Is Christmas a Pagan Holiday?

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Is Christmas a pagan holiday? No, it's a Christian holiday, a celebration of the birth of Christ.

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If that wasn't what Christmas was about, our secular culture wouldn't be so afraid of the name. But didn't

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Christmas start out as a pagan holiday? Probably not. There have been many pagan festivals around the winter solstice, including the

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Feast of Saturnalia. In 274, Emperor Aurelian chose December 25th as the birth date of Sol Invictus, the

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Roman sun god. Prior to that, Hippolytus of Rome tried to calculate the birth of Christ and mistakenly came up with December 25th.

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The winter solstice was once a celebration of darkness on the darkest day of the year. It has since become a celebration of light when

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Jesus came into the world. But aren't all these Christmas traditions a rip -off of former pagan customs?

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Some of them aren't. Christmas carols are rich with biblical truth and have impacted the world over. Giving presents comes from the magi bringing gifts to the

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Savior, and also the gift of the Savior himself to mankind. The Christmas tree has roots in paganism, no pun intended.

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But so what? Redefining pagan symbols is in the Bible. In ancient Rome, Caesar rode on a white horse.

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In Revelation 19, Jesus returns on a white horse because he's greater than Caesar. So at Christmas, some formerly pagan symbols have been

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Christianized to celebrate Jesus's greater than darkness. The Bible says nothing about Christmas, but it does say not to argue about days.

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Don't look down on the person who celebrates or the person who doesn't. Let us agree that the advent of our Lord is worth celebrating every day that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners when we understand the text.