No, Christmas is NOT PAGAN

Is everything we do at Christmas simply a rehashing of Saturnalia celebrations and Mithraian paganism? No, it's not. And that's what we're going to talk about today on Conversations with a Calvinist,.

Which begins right now. And welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist. My name is.

Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist. And I am excited to be joined today by two of my good friends. First, my very own Captain America, Chris Hanholtz, is with me today. And of course, everyone's favorite, not yet Calvinist, my friend and now elder, Matthew Henson.

Matthew Henson, thank you for being with us. Both of you gentlemen, thank you for being with us today.

Glad to be here. Yep. Times may change, but the intro never will. And I'm glad for that.

You're everybody's favorite, not yet Calvinist.

Not yet Calvinist. Okay.

I love it. Well, we're going to jump right into the topic today, because I think it's going to take all of our time that we have allotted for this, and I don't want to put it off. I want to get right into it.

And that is the question of the subject of, is Christmas pagan? That's what we're going to be talking about, because recently, particularly, it has become very common to attribute all of the trappings of the Christmas season to ancient pagan festivals and celebrations.

In fact, one of the times I remember most clearly in recent years, this happening was on an episode of the Big Bang Theory. And I don't know how many people have ever seen that show, but in that show, it's about a group of scientists who are all friends and the things that go on in their life, and they were doing their Christmas episode.

Well, in the Christmas episode, their neighbor, Penny, mentioned, asking them, were they going to get a Christmas tree? And Sheldon, who is famous for being very, sort of a know-it-all, just begins to exclaim how the Christmas is, all of the trappings of Christmas are really actually taken from the Saturnalia Festival, and that the Christmas tree and all the things surrounding it are are really stolen from pagan traditions.

So it got me to thinking, is this true? This is something that many people say, and even Christians, I've heard say it. Many Christians have assumed that this is correct because people simply say it. They simply take it for granted.

Well, sure, okay, these are actually pagan things, but it's okay because we adopted them into Christianity many years ago, and it didn't have anything to do with me, so it really doesn't matter if it's pagan.

But what I am discovering, and this is an important thing, is that many of the arguments that people make about these historical ties to paganism in regard to Christianity, many of them are not actually true.

Films like Zeitgeist and Religious with Bill Maher made many claims about Christianity, saying that Jesus was no different from Mithras, or no different from Horus, or any of the other false gods of antiquity.

And they make all of these claims, but when those claims are actually examined, we find that they're actually not true. And I did an entire sermon about this, not just a few weeks ago, when I was teaching through apologetics on a Sunday morning at Sovereign Grace, where I showed some of the arguments from those films, and I said, here's what those arguments are, and here's what the actual facts are, and they're not lining up.

They're actually not true. So I got to thinking, is that true about Christmas? So I wanted to ask you guys right away, have you heard these arguments? What are your thoughts immediately when you hear people say this, and how do you think this fits into the culture today of modern Christianity?

I'll let you go first, Chris, if you don't mind. Let me know your thoughts on this. Yeah, I think most of us have heard a lot of these arguments, and I think it's a lot of what you just said. We tend to accept it because somebody else said it, and there's not a lot of effort taken to look into those.

I think it was Lutheran Satire that actually did a great couple of videos addressing those very claims. If you haven't had a chance, folks, go to YouTube, look up Lutheran Satire, and he addresses those very claims about Christ is actually Mithras, and no, he's not.

Here's what the historical facts are. Oh, well, really, it's this. No, it's not that. It's a great little video to help you to learn what the historical facts are behind it. I think a lot of it comes from the fact that when we hear that something that we have kind of been used to doing all our lives may actually be something that has maybe a not so Christian background, I think our natural bent is to say, Well, I don't want to do something that's going to dishonor God.

And so we, without a lot of thought, we'll jump into that. And I think a real good example of that, I think it was Voti Baucom talking about a lot of the woke ideology. It's like, Well, why did people accept this so readily?

Because Christians don't want to be racist. They don't want to hate their brothers and sisters. And so even though the ideology was false, they accepted it because they wanted to do what was right. And I think as Christians, we hear something about, Oh, you mean this practice that, you know, there was a lot of family memories tied to this.

We've done it so unquestioningly. And you mean there might be something negative or sinful about it? No, I don't want to be a part of that. And so we do it without really thinking about it. And it's unfortunate because I think we, in our zeal to do what we believe is right, we almost unquestionably accept things in an effort to appear to do right.

And that, that can really do, it can be, really do some negative things. It's not to say that there aren't things about Christmas or other, you know, cultural celebrations that we get involved in that may or may not have some sinful issues.

But we're just a little too quick sometimes to accept what's presented to us without actually doing any kind of legwork on it. No, I think that's exactly right. Matthew, do you have thoughts about that?

Well, certainly the one thing that any practicing Christian doesn't want to be told is you're acting like a pagan, right? I mean, that the very word has a heavy weight to it that we want to avoid as assiduously as we possibly can.

So those accusations can be very charged. And then on the other side, like Chris was just saying, well, my daddy did it this way, and his daddy did it this way, and his daddy did it this way. And we've had a, you know, a roast on Christmas Eve, and we've had a opening presents.

And so you, so people come with their own kind of heavily charged emotional sort of baggage to this. And it can create a really unfortunate mixture between the two. It's a, I wouldn't say oil and water as much as baking soda and vinegar when the two come together sometimes.

And that's really unfortunate because it's a beautiful example to look at church history. It's a great way to look at a lot of the typology that's built into Christmas. A lot of the reminders we use for stuff to help remind us of different parts of the story.

I don't know about your churches, but at our church right now, we're going through specific, we're a non-denominational church. So we don't follow a particular liturgy or anything like that, or a book of common prayer or anything like that.

But right now we're doing Advent. And so every Sunday we're reading a particular relevant passage from the Christmas story and lighting the peace candle and the joy candle and the, you know, and you know, that's, that's a tradition.

But it helps our people to sort of see these themes throughout Advent. It connects them in a sense to church history. I think it's a beautiful thing. And I find it unfortunate, sadly, that we're even having to have the conversation, but I think it's edifying.

I think it's important. And the last thing I'll say is it's certainly a more, in my opinion, it's a more worthwhile conversation than say the, the sometimes parallel one about Halloween, because there's a lot of stuff that goes on around Halloween that we should definitely raise our eyebrows about and maybe not be so much involved in.

And I have definite sympathy for that position. But Christmas is specifically a season focused upon the incarnation and the birth of the sun. And so there's a much higher, in my opinion, a much more scrutiny we should put on it.

We should be trying to get it right. And we should be understanding our history properly if we're going to talk about it.

Good deal. And have, have either one of you done any, have either one of you seen or heard about the Zeitgeist film? I mentioned that in my opening as well as Religious with Bill Maher. Are y 'all familiar with the arguments that those films make and some of the responses that have been,.

That have been given to those?

I've heard of them. I've heard some of the arguments coming out of them in, in various forums. Have I spent time watching either of them? No. Okay. Matthew?

No, I haven't watched them. I, well, I'll say if you have Keith, I wanted to hear, let you go on those, but like Chris, I've analyzed some of the arguments coming out of them and well, anyway, you go, you go ahead.

Cause I had something I wanted to say, but we're going to hear what you thought first.

Oh, okay. Well, well, I was interested recently. I, and William Lane Craig is not my favorite apologist. I have some issues with him on, on, on a few, on a few things, but, but, but he does say some good things.

And I, and I saw him in a, in, in a college setting where one of the college students says, how can you believe in Christianity when there's all of these ties to pagan beliefs, the things about Jesus were the same things that were believed about Mithras, same things.

And, and he immediately, and I was proud of William, William Lane Craig for saying, that's not the case. That's actually not true. And he quoted a, a scholar who had, had done a tremendous amount of research in this area.

And it pointed me to him. I don't have his name right off the top of my head, but this scholar has done some tremendous work to demonstrate that much of what is in both of these films. And I have seen them, but what's in these films, these arguments that are being made are, are, are either tremendous exaggerations or they are piles of reindeer feces is what they are.

They're either, they're either exaggerations or just loads of garbage. I just say reindeer feces, you know, for the keep, keep, keep it.

Totally appropriate. Totally appropriate for the time. Very seasonal. Yeah. Yeah. So, so that's my,.

That's my thought on it is, are there some things that are, that can tangentially be brought together? Jesus, we call Jesus the God-man. Were there other people who were called God-man? Yeah. I mean, Caesar was, was considered to be divine.

There's certainly no doubt that there are certain historical connections, but to say that this is that Christians stole this, or Christians took this, or Christians have adopted this and created their theology or their practice based upon these other things is, is a, is, is wildly inappropriate.

But go ahead.

And say what you were going to say, Matthew. Well, the thing I find interesting is that we, we see the Christ story coming from those who don't even claim to be Christian all the time. I mean, something like Lord of the Rings or Narnia, of course, those are, they were intended as allegorical retellings of the story of, of the scriptures.

But, you know, even something like, and I'm really hitting a Halloween trip wire around now, but when you look at something like even the Harry Potter franchise, which is incredibly inflammatory when it comes to should we or shouldn't we or whatever.

I mean, the final movie has, you know, Harry dying essentially, and then coming back to defeat the great evil person. And the place that he goes is called King's Cross while he's dead. Like, I mean, she didn't intend this.

I'm sure she didn't mean to, but the very metanarrative of the scriptures is just so evident to us that oftentimes we can't help but make those kinds of connections, even if we're very far off from God.

And that's especially true since the cross. But I think you can, you can certainly see it a little bit, even in cultures.

And practices before then. Well, I think that's one of the things I always find interesting is when we hear these arguments, Oh, Jesus is just Mithras. Why is it not the other way around? I mean, we have the Jewish scriptures going all the way back to creation, all having the prophecies of Christ coming incarnate.

All throughout this time, the people of God have had interactions with all these other cultures that are ungodly. How is it that it's Christianity that stole rather than the other nations stealing from the scriptures?

And I think it just testifies to what you were just saying, Matthew, is that Christ's narrative is, it spreads no matter how you try to erase it. It continues to spread all throughout cultures around the world.

And the way that you never see anybody arguing that, well, Oh, well, you know, Mithras is such a phony thing. They clearly stole that from Jesus. You never hear that because it has no influence on the culture.

It has no ability to impact the culture, but Christianity does. So the obvious intent and going back to the reindeer feces arguments is they are taking these tangential connections and going, well, we're never going to argue the opposite because it wouldn't serve our narrative.

So we're going to argue it this way and this way only. And without any honest, objective analysis of which one, if at all influenced the other, it's just, it's, it's kind of that, you know, the, you know, correlation doesn't prove causality.

Well, these two are similar, so they must be connected. Yep. Why? Where's the obvious connection? What's remarkable.

To me is one of the great comforts to me as a believer in something like the Genesis flood narrative is that you see it in cultures all over the place. It's like, you've got flood narrative over here, got a flood narrative over here and all these ancient documents.

No one says, Oh, look, we stole the flood narrative from the Phoenicians or something. We say, no, the flood happened and other cultures recorded some sort of event like it. We use their, their quote unquote, or we don't ever to your point, Chris, we go the correct direction.

In my mind, we say they took it from us rather than us taking it from them. And, and in that case, we use it as, as further bolstering our own point. But for some reason, it seems like with Christmas and a couple other issues, we, we, we flip it around and we see it as a, as a bad thing.

And the correlation causation thing is absolutely true. None of these, none of this argumentation, the zeitgeist stuff, what I was going to say, Keith is reindeer feces is a much more, a much better metaphor.

I was going to say, it's basically like the Da Vinci code after round three of some sort of drinking game. That's kind of what it would come out to be. But, but the thing is we, we never, we would never use the standard of argumentation in any kind of say a legal proceeding.

Like if you're trying to prove that this was the guy that did the bad thing, well, your honor, we believe it was done by a human who drank water and breathes air and that guy on the stand, he drinks water and breathes air.

So, I mean, form your own conclusions. That's the standard of evidence we're dealing with here and Christians respectfully should not reason that way. Amen. Yep. Amen. I also want to.

Show how, how, how Matthew is very much more cultured than I, because when he makes his connection to something that, you know, something based on the Jesus story, you know, you mentioned Harry Potter, that's, that's more high culture.

I was thinking how RoboCop has a similar, uh, you know, person coming back to life. At one point he walks on water, you know, this is, there's a, there's an entire thing that RoboCop is, uh, is really just a, is, is, is based on the Jesus.

I'm shocked that you didn't go to the man of steel route. I mean, come on, that was an obvious moment there. I'm looking at Superman. There's a Superman poster right over my shoulder. So I, that would have been too easy, Chris.

I mean, there's Christological metaphors in the first Avengers movie where you have Stark carrying his cross through the town, which is the thing that's going to kill them all, but he's going to take it upon himself.

You know, I don't think that they were sitting around writing that with the new Testament open, but I don't think they were able to avoid it.

Either. No. Yeah. It's, it's a consistent theme as he, as you said earlier. So we, I, I sent you guys a note before the show a couple of days ago and I said, let's talk about four things. So this, this, this is going to keep us from going too far off the rails.

Cause if we just said, let's talk about Christmas, there's too much stuff, but here are the four things that I would like for us to talk about today. And I have some notes and I want to hear your thoughts as well.

The first is the, the dating of the birth of Jesus. We, the myth is that, that this is somehow connected to the birth of other pagan gods and that December 25th was a stolen date, or it was used as co-opted for the use by Christians from other already pre-established festivals that were on December 25th.

So that's the first thing. The second thing is the subject of Christmas trees. Chris and I have a little a personal issue on this one because we both, we both had some Twitter arguments, not with each other, but some folks who came after us on Twitter, him, him more specifically, cause I threw him under the bus and ran.

But, but, and then the third one is going to be Santa Claus. And the last one is going to be the giving of gifts. These, these are four things that are traditionally Christmas, associated with Christmas, specifically the trees, Santa Claus, and the giving of gifts.

But, but let's begin with the birth of Jesus. Now, how many, have, have each of you heard people say that the birth of Jesus is, is, has been co-opted and that there's no reason to believe Jesus was born on December 25th?

I've heard it in a variety of ways. I think I've heard the, the reference to either pagan gods or Caesar or something to that effect. Again, I think there's probably a lot of that. It's been presented, so therefore it must be true.

To me, it's one of those things of scripture doesn't tell us when he was born. I think there's reasonable speculations that I've heard in, you know, for a couple of different dates and seasons, but we're not given a specific date.

It's not like the feast day, feast days. So we don't have that. And so when we get into this particular debate, the first thing I ask is this, this, it's almost like, it's kind of like angels dancing on the head of a pin.

Why are we debating that specific date? Scripture doesn't give it to us. Now, if we've chosen that date, maybe because it was the, you know, the Catholic church at the time adopted it, made, you know, Christ mass, and this is the day we want to choose or whatever.

So be it. I don't have any heartache with that because the issue for me is the incarnation of Christ, whether it happened in the spring, the summer, the fall, the winter is less important to me than the fact that Christ took on flesh.

So we can certainly get into that. But again, is that, you know, is that something you can prove or is it simply a correlation issue? And if it is provable, then how are you certain that us acknowledging Christ was born and we've chosen this date to do so is in fact adopting a pagan practice?

It's the same argument to me as, well, Christmas is pagan. You know, you're going to, you can't just present it because it's been restated on the internet a million times. You're going to have to come up with something more specific.

And ultimately I'm more concerned about Christ's incarnation than what the specific.

Date was. Good deal. Matthew? Well, I mean, just to bounce off that last point Easter, for instance, you know, Easter is, and I'm going to, I'm sorry, I'm going to mess this up. I could have had it in show notes here, but Easter is placed on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox or solstice.

One of the two, there's a defined formula based upon that. And that was really important to early Christians because they felt that we should be celebrating this, the Catholic uppercase C, not Roman Catholic, but the Catholic church, all the believers in Christ, the universal church should celebrate Easter on the same day.

And so it was a really big deal. And so they're an agrarian, mostly agrarian society, you know, when the harvest moon is and that this moon and that moon. And so people were able to do that even, you know, cross-culturally and it wasn't dependent upon when the first rain or the first snow, because now you're a multi-country religion.

So it was, it was important. They got it right on that in that sense, but it wasn't, it didn't mean that we forgot that Christ rose from the dead if we got the date wrong. So just some stuff on specifically the 25th, Saturnalia was never on the 25th.

It wasn't.

Amen. I was going to point that out in my notes, but thank you for saying that. That's important because people say, oh, well, this is that. No, it's not. Yeah.

It is not. Saturnalia began 14 days before January, which would come out to December 17th using the Roman calendar dates. It lasted for three days, maybe. It was not a festival that correlated with the 25th.

It just didn't. Simple as, you know, we don't need to go too much more into that. Most of the other things like Yule and other kind of sort of pagan holidays or whatever, the earliest evidence we have of them being on the 25th occurs centuries after the Christ event.

Um, and we have Christ's arrival to thank for our entire system of dating. So, uh, in the year of our Lord, uh, you know, 423 or whatever, uh, that's what, you know, that's when you start to see some of the evidence of these later pagan holidays being on the 25th.

And again, I'm just going to keep calling it Chris's point. How come we say we stole it from them when the evidence suggests they stole it from us? Most likely. Yep. Well, I want to point out something.

That, uh, I'm going to piggyback on something that you said, Matthew, and that is that the dating of Easter was a very big, important part of the early churches, uh, uh, formula trying to figure out when this date was and, and having a day to celebrate it.

In fact, most people don't understand, but in the council of Nicaea, we, we know what the, the council of Nicaea was mostly about, and that was about the issue with Arius and the, and the, uh, establishing of the, uh, the Nicene Creed, which were in, in regards, understanding the, uh, the Trinitarian, uh, doctrine of Christ being of the same substance as the Father.

But also in the Nicene council, there was a conversation about the dating of Easter because these things mattered, these dates mattered. And so if you look into the canons of Nicaea and look into some of what was being discussed, the, the, the dating of Easter was part of that conversation and dates have always mattered to Christians.

I love the fact that Matthew just pointed out the fact that, yeah, we have, uh, a calendar that's based on Christ and we have a calendar that's probably incorrect because Jesus was not born in the year zero.

There was no year zero. We don't know what year he was born, but there has been a consistent tradition about Jesus's birth, which dates back to the third century. And it begins by based by, by, with the question of the annunciation.

Now, the annunciation is when Jesus's, um, uh, mother, Mary received the statement from Gabriel that she was going to have a child that we call that the annunciation, the, the, the, the, the, the statement by Gabriel that you're highly favored by God and, and the Holy Ghost is going to come upon you and, and that which is born within you will be called son of God that, that, that, that happened at a specific time.

And Luke's gospel tells us that that happened in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy. Now, Elizabeth of course, is Mary's cousin, the mother of John the Baptist. So Elizabeth is in her sixth month when Mary is in her, uh, receiving the annunciation of the birth.

Now, so the early church tried to decide when that was and the, the, the, the, where they came to a conclusion, or at least where some of them came to the conclusion was based on Zachariah's service in the temple because Zachariah's service in the temple was regarding how he, uh, uh, or, or rather the type of service he was regard, uh, doing in the temple, which had to do with incense, regarded incense had to do with a certain time of year.

And therefore they could put that in late September, which would put the annunciation in late March, which would put the birth of Jesus in late December. Therefore, December 25th is a tradition that goes back to the early third century.

We're talking around 220. It had already been established by three different people, Irenaeus Hippolytus and Sextus Julius Africanus. And I've never heard of him before today when I was doing this research, but I like that name.

Sextus Julius Africanus had established the date of Jesus's birth as December 25th. Now I agree with both of you. We don't know that that's true. We don't have a, uh, we, we don't have anything in scripture that proves it.

But my point is simply this, the, the, the, the men who were trying to figure this out, weren't basing this on the birth of Mithras. They weren't based, basing this on Saturnalia. They were looking to the scripture and trying to figure this out.

Okay. Here's where Zacharias or Zachariah received his, uh, you know, uh, time with the, with the angel who, who gave him the, the inability to speak. And, and we know about that. And, and here's where the angel spoke to, to Mary.

And this was at the sixth month of, of Elizabeth's, uh, uh, having been impregnated. Therefore, let's do some math. These guys were, they were doing math. And that's my only point is, do we know? No. Did they know?

No. But were they basing this on some weird pagan ritual? No, they were trying to be good stewards of their information in the same way that we do. So that's, that's my argument is that it, it's not about paganism.

It's about trying to determine something based upon what information they had. So, and let me just add one thing to that, Keith, because you, I think you really make a point that so often gets lost in this.

Oftentimes when we hear, oh, well, the Roman Catholic church came up with, we assume because so much bad did come out of the Roman Catholic church, that everything they ever came up with was just heretical nonsense, but church history is not so not so cut and dry.

And so, as you've pointed out, there are points in periods with, within even the Roman Catholic church history that people were not necessarily just saying, what, what is the latest heresy we can come up with, but rather what, what is the right way to look at this?

Even though they got a lot of things wrong as, as, as the Holy Roman Catholic church grew into the apostate organization, it was, you still had serious scholarship trying to determine some of these things out.

They weren't just grabbing things willy-nilly and throwing them into this mixed bag of things so they could come up with a complete mess. And so it is, as Christians, that's a reflection on us when we fail to take that in consideration.

I got the book set up here on 2000 Years of Christ's Power that Dr. White was the first one that introduced it to me. And my, one of my pastors brought it up. I read the first book and I was amazed how much was going on just in the early centuries of the church that I had never given consideration to.

And so when we are so quick to grab onto, well, Catholic church came up with that. So therefore it must be pagan. We are doing a huge disservice to Christian history. And we're, we're, it tells us that we're a lot more gullible than we think.

That is hugely true. And I, and I remember one time I was asked about teaching a history class. And, and, and I said, well, if I teach a history class, I would like to teach about the early creeds and confessions.

And the person said, but those are all Catholic. I said, well, yes, but not the way you think. They're Catholic with that universal Catholic, not Roman Catholic. So, yeah, that's, that's absolutely true.

So Matthew, you look like you had a thought there. I didn't.

Want to over. Well, I, just to give the other side, it's due. It is the case that, for example, the Marian dogmas are derived from Proto-Evangelium of James, you know, some, some very wild and crazy kind of stuff that, that are effectively Gnostic.

And you could therefore put that as a smaller category underneath pagan. So Rome has veered into this, into this area before. And, and luckily as Protestants, though, it's not hard for us to say, we keep the good with the bad.

And we'll, how do you know? Well, the scriptures, we are top line. So the scriptura is what we rest on. And so we can evaluate every single thing that came from church history against the scriptures. And we don't have to, we can take the good with the bad.

We can say they were right about this and they were wrong about that. And you know, that, that comes with a great sense of peace in a lot of this stuff that I think is sometimes missing when like Chris was saying, excuse me, or like you were saying, I don't want to learn the Nicene Creed.

That's Catholic. Well, we, yeah, but also let's test it against the scriptures. And if it holds up, then, you know, let's take it for the good that God gave it to us as.

Amen. Amen. Well, the second thing that we have on the list is the, this is a little bit more controversial because even, even I think, I think even, even among, even within this conversation, the dating of Jesus's birth, most everyone would say, yes, we don't know for sure.

Therefore we've chosen a date. We're going to celebrate on that date. No matter what else has been connected with it, December 25th, that's fine. Just like, you know, you know, we, we, in their scripture, we can say, you know, the scripture talks about the fact that the, you know, one man esteems one day as, and others esteems all day alike.

So, so we can, we can debate the day and it doesn't, it doesn't have to have a it doesn't have to know. People don't necessarily have to call us pagan or whatever if we celebrate December 25th, but when it comes to Christmas trees, as Chris has discovered, he posted something in support of Christmas trees.

I don't remember what you said, Chris, but it was obviously super controversial because by the end of that day, you, you had a huge sub thread of. A lot of people are now muted on my, on my Twitter account.

So what it was is I actually went back and found it. It was a meme that somebody came up with. It's a picture of a Christmas tree. And it says, sit down, Facebook Pharisees and cyber Sanhedrin, Jeremiah 10, two through four is not talking about Christmas trees.

And I think I just said, shared it with the phrase, just saying, you know, so it was, and it was amazing because I think a lot of people recognized what I was pointing to. I wasn't trying to make a, you know, okay.

Yes. I woke up and chose violence that day, apparently. But the point of it was, is that that passage, people see, they see, they, they look at here, well, let's read it. Let's, let's let it bring everybody into context here.

Jeremiah 10, two through four says, thus says the Lord, learn not the ways of the nations, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens because the nations are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vanity.

A tree from the forest is cut down and worked with an ax by the hand of a craftsman. They decorate it with silver and gold. They fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move. Stop. That's, that's the passage.

Everybody goes, it's about Christmas trees. You're got a pagan idol in your home. Not quite. There's a fourth, there's a fuller context to this passage. And it says in verse five, their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field, and they cannot speak.

They have to be carried for they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them for they cannot do evil. Neither is it in them to do good for there's none like you. Oh Lord, you are great. And in your name is great.

And your name is great in might. Who would not fear you? Oh, king of nations for this is your due for among all the wise ones of the nations and in all their kingdoms, there is none like you. They are both stupid and foolish.

Again, speaking of the idols, the instruction of idols is, but would beaten silver is brought from Tarshish, gold and gold from Uphaz. They are the work of the craftsmen and of the hands of the goldsmith.

Their clothing is violet and purple. They are all the work of skilled men. And then, you know, again, verse 10, comparing to the Lord, but the Lord is the true God. He is the living God and everlasting king at his wrath, the earthquakes and the nations cannot endure his indignation.

So comparing not Christmas trees, but graven idols, carved idols from wood laid with silver and gold. In other words, a statue, you know, decorated specifically to be worshiped. And so what happens is you get to verse four and you go, Oh, it's a tree.

It's been cut down. It's been, it's got silver and gold. It's been put up with, uh, with some sort of stand. Oh, that's a Christmas tree. And unfortunately, you know, I've heard that said so many times over the years and people, again, are not taking in that context.

And I, I believe zealously desiring to do what is right and good go, well, I can't have that. That's a tree. It's got silver and gold. It's all lit up. And then we go back to the argument of Saturnalia and all those other, uh, correlate what appear to be correlating practices.