say to God, “in perfect faithfulness you have done wonderful things, things planned long ago” (Isaiah 25:1).