WWUTT 585 Q&A Other Christmas Myths?

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Why do we celebrate Christmas on December 25th? Where did the Christmas tree come from?

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How about Christmas bells? And if Christmas has pagan origins, should we be celebrating it?

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The answers to these questions, when we understand the text. Merry Christmas from your friends at When We Understand The Text.

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Find all our videos, including videos addressing various Christmas myths, at our website www .wutt

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.com. Now here's your host, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. And addressing various Christmas myths is what we're going to be doing today as well.

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So last week, we were responding to a video that was done by Jim Staley that was called

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Truth or Tradition, which I don't even like the title of that because it implies that anything traditional is not truthful, and that's not true.

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No. But anyway, so after that, all we addressed was his whole thing about Santa Claus being pagan and all this, and even denying that St.

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Nicholas was even a real person. That's really all we addressed last week. But we got emails from people and even comments on Facebook asking us to address other

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Christmas traditions and whether or not they are pagan in origin. And I'm sorry,

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I do not have an email in front of me here. I didn't grab any, but we did have a few emails, a few comments on Facebook, as I mentioned.

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And I just thought, hey, let's just go through some various things that we associate with Christmas and whether or not those things are pagan in origin, or do they have an original spiritual connotation evolved from the holiday and celebrating the incarnation of Christ or his birth.

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So you're talking traditional things? Yeah. Like, you know, we'll talk about Christmas trees,

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Christmas carols, the very date itself, how we came to December the 25th.

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And then if you... Because it was foreknown that my birthday was a month after.

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Yes. Becky's birthday is on January 25th. Yes. Which makes it very easy for me as a husband to remember when my wife's birthday is.

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It's exactly one month after Christmas. Except it's easily skipped because you're still exhausted from Christmas.

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I don't think so. Now, my mom always complained about her birthday. Oh, I'm sure.

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Because it was December 20th. Yes. And we have, not only your moms, but we have a nephew and two nieces that are the same area.

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Is that right? Yes. Yeah, there is another. Who else is this on December 20th? Samuel's.

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Samuel, that's right. Yeah, my nephew. All right. So, here we go. Let's get to some various Christmas traditions here.

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We love Christmas at our home. And we love traditions. And this is the first year that we've done lights outside.

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Isn't that right? Yes. It's so exciting. And seeing how cool they look, I wish

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I had gotten a ladder and we just tried to do them around the outside of the house. Me too.

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But we'll do that next year. We're already, what, halfway into the Christmas season.

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More than halfway into the Christmas season. We did just around our entryway. And so, it makes it really pretty there.

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And then we learned our lesson on how is the best way to hook it up and what tools we need and how much to stretch it because I really didn't stretch it.

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Yeah, it started to sag. It did really bad. I'm like, oh dear, next year, next year.

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Yeah, we're learning as we go here. We don't know the tricks of the trade of hanging lights up around your house.

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But we have always put the Christmas tree right there in the window. So, that counts. Right. Kind of.

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Yeah. That's lights. Everybody can see the lights just fine from the street. It's pretty. Now, I'm going to say here from the outset that a lot of the traditions associated with Christmas people will say have pagan origins.

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And that's why we shouldn't. Oh, yeah. I've heard that a lot. Celebrate Christmas. Right. There was a recent

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Renewing Your Mind with Dr. R .C. Sproul. It was Dr. Sproul and Dr.

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Stephen Nichols that were talking with one another and then Lee Webb, who's kind of the emcee of the program.

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So, the three of them are talking about Christmas. And at one point in the program, Dr. Sproul said,

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I'm pretty sure that the Grinch was an evangelical. The question had come to him, should we be celebrating

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Christmas? Doesn't it have pagan origins? And he's like, yeah, it's fine to celebrate Christmas. And that was when he made the comment about the

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Grinch being an evangelical. So today, of course, we mourn the loss of our friend, Dr. R .C.

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Sproul, who went to be with the Lord yesterday. Last year, this question was presented to Dr.

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Sproul on Ligonier Ministries' website, Is Christmas a Pagan Holiday? And this is the article that he wrote in response to that.

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That question comes up every Christmas time, he says. In the first place, there's no direct biblical commandment to celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25th.

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There's nothing in the Bible that would even indicate that Jesus was born on December 25th. And we're going to get to that.

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Why December 25th? So Dr. Sproul goes on. In fact, there's much of the

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New Testament narratives that would indicate that it didn't occur during that time of year. It just so happens that on the 25th of December in the

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Roman Empire, there was a pagan holiday that was linked to mystery religions. The pagans celebrated their festival on December 25th.

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The Christians didn't want to participate in that. And so they said, while everybody else is celebrating this pagan thing, we're going to have our own celebration.

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We're going to celebrate the thing that's most important in our lives, the incarnation of God, the birth of Jesus Christ.

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So this is going to be a time of joyous festivities, of celebration and worship of our

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God and King. Dr. Sproul goes on. I can't think of anything more pleasing to Christ than the church celebrating his birthday every year.

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Keep in mind that the whole principle of annual festival and celebration is deeply rooted in ancient Jewish tradition.

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In the Old Testament, for example, there were times when God emphatically commanded the people to remember certain events with annual celebrations.

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While the New Testament doesn't require that we celebrate Christmas every year, I certainly see nothing wrong with the churches entering into this joyous time of celebrating the incarnation, which is the dividing point of all human history.

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I mean, you consider that our calendar is set up in B .C. and A .D. and it's all, you know, supposed to be centered around when

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Christ was born. Didn't that change the B .C.? Didn't that change? Oh, they're trying to change it to the

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Common Era and before the Common Era. I mean, they've been doing this for 20 or 30 years or so.

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I know, but I thought it actually happened. No? No. Okay. I still hear B .C. and A .D. even on, like, the

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History Channel. Oh, okay. Yeah. Just checking. I mean, any effort to try to de -Christianize it hasn't worked.

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And even if they are successful in changing it to C .E. and B .C .E.

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It's going to be so confusing. Well, we're still going to know that the dividing point was the incarnation of Christ.

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That's very true. That's how that calendar was set up that way. Can't take that away. So anyway, Dr. Sproul goes on.

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And by the way, we do have a what video talking about how there is no connection between Mithras and Jesus Christ.

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If anything, the Mithraic religion was a ripoff of Christianity, not the other way around.

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From Dr. Sproul. Incidentally, Easter can be traced to Ishtar in the ancient world, but the Christian church coming together to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus is hardly something

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I think would provoke the wrath of God. I wish we had more annual festivals.

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The Roman Catholic Church, for example, celebrates with great joy the Feast of the Ascension every year.

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Some Protestant bodies do, but most do not. I wish we would celebrate that great event in the life of Christ when he was raised up into heaven to be crowned

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King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We celebrate his birth. We celebrate his death. I wish we would also celebrate his coronation.

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So that's from Dr. Sproul on. Should we celebrate Christmas? That's amazing. He'd have given it the thumbs up.

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He did give it the thumbs up. He did. So now we get to addressing our various Christmas myths.

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Now, while Dr. Sproul made a connection between Easter and Ishtar and December 25th and the celebration of Sol Invictus.

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So the pagan holiday that happened in the Roman Empire about the time that Christmas came around. I would actually go a little bit further than Dr.

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Sproul and say, you really cannot make any direct link to most

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Christmas traditions to anything pagan. There is enough argumentation that you could present to say that correlation does not equal causation.

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So just because they look the same does not mean one caused the other. It just coincidentally was at the same time or around the same era or was associated with a particular thing.

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And I'll get to the ones that I think are most closely associated with pagan traditions. But first of all, related to December 25th, there's a possibility that the reason why we celebrate

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Christmas on December 25th actually has nothing to do with the feast of Sol Invictus.

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So it was in 274 that Emperor Aurelian chose

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December 25th as the birth date of Sol Invictus, who was the Roman sun god. And that was the feast day of the birth of the sun.

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And it was December 25th. But then after the council at Nicaea in 325,

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Constantine changed December 25th. And it wasn't even directly Constantine. It's just everybody says it was

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Constantine. But Constantine changed December 25th from celebrating the birth of the sun to the birth of the sun, son of God.

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The earliest date Christmas was celebrated was 336. And then Christmas celebration started to spread throughout the

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Roman Empire. And eventually Sol Invictus wasn't even celebrated anymore. So we've been celebrating

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Christmas for 1700 years. And the feast of Sol Invictus was celebrated for only like 70 something years.

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So mark that one in a win column for the church. Amen. We beat that pagan celebration into the ground.

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And even the whole idea of the birth of the sun, you know,

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S -U -N, birth of the sun, and then associating that with the birth of the sun, S -O -N, that isn't even necessarily a pagan to Christian correlation.

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It could even be an Old Testament to New Testament correlation. Because we have it written in Malachi 4 .2.

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But for you who fear my name, the son of righteousness, S -U -N, the son of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.

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You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. So while the pagans were celebrating around that time, the birth of the sun,

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S -U -N, it was perfectly fine for Christians to say, you know what, we're going to celebrate the birth of the sun,

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S -O -N. But as I said, there's a possibility that the decision to use

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December 25th as the date of the celebration of the birth of Christ has no connection with paganism whatsoever.

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Because the early church writer Hippolytus, who was from 180 to 236, he came up with December 25th as the date that Jesus was born.

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He was attempting to calculate from information in the Gospel of Luke regarding the ministry of the priest Zechariah, John the

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Baptist's father, and he thought that Jesus was born on December 25th. So that's from Hippolytus over a hundred years before the first Christmas celebration that he thought

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Christ was born on December 25th. So there's a chance that celebrating Christ's birth on that date really has nothing to do with Sol Invictus or the

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Feast of Saturnalia or any winter solstice celebration or anything else associated with that particular timeframe.

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It just coincidentally happens to be the same day. But the two are not related to one another at all.

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Now I'll let you be the judge of that. But overall, that's your opinion. That's my opinion.

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Now before that December 25th date, there were various celebrations that were going on on different dates.

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For example, March 25th was believed to be the day that Jesus died, which was the 14th of Nisan on the

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Jewish calendar. But that also became a day in which the announcement was celebrated, when the angel

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Gabriel came to Mary and told her she was going to be with child. So March 25th became a day of recognition of both of those things.

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And perhaps you know Epiphany was celebrated on January the 6th, and that was at first a celebration of the baptism of Jesus.

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That's when it was believed that Jesus was baptized, and therefore Epiphany meant the revelation of God's Son.

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So the voice of God the Father from heaven saying, this is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.

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And everybody there at the baptism of Jesus who witnessed that, it was therefore the revelation of Christ to everyone that Jesus is the

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Son of God. Now the way that we traditionally celebrate Epiphany, it's when the wise men came and visited the baby

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Jesus. I was going to say, that's what a friend of mine were talking about yesterday.

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Yesterday. Yesterday. Okay. So celebrating Epiphany. Yes. And we have some friends that don't celebrate

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Christmas, but they do celebrate Epiphany. And then I think the gifts that they give on Epiphany, don't they somehow relate to gold, frankincense, and myrrh?

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There's three. Right. You give three gifts, but gold would be like something valuable.

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Frankincense would be something that smells good. I'm making that up. No, it's something that's useful.

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Something that's useful. That's the gold or that's the frankincense? Frankincense because that was for preparing your body.

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No, that's myrrh. Oh, that's myrrh. Myrrh was the embalming. Yeah. Okay. So then frankincense, that was something pretty.

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Okay. Something pretty. Well, that's not gold. Value... No, that's valuable. That's valuable. What does frankincense do?

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It smells good. It's... So you give somebody with socks, you know, or something. No. So you...

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I mean, it's like... Something practical? Maybe. I thought the myrrh was the practical then.

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I don't know. Cleaner. House cleaners. You give somebody with house cleaners. What? That's frankincense. It smells good. Make your house smell good.

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No. Candles. Cleaners. Scentsy. Oh, okay. Essential oils. I see what you're... I'm just throwing in smells good stuff.

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Yeah. All right. Perfume. Perfume. Give somebody with perfume. Anyway, so... I was thinking something pretty, because it helps you, like, dress up, you know?

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All right. So three gifts that are somehow associated with gold. We'll have to ask our friends. Those that celebrate this when we don't.

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So yeah, we know some folks that will celebrate Epiphany, but don't celebrate Christmas. And it's because of that particular tradition.

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So when December 25th was chosen as that date to celebrate the birth of Christ, it was all of these other different celebrations that were somehow associated with the birth of Christ moved to a single day.

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And so that's how we came to Christmas Day. Now, of course, you probably know that in the Catholic Church, Christmas Day was referred to as Christ's Mass.

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So this is the day that we all gather together. That's just where the name comes from. It doesn't necessarily mean that Christmas was originated from the

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Catholic Church, but the name that we use for that day did come from the Catholic Church, because it's

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Christ's Mass. So that's where that comes from. And the actual celebration of Christmas in America didn't begin until sometime around the mid -1800s.

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It did not become a national holiday until 1870. Really? So there may have been some traditions, some different places, depending on immigrants that came over to the country that were celebrating

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Christmas, but it did not become an official holiday until just a little over 140 years ago or so.

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Interesting. For about 150 years now. And there was a time when Christmas was outlawed in the

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United States. I believe that. Do you know about this? No, but I believe it. Like the

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Puritans? Right. It was the Puritans. Yep. 1659, the Puritan government of the Massachusetts Bay Colony banned

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Christmas. And this was the notice that they posted, for preventing disorders arising in several places within this jurisdiction, by reason of some still observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other countries to the great dishonor of God and offense of others.

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It is therefore ordered by this court and the authority thereof that whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon such accountants as aforesaid, every person so offending shall pay of every such offense five shillings as a fine to the country.

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Whoa. They meant business. Honestly, I don't see it as a very shining moment in the history of the

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Puritans. No. Definitely not. Outlawing Christmas for whatever.

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But I mean, they were very hypersensitive against anything Catholic. And Christmas was mostly associated with the

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Anglican Church and the Catholic Church. And we came over to the United States to get away from the Anglican Church, in particular, because the oppression in Great Britain upon Christians for wanting to worship the way that they believed the

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Bible said a Christian was supposed to worship. So they came over to the United States to escape from the religious tyranny that was going on in Europe.

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And it was because there were no cats. There are no cats in America. You know, we got children and we watch cartoons.

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Oh, yes. And the streets are made of cheese. And the streets are made of cheese.

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Oliver Cromwell was one who was against all Christmas traditions as pagan, including

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Christmas carols. What? Cromwell was against Christmas carols. What? Because it was believed that the whole origin of Christmas carols came from singing to your pagan symbols, kind of like, oh,

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Christmas tree, oh, Christmas tree, which I don't understand. Why in the world are we singing to the tree? Even I have...

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You're singing about the tree? I have to concede that's a dumb hymn. That's a silly

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Christmas hymn. So it was because of that. Because the songs apparently were originated from singing to a pagan thing.

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But I don't I don't see that at all. They were singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs in the church that just became associated with the incarnation of Christ or the birth of our

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Lord. And so that's where you got Christmas carols from. It's not directly associated with anything, any kind of pagan singing.

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So anyway, that's that's the story of Christmas in the United States from the time that it first began to be celebrated on December 25th to when it became a national holiday in the good old

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U .S. of A. But it was mostly associated with the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church and I think even somewhat the

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Orthodox Church. But I don't know the extent to which it was it came from the Orthodox Church. So let's look at some other

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Christmas traditions here. Yes. One of those that was attacked last week by Jim Staley was

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Christmas bells. Do you remember that vaguely? So he thought that the tradition of Christmas bells came from the bells that the

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Krampuses would wear. Oh, right. And as St. Nick and the Krampuses came into town and you heard the bells, that's where Christmas bells came from.

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And then he associated with the song Christmas Bells, which was actually singing about the Krampus bells, which is totally false, right?

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It was James Lord Pierpont that wrote Jingle Bells and he was just writing about horse and buggy drag racing in Boston.

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That's all it was. So anyway. So where did the Christmas bells tradition come from? Well, in the

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United Kingdom, it is traditional that the largest bell in the church is rung four times before midnight and then at midnight, all of the bells are rung in celebration.

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And so that's where the Christmas bells tradition came from. But I guess, first of all, let me ask this.

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Why did churches even have bells in them in the first place? To let people know when there is an emergency or to let people know that there is a town meeting.

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That's kind of a secondary reason why they had bells. The primary reason was just to let people know it's time for church.

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Ah, wake up. Yeah. You would have a church either in the middle of a town or you would have a countryside church and trying to draw people from surrounding villages to come to the church.

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So the bells would ring to make an announcement that it's time for church. There's no pagan origin to church bells.

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It's just simply to let people know, hey, time to get together and come to church. And so there was a particular tradition in the

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Anglican church related to ringing the bells around Christmas. And so that's where we get the tradition of the of the

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Christmas bells. And then, of course, you have the association of jingle bells on winter animals.

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So a horse that was pulling a sleigh or a reindeer that was pulling a sleigh.

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And then you've got bells on the sleigh so that people would hear the sleigh coming in the snow. Because as it's going through the snow, it's stealthy, man.

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It's pretty quiet. It's not like hearing a horse clop down a cobblestone street or something like that. So there would be bells on the sleigh so that people could hear the sleigh coming.

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They knew where it was. I just figured if it got too foggy or too much snow that there was that. Yeah, it's associated with weather.

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That's the reason why the bells are on there. So because that's generally in winter, then we've come to associate things like jingle bells with Christmas time.

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There's no pagan origin to that. Bells just simply announce announce something, you know, they warn you a sleigh is coming.

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Watch out because grandma got ran over by a reindeer. Probably because there was no bells on that sleigh.

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And then, of course, the bells that make an announcement for church. So Christmas bells, that has no pagan origin.

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How about Christmas candles? What would be the origin of Christmas candles? They're Christmas candles?

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Yeah. Well, yeah, we always associate candles with Christmas time. We have our candle lit

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Easter or Christmas Eve service. Easter Eve service. Oh, OK. Yeah. Yeah.

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Sorry. I'm thinking like pretty candles that you decorate with. Anyway. No, just candles. I'm good.

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Candles at Christmas. Christmas candles. I'm caught up. All right. Nothing pagan there either.

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It's just, you know, in the olden times, they didn't have lights, so they decorated with candles.

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You would come to church on a Christmas Eve service and it would just be candles all around.

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That's what you'd have. And if you lit a Christmas tree prior to the invention of the light bulb, it would have been with candles.

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And it is believed... I'm always afraid when I'm watching the shows that it's going to catch fire.

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When you see the trees with candles on them? Yes, because I know around here, you know, if those trees catch fire, they're gone.

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Christmas trees is where we're going next too, by the way. Oh, well, hey, there we go. But it's believed that Martin Luther was the first to decorate a tree with lights.

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Oh, neat. And so that's a tradition that originates with Martin Luther. Now, that may just be legend. There's not anything definitive that says that it originated from Martin Luther.

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I heard Dr. Nichols repeat that on a recent episode of Renewing Your Mind.

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He talked about it there too. But he added the same caveat. He said... Oh, okay. Or disclaimer, rather.

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He said, it may not be true, but traditionally, we know that Martin Luther decorated a

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Christmas tree with lights. And so it's believed that he was the one that we got that tradition from. Or maybe just spread the word.

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Put lights on your tree. Yeah. And this is associated with Jesus being the light of the world.

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So we get the whole idea and concept of lights from Christ. Cool. Jesus in John 8, 12,

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I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

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And then, of course, Jesus presented as the light by John himself at the beginning of his gospel.

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The true light who gives light to everyone is coming to the world, which is John 1, 9. So because we remember

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Christ as the light who has come, then that is why we decorate with lights at Christmas time.

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It is to remind us that Jesus is the light. So you think of, if indeed Christmas does originate with some sort of winter solstice celebration.

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So the pagans would celebrate the winter solstice, which was a time of death. Everything had died.

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The sun died. It was the longest day of the year, the darkest day of the year. And then after the winter solstice, then the sun or the days would start to get longer.

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Not the longest day. The longest night, shortest day of the year.

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Longest amount of darkness. Yes. Right. Right. There we go. So then the sun is reborn after that.

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The days start to get longer after that. So that was the pagan celebration. It was a celebration of darkness.

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Celebration of death. Usually their festivals had something to do with death because it was the darkest day of the year.

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Now that's moved to Halloween. I don't think there's any. I'm just kidding. Yeah. I'm only kidding. Yeah. Celebrating death at Halloween.

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Sorry. I apparently had too serious of a face for that. Yeah. I was going to say, I don't think there's any correlation there, but anyway.

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So it went from being a celebration of darkness on the darkest day of the year to a celebration of the light of Christ who had come into the world and that Christ is greater than darkness.

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So now around the winter solstice, we're celebrating light, not darkness and death, but life and light through Jesus Christ.

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Yay. I think that's a great transformation, regardless of whether or not Christmas is directly linked to something pagan, which

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I'm going to get to shortly here. But let's get into the Christmas tree. So this is our next

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Christmas tradition. Now, this is the one that is most commonly associated or most pointed to as, see, that's pagan.

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That was a pagan tradition. Right. You Christians are doing something pagan whenever you put a tree in your house.

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Right. Or mistletoe or holly and ivy or wreaths or anything like that.

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And maybe. I mean, if there's any tradition in Christmas that is going to be most closely linked to some sort of former paganism, that might be the one, especially when you consider that this legend is where we generally think of the

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Christmas tree originating from. Boniface was a missionary in the eighth century that went into Germany to preach

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Christ. And he came to a town where there were some people who didn't want to hear about Jesus.

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They didn't believe in Jesus. They didn't believe in this one true God. They worshiped

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Thor. We already have a God that we worship. We worship Thor. And when they asked

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Boniface, well, show us your God. Boniface couldn't show them anything. And so they said, well, here's the evidence of our

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God, this oak tree. They pointed to this oak and it was the oak of Thor.

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And so because that tree was there in their village or whatever, that was what they worship.

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They believed that that was the oak of Thor and they could worship that tree and Thor would give them all blessings, which

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I don't know how an oak became associated with Thor because he's a thunder God. Yeah, I was wondering that myself.

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But they worship this oak tree, which they said symbolized Thor. And for Boniface to prove to them that that oak tree had no connection with any kind of deity, he grabbed an axe and he chopped it down.

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And the tree fell and he was not struck dead. And so he proved to them

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Thor doesn't even exist. Way to go. That's an oak tree. Right. That's hard work.

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That was quite some work to chop that tree down. But after felling that tree, Thor didn't strike him down with lightning.

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He didn't beat him in the head with Mjolnir, his hammer, his magic hammer. Right. Iron Man didn't come and help him out.

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Right. Nothing like that. And so the people began to realize Thor probably isn't real.

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So then having done this demonstration on the oak of Thor, he then preached the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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And I like to picture him standing on the stump. Becomes his platform or his pulpit right there and starts preaching about Jesus Christ.

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And the people became Christians. But they still loved their tree tradition. So Boniface said, well, why not take this fir tree and put it in your home and it's pointed.

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It points up to heaven. It's evergreen. So you remember that we are to be in Christ all the time, not just a particular time of the year, like at the

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Feast of Thor or something like that. But you should always live a Christian life, godly and dignified in every way in Christ Jesus.

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And so the tree reminds you to do that. So that was why the Germans put those Christmas trees in their home was because of the witness of Boniface.

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So Boniface took something that was formerly pagan and Christianized it and made it a symbol of holy living or being reminded to live a life that is holy and pleasing unto the

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Lord. Kind of like the Bible verses and pictures and stuff like that, that you hang all over your house.

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Right. Yeah. You post verses around to remind you the promises of God that are in his word.

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And remember, this was during a time when people didn't have Bibles that were written in their language.

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And so they would have a symbol like a Christmas tree to remind them to always live holy lives and pointing upward to Christ, keeping their eyes on Jesus and seeking the things that are above where Christ is.

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So then the tradition of Christmas trees came to the United States by German settlers that brought that tradition in the 1800s.

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And since then, Christmas tree growing, harvesting, purchasing, putting up in your home has become a major industry.

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Oh, yes. Over 100 ,000 people are employed in the selling of Christmas trees. Wow. That's a lot.

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And there are over 1 million acres of land committed to growing Christmas trees. My goodness.

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They take about six to eight years to mature. They are grown in every state, including Hawaii. Really?

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35 to 36 million Christmas trees are produced each year, and they still outsell fake trees.

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Really? I was surprised about that. So most people would prefer to get a real

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Christmas tree. You know, that's very... I can believe that. Very easy to believe, because just all of our friends that say,

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I love the smell or miss the smell. Yeah, the smell of the pine. Yep. I'm like, well, you can hang some air fresheners.

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You can use some pine salt and take care of that. We used to get, when I was a kid, I was a kid, we used to get real trees.

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And when we lived in Pennsylvania, which we lived there for a very short time, I think only three Christmases, but we would actually go to a place where they would have a

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Christmas tree farm, and you'd meet the guy at the entrance to the farm, and then we'd walk through and, okay, that's the tree we want, and he would cut it down, tie it up, put it on the top of the car, and then we'd get it home.

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But man, decorating that thing, my arms would break out like crazy. So we don't have a real

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Christmas tree in our home because of allergies. We did it a couple of years when I was growing up, and that's when we learned that I was allergic to pine.

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Ah, gotcha. Yeah. I couldn't breathe, and my eyes got all watery, and I'm like, ah, ah, ah, ah. Plus you got the needles shed.

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It was awful. It was awful. And by the way, when you first bring that tree into your home and put it up, you put it on the stand, you got the little bowl underneath it that you pour water into, it will soak up as much as a quart of water per day when you first put that tree up.

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Wow. So, yeah. And then you take the tree down, you put it outside, and your city probably has some sort of annual

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Christmas tree pickup day. Oh, we always took it out to the lake. Do you plant it?

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No, no, no, no. Oh, okay. You throw it in the lake, and then the fish use it for their... It's like for them to hide.

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Oh, didn't know that. Their house and... That sounds like water pollution to me. Babies. It's a tree.

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It's a tree. I know, but then you clog up the lake with all these trees. Oh, well, not everybody did it.

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But word's gonna get around. Oh, yeah. You know, we got these... Ask first. We got these lakes around here that we fish in that are basically like ponds.

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Enough people throw Christmas trees in it, you wouldn't be able to get anywhere anymore. But you'd have more fish.

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Maybe so. So then candy canes, this is another tradition at Christmastime, and there's a lot of different legends related to candy canes.

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And poems. Yeah, and it's possible that none of them are true. But it's perfectly fine that you take a candy cane and you explain to your kids that this is shaped like a shepherd's...

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Is it crook? Do you call it a crook or is it just a hook? I always called it a hook.

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A shepherd's crook? But it could be crook. Shepherd's hook. I don't know. I always called it a hook. It's got that shape like a shepherd's staff.

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We'll go with that. There we go. There we go. And so that symbolizes that Jesus is the good shepherd.

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Or you turn it over and it's shaped like a J, which stands for Jesus. You have the red and white stripes on it, and the red represents the blood of Christ, and white represents purity, because we are washed white as snow when we're covered with the blood of Christ.

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And that's a great tradition to use to teach your kids with, regardless of whatever the origin of the candy cane is.

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And regardless of whether or not that was the meaning of the candy cane when it first came about. Is it okay for us to take symbols that previously would have been pagan and Christianize them and give it a different meaning or a different reminder in a particular season or time?

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Yes, those things are perfectly acceptable. Why? Because the Bible does this very thing, especially associated with the

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Christmas tree. There are people that like to reference that verse in Jeremiah, chapter 10, where it says, learn not the way of the nations, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens because the nations are dismayed at them.

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For the customs of the peoples are vanity. A tree from the forest is cut down and worked with and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman.

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They decorate it with silver and gold. They fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move.

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Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field and they cannot speak. They have to be carried for they cannot walk.

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Do not be afraid of them for they cannot do evil. Neither is it in them to do good. And so there are people that will take that particular passage there in Jeremiah 10 and they will say, see, this is directly telling us that by having trees in our home and decorating them with silver and gold, we're doing something pagan that God explicitly told us not to do.

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Jeremiah 10 has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas trees. It's talking about how they would take a tree, cut it down, fashion an idol, cover it with silver and gold so that it went from being a wooden idol to an idol covered with a precious metal.

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That's really all that's being talked about there. And then they worship the thing. Nobody's worshiping a Christmas tree.

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So is it OK for us to take something that may have had a pagan connotation to it like a

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Christmas tree? And again, this is probably the only Christmas tradition that you could definitively point out and say that used to be pagan.

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Right. Maybe you still can't even say for sure whether that's the case, but but probably so.

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So is it OK for us to take something that that previously would have been in recognition of the oak of Thor and instead

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Christianize it to have a different meaning? The answer is yes, we can, because in the

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Bible, formerly pagan symbols were Christianized or redefined to symbolize something else.

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This happens even in the Bible. And I think one of the best examples of this is in Revelation 19. So we read, then

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I saw heaven opened and behold, a white horse. The one sitting on it is called faithful and true.

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And in righteousness, he judges and makes war. Well, who previously used to be known for sitting on a white horse?

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Caesar, the emperor. And whenever he would. That's right. When he would come back from conquering in battle or having won a war, he would ride into the city on a white horse to display that he is victorious.

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So here we have a picture of Christ coming back on a white horse. Is Jesus literally riding on a white horse?

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No, this is symbolism. It's symbolizing that Jesus is greater than Caesar and victorious and that he is making war on the nations.

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And yes, just as you said, he will have victory. His eyes are like a flame of fire and on his head are many diadems.

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And he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood.

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And the name by which he is called is the word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses.

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From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. And he will rule them with a rod of iron.

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He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written,

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King of Kings and Lord of Lords. So this picture of Christ on a white horse is to show he is greater than Caesar.

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He is greater than the emperor. He will make war on the nations and he will be victorious. And only those who are in Christ Jesus will not be struck down in the wrath of God but will live with him forever in his peaceful kingdom that he ushers in after he has removed all of those who were evil, who did not know

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God or obey the gospel. That is taking what had previously been a

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Roman symbol of the emperor sitting on a white horse and instead placing Christ there because he is greater than Caesar.

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Right. We can do that with a Christmas tree. Just like the Bible has done that with the symbol of the white horse.

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It's in scripture. And it's also, when you hear a fuddy -duddy grinchy

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Christmas, or sorry, when you hear a fuddy -duddy grinchy

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Christian, that's what I was going for, that wants to get on you about not celebrating Christmas because it's this pagan thing and whatever else.

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Well, I mean, they're inconsistent in that argument. Christmas just happens to be the popular thing.

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And it happens to be that we can look back and see that there are somewhat pagan symbols related to other holidays that happen around that time of year.

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So we make this correlation to it being associated with Christmas. But look at that person who is arguing about Christmas Day with you and saying that it's pagan and check and see if they have a wedding ring on their hand.

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Oh. That was previously a pagan symbol that we have since incorporated into a cultural tradition.

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You have a wedding ring on. I have a wedding ring on. That symbolizes that we are bound to one another in oath and in covenant till death parts us.

40:43

Right. And the roundness of the ring symbolizing that, well, eternal.

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Until death parts us. So we will not be broken. Right. Doesn't mean eternal because we're not

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Mormon. I know. I was just kidding. Yes. Anyway. That's why I whispered it.

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So there are other things that we do that actually do have some sort of pagan association with them.

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But we're not worshiping that thing. It does not become something in our hearts that distracts us from the worship of our king or even causes someone else to stumble.

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Right. Christmas and Easter just become those targets every year. But those who will make the argument that it's associated with some sort of paganism.

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And so, therefore, we shouldn't do it. They're going to be inconsistent with that argument somewhere in their lives.

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They will be inconsistent. So how about. That would be exhausting to take out all of the things that used to be pagan and now they're.

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Oh, that would be a lot. The very fact that you're getting older and that you feel weak today is because of sin.

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Right. And the effects of the fall that are affecting your body. And you are reminded that we live.

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I was talking about that, too. Today? Just today you were talking about it? Yeah. That you feel tired and so you're going, thanks,

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Adam and Eve. I remember a time when I could get up off the floor without making the sound effects.

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And so there are so many different things that we're surrounded by in our lives that remind us of our sin and the fall and carnality and the flesh.

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And these things are always going to be around us as long as we're here. The apostle

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Paul said to the Corinthians that we know that an idol is an empty thing. There's nothing to an idol.

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Right. It's just a belonging. Being in its proximity somehow doesn't make you evil.

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But the condition of your heart before the Lord, do you honor him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength?

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Do you desire to live in holiness? Are you living upright and godly lives in this present age in Christ Jesus?

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Do you hate sin? Do you abhor your sin? And you want

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Christ to purify you of that sin so that you might walk in godliness. Do you repent of your sin?

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Yeah. And true repentance in which you are turning from it and not going back to it again. And is this the desire of your heart?

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For Jesus said in Matthew chapter 6, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

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And that's what we should be after. God's kingdom, living in his righteousness, and then

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God will provide for us all of the different things that we need. So sometimes we're going to get into things that may be pagan and origin.

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But just the fact that you've stumbled into it and did not understand the origin of it does not mean that you are inherently doing something evil.

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And because you have changed Christmas from something that may have been pagan at some point into a celebration of the incarnation of Christ, is not doing anything that would incur the wrath of God, as Dr.

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Sproul had said in the article that was read at the start of the program. That's right. Celebrate him every day.

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There you go. The Bible doesn't say anything about celebrating Christmas Day, but it does say that we shouldn't argue about days.

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So don't look down on the person who celebrates or don't look down on the person who doesn't celebrate.

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But yeah, as Becky said, let us celebrate the incarnation of Christ every day.

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Christ, who was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.

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But he emptied himself and made himself nothing, taking on the form of a servant, the very likeness of man, and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

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Therefore, God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is

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Lord to the glory of God the Father. There is the Apostle Paul's Christmas sermon right there in Philippians 2, verses 5 through 11.

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Celebrating the incarnation of Christ, that's what we remember every Christmas. Jesus Christ, who we read about earlier this week in 1

45:12

Timothy chapter 2, came into the world to save sinners. And that's what we remember at Christmastime.

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And we are eternally grateful. Yes. So as we close here, and I'm going to close with prayer, do you have any other

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Christmas traditions you're curious about? The origin might be? I'm asking you that, not the listeners that.

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I know, I'm trying to think. I don't know, what else do we do? Well, if you have any other...

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No, we talked about that. We talked about decorating. Singing. I think we've covered everything that we do.

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All right. Well, if you have any other questions, Christmas related or otherwise, doesn't matter, send your questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

45:58

Let's pray and then we'll conclude. Our Lord God, we thank you for sending your son

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Jesus to this world to die on the cross for our sins, rising again from the grave so that all who worship

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Christ will be forgiven their sins. And we have the assurance of a resurrection like his, in which our bodies, though they go into the ground, will once again rise on that day that Christ returned.

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The dead in Christ will rise. Our bodies will be transformed to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself.

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And so we worship our great God and King who brought about life in a virgin, conceived of the

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Holy Spirit. And she was found to be with child. And the child that she gave birth to was

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Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. If God can bring all things into existence from nothing just by speaking a word, then he could make this happen in this virgin girl in the

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Middle East 2 ,000 years ago, that he would be the Savior of mankind, free from the stain of original sin, living the perfect life and dying his death on the cross for our sins.

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We praise you for this amazing, marvelous work that we reflect upon each and every Christmas. And as we are approaching this holiday season, may we also remember the

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Sproul family, the St. Andrew's Chapel there in Orlando, Ligonier Ministries, and all of those who are associated with Dr.

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Sproul and what he was doing through the ministry of Ligonier, as they are mourning the loss of their dear friend.

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I pray that Ligonier would remain strong in what Dr. Sproul had established there on the word of God, the inerrancy of the scriptures, so that we might continue to hear great teaching come out of that ministry, even though our dear brother in the

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Lord is now with the Lord in glory. Thank you for his ministry and everything that he has done and continues to impact people the world over.

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May we continue to live faithfully in Christ, just as this man exhibited in his life.

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We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. What kind of stuff?

49:34

You gotta be careful singing, because you never know, that might end up at the end.

49:40

We had enough complaints. No, I had enough complaints. That's because they're kind to me.

49:47

It's complaints about me rapping. So they complain about you, but indirectly. Because I can take it.

49:55

That's right, I can't. I can handle it. I think I must be a tough guy, but inside I'm weepy.

50:03

Oh, whatever. They don't like my rapping. Whatever. I wanted to make a career as a rapper.