No, Christmas is NOT PAGAN

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Is everything we do at Christmas simply a rehashing of Saturnalia celebrations and Mithraian paganism?

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No, it's not. And that's what we're going to talk about today on Conversations with a Calvinist, which begins right now.

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And welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a

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Calvinist. And I am excited to be joined today by two of my good friends.

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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,

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

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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.

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Not yet Calvinist. 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.

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I want to get right into it. And that is the question of the subject of, is Christmas pagan?

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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

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Christmas season to ancient pagan festivals and celebrations. In fact, the, one of the times

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I remember most clearly in recent years, this happening was on an episode of the big bang theory.

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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.

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And, and, and they were doing their Christmas episode while in the Christmas episode, uh, their neighbor,

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Penny mentioned asking them, were they going to get a Christmas tree? And Sheldon, who is famous for being a very, uh, sort of a know -it -all, just begins to exclaim how their, their, the, the

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Christmas is, is all of the, all of the trappings of Christmas are really actually taken from the

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Saturnalia festival, and that the Christmas tree and all the things surrounding it are, are, are, are really, uh, stolen from pagan traditions.

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So, um, it got me to thinking, is this true? You know, this is something that many people say, and even

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Christians I've heard say it. They, many Christians have assumed that this is correct because people simply say it.

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They, they simply take it for granted. Well, well, sure. Okay. These are actually pagan things, but it's okay because we, you know, we, we, we adopted them into Christianity many years ago and it didn't have anything to do with me.

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So it really doesn't matter if it's pagan. But what I am discovering, and, and, 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.

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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.

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But when those claims are actually examined, we find that they're actually not true.

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And I did an entire sermon about this, uh, not just a few weeks ago when I was teaching through Apologetics on a

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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.

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They're actually not true. So I got to thinking, is that true about Christmas?

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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?

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And, um, what, how do you think this fits into the culture today of modern Christianity? I'll let you go first, uh,

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Chris, uh, if you don't mind, let me know your thoughts on this. Uh, yeah, I think, I think most of us have heard a lot of these arguments, and I think it's a lot of like what you just said.

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We tend to accept it because somebody else said it, and there's not a lot of, uh, effort taken to, to look into those.

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I think, um, uh, it was Lutheran Satire that actually did a great couple of videos addressing those very claims.

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If you haven't had a chance, folks, go to YouTube, look up Lutheran Satire, and he addresses those very claims about, you know,

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Christ is actually Mithras. And, oh, no, he's not there. Here's what the historical facts are. Oh, well, really it's this.

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No, it's not that. It's a great, uh, little video to help, help you to learn what the historical facts are behind it.

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And I think a lot of it comes from the fact that when we hear, um, that something that we have kind of been used to doing all our lives may actually be something that's, has a, you know, maybe a not -so -Christian background,

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I think our, 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.

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And, and, uh, I think a real good example of that, I think it was Voti Baucom talking about, uh, the, a lot of the woke ideology.

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It's like, well, why did people accept this so readily? Because Christians don't want to be, uh, racist.

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They don't want to hate, uh, their brothers and sisters. And so even though the ideology was false, they accepted it because they wanted to do what was right.

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And I think as Christians, we hear something about, oh, you mean this practice that, uh, that, you know, there was a lot of family memories tied to this.

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It's, we've done it so unquestioningly. And, and you mean there might be something negative or sinful about it?

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No, I don't want to be a part of that. And so we do it without really thinking about it. And it's, 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.

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And that, that can really do, it can be, uh, really do some negative things. It's not to say that there aren't things about Christmas or other, you know, um, 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.

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No, I think that's exactly right. Matthew, do you have thoughts about that? Well, certainly, uh, the one thing that any practicing

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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, um, as, as, as assiduously as we possibly can.

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So those, those accusations can be very charged. And then on the other side, like Chris was just saying, um, well, my daddy did it this way and his daddy did it this way and his daddy did it this way.

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And we've had a, you know, a, a roast on Christmas Eve and we've had a opening presence.

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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, um, mixture between the two.

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It's a, I wouldn't say oil and water as much as baking soda and vinegar when the two come together sometimes.

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And that's really unfortunate because it's a beautiful example to look at church history. It's a great way to, um, look at a lot of the typology that's built into Christmas.

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Um, a lot of the, a lot of the reminders we use for stuff to help remind us of different parts of the story.

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I don't know about your churches, but at our church right now, we're going through specific, we're a non -denominational church.

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Uh, so we don't follow a particular, uh, liturgy or anything like that, or, or a book of common prayer or anything like that.

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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.

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Um, but it helps our people to sort of see these themes throughout Advent. It connects them in a sense to church history.

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I think it's a beautiful thing. Um, and I, I find it unfortunate, sadly, that we're even having to have the conversation, but I think it's edifying.

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I think it's important. Um, 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.

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And I, I have definite sympathy for that position. Um, but Christmas is specifically a season focused upon, uh, the incarnation and the birth of the sun.

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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.

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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, uh, have either one of you seen or heard about the

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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, uh, some of the responses that have been, that have been given to those?

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I've heard of them. I've heard some of the arguments coming out of them, uh, in, in various forms. Have I spent time watching either of them?

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No. Okay. Matthew? Uh, no, I haven't watched them. Um, I, well

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I'll say if you have Keith, I wanted to hear, let you go on those, but I like Chris, I've analyzed some of the arguments coming out of them and, uh, well, anyway, you go, you go ahead.

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Cause I had something I wanted to say, but we're going to hear what you thought first. Oh, okay. Well, um, well

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I was interested recently. I, uh, and, and William Lane Craig is not my favorite apologist.

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I have some issues with him on, on, on a few, on a few things, but, but, but he does say some good things.

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And I, and I saw him in a, uh, 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?

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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.

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That's actually not true. And he quoted a, a scholar who had, had done a tremendous amount of research in this area.

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And it pointed me to him. I don't have his name right off the top of my head, but this scholar, uh, has done some tremendous work to demonstrate that much of what is in both of these films.

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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.

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

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Yeah. Only appropriate for very seasonal. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so that's my, that's my thought on it is, uh, are there some things that are, uh, that, that can tangentially be brought together?

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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.

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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,

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Matthew. Well, the thing I find interesting is that we, we see the

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Christ story coming from those who don't even claim to be Christian all the time. Um, I mean something like Lord of the

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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, you know, really hitting a

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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 be, or shouldn't we, or whatever.

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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

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King's Cross while he's dead. Like, I mean, she didn't intend this,

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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 kind of connections, even if we're very far off from God.

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Um, and that's especially true since the cross, um, but I think you can, you can certainly see it a little bit, uh, even in cultures and practices before then.

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Well, I think that's one of the things I always find interesting is when we hear these arguments, oh, Jesus is just Mithras.

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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, you know,

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Christ coming incarnate all throughout this time that, you know, the, you know, the people of God have had interactions with all these other cultures that are ungodly.

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How is it that it's Christianity that stole rather than the other nations stealing from the scriptures?

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And I think this, 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.

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And the way that you never see anybody arguing that, well, well, you know, Mithras is such a phony thing.

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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.

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So the obvious intent and going back to the, 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.

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

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

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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.

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It's like, you've got flood narrative over here, got a flood narrative over here and all these ancient documents.

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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.

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We, we use their, their quote unquote, uh, or, or we don't ever to your point, Chris, we go the correct direction.

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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.

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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.

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And, um, the correlation causation thing is absolutely true. None of these, none of this argumentation, the zeitgeist stuff, what

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I was going to say, Keith is reindeer feces is a much more, a much better metaphor. Um, I was going to say it's basically like, uh, the

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Da Vinci code after round three of some sort of drinking game, that's kind of what it would come out to be.

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Um, but, but the thing is we, we never, we would never use the standard of argumentation in any kind of, say a legal proceeding.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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At one point he walks on water, you know, this is, there's a, there's an entire thing that RoboCop is a, is really just a, is, is, is based on the

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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.

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I'm looking at Superman. There's a Superman poster right over my shoulder. So I, that would have been too easy,

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Chris. Well, I mean, there's Christological metaphors in the first Avengers movie where you have

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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.

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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.

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No. Yeah. It's, it's a consistent theme as he, as you said earlier. So we,

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I, I, I sent you guys a note before the show a couple of days ago and I said, let's talk about four things.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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So that's the first thing. The second thing is the subject of Christmas trees. Chris and I have a little personal issue on this one because we both, we both had some

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Twitter arguments, not with each other, but some folks who came after us on Twitter, him, him more specifically, cause

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I threw him under the bus and ran. But and then the third one is going to be

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Santa Claus. And the last one is going to be the giving of gifts. These, these are four things that are traditionally

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Christmas associated with Christmas, specifically the trees, Santa Claus, and the giving of gifts.

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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

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Jesus was born on December 25th? I've heard it in a variety of ways. I think

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I've heard the, the reference to either pagan gods or Caesar or something to that effect.

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Again, I think there's probably a lot of that it's been presented.

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So therefore it must be true. To me, it's one of those things of scripture doesn't tell us when he was born.

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I think there's reasonable speculations that I've for a couple of different dates and seasons, but we're not given a specific date.

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It's not like the feast days. So we don't have that. And so when we get into this particular debate, the first thing

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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?

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Scripture doesn't give it to us. Now, if we've chosen that date, maybe because it was the, you know, the

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Catholic church at the time adopted it, made, you know, Christ mass, and this is the day we want to choose or whatever.

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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.

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So we can certainly get into that. But again, is that something you can prove or is it simply a correlation issue?

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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?

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

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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.

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Good deal. Matthew. Well, I mean, just to bounce off that last point

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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 one of the two, there's a defined formula based upon that.

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And that was really important to early Christians because they felt that we should be celebrating this, the Catholic uppercase

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C, not Roman Catholic, but the Catholic church, all the believers in Christ, the universal church should celebrate

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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.

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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.

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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.

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So just some stuff on specifically the 25th, Saturnalia was never on the 25th.

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It wasn't. Amen. I was going to point that out in my notes, but thank you for saying that.

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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

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Roman calendar dates. It lasted for three days, maybe.

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It was not a festival that correlated with the 25th. It just didn't.

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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

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Christ event. And we have Christ's arrival to thank for our entire system of dating.

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So in the year of our Lord, you know, 423 or whatever, that's when, you know, that's when you start to see some of the evidence of these later pagan holidays being on the 25th.

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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?

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Most likely. Well, I want to point out something that I'm going to piggyback on something that you said,

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Matthew, and that is that the dating of Easter was a very big, important part of the

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Church's formula, trying to figure out when this date was and having a day to celebrate it.

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In fact, most people don't understand, but in the Council of Nicaea, we know what the

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Council of Nicaea was mostly about, and that was about the issue with Arius and the establishing of the

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Nicene Creed, which were in regards understanding the Trinitarian doctrine of Christ being of the substance as the

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Father. But also in the Nicene Council, there was a conversation about the dating of Easter because these things mattered, these dates mattered.

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And so if you look into the canons of Nicaea and look into some of what was being discussed, the dating of Easter was part of that conversation.

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And dates have always mattered to Christians. I love the fact that Matthew just pointed out the fact that, yeah, we have 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.

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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 with the question of the

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Annunciation. Now, the Annunciation is when Jesus's mother

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Mary received the statement from Gabriel that she was going to have a child.

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We call that the Annunciation, the statement by Gabriel that you're highly favored by God, and the

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Holy Ghost is going to come upon you, and that which is born within you will be called Son of God. That happened at a specific time, and Luke's gospel tells us that that happened in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy.

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Now, Elizabeth, of course, is Mary's cousin, the mother of John the Baptist. So Elizabeth is in her sixth month when

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Mary is in her receiving the Annunciation of the birth. Now, so the early church tried to decide when that was, and 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, or rather the type of service he was 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

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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.

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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

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I was doing this research, but I like that name. Sextus Julius Africanus had established the date of Jesus's birth as December 25th.

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Now, I agree with both of you. We don't know that that's true. We don't have anything in Scripture that proves it, but my point is simply this.

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The men who were trying to figure this out weren't basing this on the birth of Mithras.

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They weren't basing this on Saturnalia. They were looking to the Scripture and trying to figure this out.

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Okay, here's where Zachariah received his time with the angel who gave him the inability to speak, and we know about that, and here's where the angel spoke to Mary, and this was at the sixth month of Elizabeth's having been impregnated.

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Therefore, let's do some math. These guys were doing math, and that's my only point is do we know?

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No. Did they know? No, but were they basing this on some weird pagan ritual?

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No. They were trying to be good stewards of their information in the same way that we do, so that's my argument is that it's not about paganism.

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It's about trying to determine something based upon what information they had. Let me just add one thing to that,

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Keith, because I think you really make a point that so often gets lost in this. Oftentimes, when we hear, oh, well, the

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Roman Catholic Church came up with, we assume because so much bad did come out of the

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Roman Catholic Church that everything they ever came up with was just heretical nonsense, but church history is not so cut and dry, and so as you've pointed out, there are points and periods within even the

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Roman Catholic Church history that people were not necessarily just saying what is the latest heresy we can come up with, but rather what is the right way to look at this?

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Even though they got a lot of things wrong 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.

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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.

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I got a book set up here on 2 ,000 years of Christ's power that Dr.

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White was the first one that introduced it to me, and one of my pastors brought it up. I read the first book, 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, the

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Catholic Church came up with that, so therefore it must be pagan. We are doing a huge disservice to Christian history, and it tells us that we're a lot more gullible than we think.

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That is hugely true, and I remember one time I was asked about teaching a history class, and I said, well, if I teach a history class,

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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.

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They're Catholic with that universal Catholic, not Roman Catholic, so yeah, that's absolutely true.

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So Matthew, you look like you had a thought there. I didn't want to over... Just to give the other side its due, it is the case that, for example, the

29:45

Marian dogmas are derived from Protoevangelium of James, some very wild and crazy kind of stuff that are effectively gnostic, and you could therefore put that as a smaller category underneath pagan, so Rome has veered into this area before, and luckily as Protestants, though, it's not hard for us to say we keep the good with the bad, and well, how do you know?

30:13

Well, the scriptures. We are top line, Sola 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...

30:24

We can take the good with the bad. We can say they were right about this, and they were wrong about that, and 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,

30:37

I don't want to learn the Nicene Creed. That's Catholic. Well, yeah, but also let's test it against the scriptures, and if it holds up, then let's take it for the good that God gave it to us as.

30:49

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

31:09

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.

31:15

Just like in their scripture, we could say the scripture talks about the fact that one man esteems one day and others esteems all day alike, so we can debate the day, and people don't necessarily have to call us pagan or whatever if we celebrate

31:38

December 25th, but when it comes to Christmas trees, as Chris has discovered, he posted something in support of Christmas trees.

31:50

I don't remember what you said, Chris, but it was obviously super controversial, because by the end of that day, you had a huge subthread.

32:02

A lot of people are now muted on my Twitter account. So what it was is

32:07

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

32:15

Sanhedrin. Jeremiah 10, 2 through 4 is not talking about Christmas trees. I think

32:21

I just shared it with the phrase, just saying. It was amazing, because I think a lot of people recognized what

32:32

I was pointing to. I wasn't trying to make a, okay, yes, I woke up and chose violence that day, apparently.

32:39

But the point of it was that that passage, people see, they look at, well, here, let's read it.

32:47

Let's bring everybody into context here. Jeremiah 10, 2 through 4 says, thus says the

32:54

Lord, learn not the ways of the nations, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens, because the nations are dismayed at them.

33:02

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.

33:08

They decorate it with silver and gold. They fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move. Stop. That's the passage.

33:16

Everybody goes, it's about Christmas trees. You're got a pagan idol in your home.

33:22

Not quite. There's a fuller context to this passage. And it says in verse 5, their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field, and they cannot speak.

33:33

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.

33:40

For there's none like you, O Lord. You are great, and your name is great in might.

33:48

Who would not fear you, O 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.

33:56

They are both stupid and foolish. Again, speaking of the idols, the instruction of idols is but wood.

34:03

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.

34:12

Their clothing is violet and purple. They are all the work of skilled men.

34:21

But the Lord is the true God. He is the living God and everlasting

34:26

King. At his wrath, the earthquakes and the nations cannot endure his indignation.

34:33

So comparing not Christmas trees, but graven idols, carved idols from wood laid with silver and gold.

34:41

In other words, a statue decorated specifically to be worshiped.

34:46

And so what happens is you get to verse 4 and you go, oh, it's a tree. It's been cut down. It's got silver and gold.

34:52

It's been put up with some sort of stand. Oh, that's a Christmas tree. And unfortunately,

34:58

I've heard that said so many times over the years, and people again are not taking in that context.

35:05

And I believe zealously desiring to do what is right and good go, well,

35:11

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, what appear to be correlating practices.

35:22

And we go, that's clearly something that's abomination to God. I can't have it in the home. And what happened is when

35:28

I shared that, I did not realize just how many actual

35:33

Judaizers are still in practice, especially on Twitter. I'm fairly certain that they have a network of people who simply look for the image of a

35:43

Christmas tree, because it takes about 30 seconds for one to show up if you post one online.

35:49

And that's where you came in. And thank you for throwing that more of them my way, because you did the same thing.

35:57

But what was interesting is, you share that meme and say, trying to explain, look, there's a context here.

36:05

And literally, not only were they telling me that I was worshiping a false idol.

36:13

Now, I understand there is a difference between those who are Sabbatarians who hold to say, like the

36:20

Westminster Confession of Faith and believe the Sabbath should be observed versus actual Judaizers who say the law of God in the

36:27

Old Testament and the Sabbath is on Saturday and all this thing. There's a difference.

36:32

When I say they were telling me, you need to be observing the Sabbath, I'm not talking about the Sabbatarian. I'm talking about, you need to obey the law of God.

36:41

You need to keep the Sabbath and all this stuff, as if they were taking the Old Testament and applying.

36:46

These were all the arguments being shot in at me. And it was all I could do to just mute them and move on because they were not having any kind of logical discussion, no biblical or rational discussion.

36:58

If you tried to even mention that, they just went off into left field. And I also found that the same crowd denies the deity of Christ, which was a whole different take

37:08

I wasn't even ready for. I was shocked when I saw that. I'm like, wait, what? But the whole point in this is that putting that group aside,

37:19

I think there are a great many Christians who look at the Western cultural practice of Christmas, and that is worthy of debate.

37:29

I happen to be on a round table discussion called Theology Throwdown that the network that I'm part of,

37:35

Christian Podcast Community, does once a month. And we were talking about Christmas traditions. And here we are starting with a discussion about Christmas itself, its dating, its comparison to potential pagan festivals, et cetera, versus Western Christmas traditions.

37:55

Now, there's nothing in what we do, and this is going to maybe rub a little people the wrong way when they hear me say it, but just hear me for a second.

38:04

There's nothing neither commanded nor prohibited in observing a cultural celebration.

38:10

So July 4th, President's Day, Memorial Day, all the things that we do as Americans, for example, there are many cultural celebrations that we participate in that unless it were to be proven to be sinful to do, we can participate in and we're not violating scripture in any way.

38:32

A cultural tradition of gift giving, lights and carols and hot chocolate and food and all this stuff is not something that is in and of itself either prohibited or commanded.

38:46

We can do that. So now the question becomes, because it happens to be a cultural adaptation of Christmas, where do we draw that line?

38:58

And that was one of the discussions we had in that round table discussion. So now it's a question of, OK, Jeremiah 10 is not speaking of Christmas trees, it's speaking of idols.

39:07

So, OK, it's OK to have a Christmas tree. Now the question is, should I or should I not have a

39:12

Christmas tree, which is part of a cultural tradition in my home that coincides with the

39:19

Christmas celebration because it's a Western adaptation that adds much more to it.

39:24

And that's something we can certainly get into, but to turn it into a, well, the scriptures prohibit it.

39:30

No, it doesn't. Yeah. And I want to, I'm going to quote from an article

39:35

I read. This is from a writer, Spencer McDaniel is the one who wrote this, who said, quote, virtually none of the traditions associated with Christmas in the

39:45

United States today are actually of ancient pre -Christian origin. In fact, virtually all of the

39:50

Christmas traditions that you usually hear people going around claiming are pagan are actually traditions that arose within the past 200 years or so within a

39:59

Christian cultural context. That doesn't mean they're Christian, but they arose within a

40:04

Christian, I think that was a good point, that it arose within a cultural context. And the context is the

40:10

American experience and much of America, much of Christmas is

40:16

American. You know, there's a lot of commercialism. There's a lot of, you know, we have something called black

40:23

Friday because there's a big, there's a big capitalist side of this, right? Where we're, you know, this is where companies get in the black, right?

40:30

Is at Christmas time where they've been sort of in the red all year long until Christmas and then boom, everybody's making money.

40:36

So we're not saying that everything that goes on in Christian or at Christmas time is

40:41

Christian, neither are we saying it's all good. We're just saying it isn't necessarily pagan. And some of it just might just be 200 year old

40:50

American, when somebody said, well, American might have some paganism in there. But my point is, it's not ancient paganism.

40:56

It's not the argument of that. So Matthew, you have a thought on that before I throw a few thoughts in there.

41:03

Yeah. First off, while you were describing the events, Chris, I went and found the thread and was just scrolling through it.

41:10

Let me tell you. So I don't know how much of a Facebook aficionado are, but we have tag groups that we love to throw down with people.

41:20

So one of my favorites is, I'm not reading all that, but I'm sorry for your loss or happy about the win.

41:27

I love that. Moving on. Or you can invert it and say you're happy about their loss or sorry about their win.

41:32

But the very first one, the dude's got like several fonts and one's in italics and I've even got good corrected vision and I'm not reading all that.

41:40

I have no interest. It was bad. It was bad.

41:46

We've had some more controversial topics here on this podcast before. And Jake has said,

41:51

Jake Korn, one of our other frequent guests has said, you can write all of your opposition to this in a long

41:56

YouTube comment and I will read none of them. TLDR stands for too long.

42:05

Moving on. No, but yeah. So what, just one humorous thing.

42:12

I think I don't want to just say the same things that Chris just said in my own words, because I think that would just be redundant other than to say,

42:18

I agree with that entire line of reasoning. But I will just point out comically, my opinion is that Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 11 has gotten a lot more hate than it really deserves.

42:31

Because someone cannot even begin to say, for I know you weren't, you weren't in the ancient exile among the

42:38

Babylonians. You can't say, okay, calm down, friendo. If I want to reference that verse and I want to talk about God's covenant faithfulness to his people and how there is now a new people united in Christ.

42:49

And I want to say that all the way back there, God was promising hope in a future. And that doesn't mean good grades in college.

42:54

It means this. And I want to properly understand the verse and apply it today. That's a fine thing to do.

43:00

Absolutely. Some of the same people in here who are like Jeremiah, this

43:06

Jeremiah 10, this applies right now in my living room would dive all over you if you sent them a graduation card with 2911 on it.

43:14

They'd be like, that doesn't apply to us. That is about the Babylonian exile. Cool.

43:19

But 10 does? On what basis? By what standard? What is the exegetical method you used to get there?

43:25

They didn't. They found some guy on a forum somewhere, like Chris said, they heard something over and over again and they started believing it.

43:33

And then yeah, they became Judaizers. They took what was written in, I believe it's the end of Colossians 2, about don't let anyone act as your judge with any of these festivals or holidays or whatever.

43:44

And they said, yeah, that's an inspired apostle. That doesn't count. But oh, my interpretation of Jeremiah 10, yeah, you better believe it, which is exactly what the

43:53

Judaizers did. The Judaizers took all of the good news of the gospel and they said, hmm, yes, but what if we ignore all of that and just go back to the

44:02

Torah and say, this is all we have. Same argument, same argument. And I think that's exactly the point is that they were doing exactly that.

44:12

And I think even though if we don't go into that far reaching, bizarre, let me give you this picture that's this big with this tiny print on, even on my big screen,

44:24

I need a magnifying glass for, even if we don't go that far, if we make the mistake of isolating passages and not do it, even

44:33

Jeremiah 10, can a Christmas tree become something that's an idol? Absolutely.

44:40

How many more comedies do we need of people who have these Christmas light fights that they're all duking it out, trying to be the best winner?

44:47

Why does that comedy work? Because it happens. Why is it a great laugh line when the guy's trying to put up the best decorations and everything explodes?

45:00

Because that's what happens. We get, these things become an idol. So can the perfect Christmas tree and the perfect decorations and all of that become something that you're essentially worshiping?

45:10

Absolutely. Because you're worshiping the tradition, you're worshiping the, the, you know, the applause that you're going to get for what you've accomplished.

45:19

You can take something like that, take Jeremiah 10 and apply it in that context, because you're not worshiping

45:25

God, you're worshiping yourself. But again, as Matthew, as you said, it's taking what is historically true about that passage, drawing the meaning out and then applying it in my context.

45:37

And that's just simply not what's being done. I will just say one last little thing. The song, Oh, Christmas tree is weird.

45:43

And you should stop singing. I was really should stop that. I I'm sorry, Keith. Did I take it from you?

45:49

Yeah. Yeah. I'm so sorry, Keith. I, I stepped on the last syllable. So I can say that you got me.

45:56

No, that song is weird and you should stop singing it. Like you, you want to train your guns on something that's strange. That song is whack.

46:03

Don't sing that. Um, it literally is a praise song to a tree. Stop it. Yes. Yes.

46:10

Um, it's so funny that you say that when I was a kid, I was in a, um, I was in a play.

46:15

I was like in the second grade and we sang a song about a rainbow, but it was to the same tune. Oh, rainbow, oh, rainbow.

46:22

How lovely are your colors? It had nothing to do with pride by the way, this 40 years ago, but it was still just a rainbow.

46:28

Yeah. It was still just a rainbow. But in that I didn't know there was a Christmas tree song. I, that was my only version of it.

46:35

So the first time I heard old Christmas tree, I said, Hey man, they changed my rainbow song. So that's just a little history about me is

46:42

I, I think of old Christmas tree is old rainbow, but no, um, it is interesting when we think about the history of Christmas trees, because I even doing a tangential search or rather not tangential, doing a, um, a cursory search online, trying to find information.

47:00

There's all kinds of information out there. Finding, uh, original source documents is really difficult trying to, trying to really nail down where this came into the culture and everything again, points to, you know, people say, well, it's from mule or it's from this or it's from that.

47:16

But, um, there's also arguments that it came from Martin Luther, that he was the first one that put a tree in his home and he put candles on it, which is a terrible idea, by the way, especially when there's probably not a fire brigade back in, you know, 16th century

47:31

Germany. That's, that's as, as, as, as efficient as the fire firemen are now let's put candles on a, on a wooden, uh, a tree and put it in a, inside of our house.

47:40

But there's all of these different ideas of where it came from. Even one that I saw was from the 12th century.

47:47

Um, that was the feast of Adam and Eve, that it was a celebration of the feast of Adam and Eve, which, uh, uh, included a paradise play, which had a paradise tree, which was decorated with red apples.

47:59

Again, is that where it came from? There's a lot of debate about it. And, um,

48:05

I would simply say this trees have been a part of just about every culture, whether it's the, the, whether it's the, the, the trees that were used in, in Egypt or the trees that are used in, in, in different cultures, trees are everywhere.

48:17

Trees are ubiquitous. They are, they are always a part of, of, of different cultures things.

48:23

So to say that we stole this from paganism. Well, not really. It's just, it's, it's part of the reality that, that there, there are trees in the world.

48:33

There are trees in Christian history. There is, there is trees in Christian theology.

48:38

There is the tree of life. There's the tree of good and evil. There are all these things. And so to say, well, you stole this from paganism.

48:45

I think is the answer is prove it, prove it, prove where this, this became that.

48:51

And again, finalizing this. So we move on. Certainly Jenna, Jeremiah 10 is not a

48:59

Christmas tree in the way that we think of it. And the key to this is actually in the, in the NIV and people, people hate it when

49:06

I cite the NIV, but I'm going to cite the NIV. They spent more time translating it than you did criticizing it .

49:14

Oh, that felt good. Thank you. But when it says it says a tree from the forest is cut down and worked with an ax.

49:26

The NIV if I remember correctly, I'll pull it up here. Cause I do have it. It says that it was fashioned.

49:34

Let me see this. Is that the word? No. It's Oh no. A craftsman shapes it with a chisel.

49:42

That's the term that's used. And so the, the, the, the, the translators of the NIV are trying to get across the idea that they didn't just bring a tree and nail a cross to the bottom of it, set it up and decorate it.

49:53

No, they, they took the branches off. They, they chiseled it down to the wood and they carved an idol out of it.

49:59

That's the point. It wasn't a tree like we think of a tree, but it was the, it was the, the branches and the trunk of the tree that were used to create an image.

50:09

And that's what, as you went ahead and said, when you read the whole context, Chris, that that's what that is.

50:16

All right. So moving on to our third thing and we're, we're getting close to the hour mark. So we'll and I think

50:23

I'll say this as far as gift giving, I kind of put that in the same category as trees. So if we don't get to say as much about that,

50:29

I would simply say that just like trees are sort of ubiquitous and everywhere, gift giving is a part of so many celebrations to say that's only pagan.

50:36

We give, we give gifts at Christmas. We give gifts at weddings. We give gifts at birthdays. We give gifts all the time.

50:42

And to apply that to only one culture or one thing and say, well, we stole this from that. Jesus said a father gives good gifts to his children.

50:50

Even that's a scriptural idea. There's no, there's no question that giving gifts is, is a has a historical a tie to a lot of cultures, because certainly a lot of cultures have given gifts, but there's one great gift giver in, in, in, in the, in the mythology that surrounds our

51:09

Christmas celebration. And that's the jolly old St. Nicholas. And this one is tough because St.

51:18

Nicholas is a real person was, I guess we could say if he was a believer, he still is he's, he's with, he's with the

51:26

Lord, but he's a real person. But we know that there are a lot of beliefs about this person that we now call

51:36

Santa Claus that aren't real. And a lot of people want to apply that to some pagan background, whether it's the

51:42

Norse God Odin, they say Odin would fly around during the winter time and give gifts to, to, to children or all kinds of things that Odin had a long white beard and he rode on an eight legged steed or something, you know, this is where the eight reindeer comes from.

51:57

There's, there's all these ideas that are, that are applied. Interestingly enough about that, Jack Crawford, who has a

52:03

PhD in Norse studies, spent many years teaching on this subject and is now a professional public educator on the subject.

52:10

And he posted a video on his YouTube channel that where he says, Odin is not a prefigurization of Santa Claus.

52:16

So anybody who makes that tie, he was a, he was an actual expert. He said that that's not the case. So when people say

52:22

Santa is just Odin, say Nodin. No, no, no, he's not. But we know that this leads to another big question, and that is the question of should

52:35

Christians even be involved with the question of Santa? I have my thoughts, but I want to give you guys a chance to tell me your thoughts about the

52:44

Santa idea. And, uh, and again, we'll remain friends, even if we disagree, less, less, of course,

52:50

I think you're a raving heretic and then I'll shut this show down right now. No, uh, heretical garbage from you.

52:59

I love that. I have my stamp. So if you ever give me a really bad book by a heretical author, I will keep it.

53:06

I will shake hands and say, thank you. And then I will stamp it. I really need one of those stamps. I talked about that on a show recently.

53:12

Somebody asked me, what do you do when somebody gives you a book that it's by a pagan author? I said, have your stamp ready and just stamp it.

53:18

Yeah. But I bought one on Kindle recently, uh, to review because it was something that I didn't think was going to be a very good book.

53:23

And it turned out it was not a good book and I would warn off my church members from reading it. Um, but I can't stamp the Kindle.

53:29

So I'm at a loss of what to do there. That's where you get a Kindle scribe and then you can write your sticky note on it.

53:35

But it doesn't have the same feeling. I want to hear that when that comes down, you know? Well, Matthew, you haven't gone first yet.

53:43

I don't think, why don't you tell us your thoughts on Santa and then we'll let Chris follow up with what your thoughts are. Um, the historic figure of St.

53:50

Nicholas is, uh, is a larger than life character, even in, in the real history that we have about him.

53:58

Um, I mean, every Christian man has shared at least one meme about punching Arius in the face, right?

54:04

Like we have to, we have to have at least a couple of those that may be apocryphal. We're not exactly sure, you know, to what extent that did occur, but we know he opposed

54:11

Arius at the council. We know that Arius is a loser and a heretic. And so that's easy to, you know, to, to pile on and stuff like that.

54:18

But the real story of St. Nicholas is remarkable. Um, his sufferings and his ministry and all of that is something we absolutely should teach.

54:26

And I'm not the biggest fan of, of, and this is again, a more Roman Catholic thing, having the feast of St.

54:32

whoever and the whatever of whatever. I don't, not, I don't know. It makes me uneasy.

54:39

I'm not going to say it's abjectly wrong. I will say praying to those saints would be wrong. And I would say that, um, you know, uh, uh, making them the focus rather than Christ would be wrong.

54:49

Um, but to tell the stories of the faith is fine. I mean, how many on October 31st, how many

54:55

Martin Luther memes did we share about nailing 95 theses, even though we know the big dramatic moment where he's beating it onto the church door and the whole crowd's gasping probably didn't happen.

55:05

You know, it was probably more of just a, the community bulletin board kind of thing. So all that to say, these stories kind of take on a larger than life impact.

55:15

And to an extent that's okay. As long as we recognize it for what it is. Um, so the story of, of, of St.

55:22

Nicholas of Santa Claus as, as it sort of has morphed into, um, I love teaching the full story of that teaching who this man was, how he impacted church history, how like the great early, early church figures, um, he made such an impact on our faith and we have him to thank.

55:39

Um, I was always just raised as, you know, the fairly traditional

55:44

Americanized sort of Christianity was taught, you know, that there, that he's still alive and he's really out there in a sleigh and he's coming down and all these presents.

55:51

And when you're a kid, there's a magic and a, a wonder and a mystery to that. And then it's almost become sort of a trope that,

55:58

Oh, well he just found out Santa Claus isn't real. Like that's a defining moment. How old were you when that happened and all that.

56:04

And I've always wanted to retort, nobody is, and he's currently worshiping at the side of the father and he is, you know, up there among in the presence of Christ.

56:12

And so he is real. You were just told a story about him that was a little bit dramatized. So I, that's how about how

56:19

I've always seen it. Uh, we don't have kids yet. Uh, Aaron and I, though, we've talked a lot about how we would handle that.

56:24

She feels incredibly strongly that we don't go with the traditional formula because she says,

56:29

I don't want to tell my kids a lie. I don't want them to think that some saint is watching them and they better behave or else the saint won't bring them presents.

56:39

I would rather teach them about Christ. I would rather say that you need to behave in a manner that honors us as your parents and honors

56:47

God, because that's what God says to do. Not because you're going to get a bigger nerf gun in December if you do it.

56:52

Um, and I respect that a lot. I didn't have as strong of feelings as she did about it. Again, maybe that's across that bridge when we get there kind of thing.

56:59

But what I would say is, um, if you are, my, my counsel would be, if you are going to go with your children to the traditional,

57:06

I'll say traditional in the sense of how it is culturally Santa Claus story. If you're going to do that, at least give them the historic

57:14

St. Nicholas as well. Give them who he was, give them what he did. And then when you're out and about around Christmas time and you're in the mall and there's a

57:22

Santa, an inflatable Santa Claus, tell them how awesome is it that people are remembering a great man of God in our culture?

57:30

Isn't that, isn't that wonderful? Let's remember the stories about them that are true. Amen. Amen. I actually love that.

57:37

What you just said right there. Cause that, that is one of the discussions that comes up is the, when it comes to the cultural, you know, the

57:45

American cultural, uh, you know, Christmas, how much of it do we adopt? How much of it is

57:50

OK? And, you know, that's one thing that I think, when we go back to what I said before about this is a cultural celebration, neither commanded nor forbidden.

58:02

So therefore, what do we do? Like the discussion you have with your bride, my wife and I, when, you know, our boys are now 18 and 19, one of them's already moved out.

58:12

But when, when they were young, it was kind of a big thing for us. We didn't want to start a foundation of being dishonest with our children.

58:21

But at the same time, we recognize that there is a certain aspect of the American Christian or American cultural celebration of Christmas, that some people were not going to make that same decision.

58:33

They were not going to have that same conviction. And so one of the things that we did was that we would tell boys, this is what is, you know, happens during Christmas.

58:42

This is one of the stories that gets told. It's a fun, entertaining thing that parents do with their children.

58:48

So even though we want you to understand that he's not a real person in terms of how the, the myth of American Santa Claus goes, we don't want you running around destroying families by telling them,

59:04

Oh, hey, you know, Santa's not real. Your parents are lying to you. Although I will say, the funniest moment in, where it was just,

59:13

I had to stifle a proud moment. My kids were young, as we were in, you know, a

59:20

Walmart, and there's this wall of toys. And I felt real bad for this poor mom. The kids, I mean, it was actually like the, the really cheap toys, you know, as opposed to the, you know, the, the

59:30

Mattel and Hasbro toys. It was like the Walmart knockoff toys. And the kids pointing at certain toys they want.

59:36

And she goes, Honey, you're gonna have to, you know, ask Santa Claus about that. And I felt bad for mom, because obviously the money's tight.

59:42

And thankfully, he didn't blurt it really loudly. But my son looks up at me and goes,

59:48

But dad, Santa's not real. Thank goodness, the mom and the kid didn't hear it. But the lady behind us, the biggest gasp,

59:57

I mean, she probably sucked the air out of the aisle. Well, he could be real if you want him to.

01:00:03

And she almost stormed off and I just patted my child on the head. I'm like, yeah.

01:00:10

But it was one of those moments where it was just like, we wanted to, our kids, you know, even though we were doing the presents, even though we were visiting family and putting up decorations, we did not want to participate in that because we wanted it to have the correct focus.

01:00:25

And if the focus is, as your wife is concerned about, a jolly old magical elf that lives at the

01:00:33

North Pole, who's going to bring you coal, if you don't get it right. We just didn't want that to be the focus of what we did.

01:00:40

And I think that's one of the risks of the cultural aspect of Christmas. Look, I've got an

01:00:46

Amazon wish list longer than probably my kids have. I just, there's lots of stuff I like and the books are just never -ending.

01:00:54

But are you on the nice list? That's the question. Are you? Well, considering I've said

01:01:00

Santa doesn't exist, I don't think, I'm probably going to get coal. But, you know, it's, you know, so the trappings of it and the risk of the commercialization and the risk of making it about the presence rather than the focus of Christ and his incarnation and the, you know, it's, you know, the, really the, the beginning of the gospel story, in a sense, when

01:01:22

Christ enters into this world to take on human flesh. There is a big risk that if we are too partaking of these cultural traditions, that we lose that in the, in the account.

01:01:38

And I think, Matthew, your, your way of saying it, look, if you're going to part, if you're going to make Santa a part of your, your

01:01:44

Christmas experience, then using that as a springboard to teach the historical truth of St.

01:01:49

Nicholas, I think is fantastic, because now you've refocused it. You're, you may be saying,

01:01:56

OK, you know, there's a certain fun side of this that we're, when we talk about Santa Claus, but you know what, Santa Claus was actually a real person.

01:02:03

And here's who he was. And now refocusing it back on the scriptures, refocusing it back on the

01:02:09

Christian faith and what this man believed and what he taught, and that he may or may not have decked

01:02:14

Harius for being an heretic. I'm holding my fingers crossed that that's true.

01:02:21

I want it to be true. Lord, please show us the replay, please. That's right. That's right.

01:02:27

Let's get the popcorn and watch this one. But I think that's fantastic, because it takes the

01:02:33

Christian faith and it recenters it, even though we're participating in something that's cultural. And I don't think it's wrong to participate in a cultural celebration.

01:02:40

I really don't. I think make, using those to refocus it where it needs to be, that's a fantastic idea.

01:02:47

Fully support that. And it's doing exactly what we were talking about, which is, OK, we have St. Nicholas, it's, and that got commercialized, right?

01:02:55

So you could say they took that from us. Well, now we're gonna take it back, you know, so it's, it's a full circle. Are we going to gifts next,

01:03:02

Keith? Well, actually, we've kind of already mentioned gifts. I have a few things I want to say about this, and then I think we're going to begin to wrap down.

01:03:08

But did you have a thought about gifts you want to say? I'll go after you. OK, OK. Very quickly, something piggybacking on what

01:03:16

Matthew just said about cultural celebrations. Chris, you said this as well. Is it

01:03:21

OK to celebrate cultural celebrations? There's good evidence that in the Gospel of John, that Jesus was in Jerusalem to celebrate what would now be called

01:03:30

Hanukkah. And so, because that celebration came in during the time of the

01:03:36

Maccabees, that's not an Old Testament feast. And yet Jesus was likely there to be a part of that celebration.

01:03:42

So can we engage in cultural celebrations that have a religious significance but aren't necessarily scriptural?

01:03:49

I think the answer is yes. I think Jesus gives us that example. And somebody may want to argue with me in the comments about that. Have fun.

01:03:54

If it's too long, I won't read it. But we won't read it. We will not read it at all. Give us full dissertation.

01:04:01

We won't read it. But I do want to take a little different stab at the Santa thing.

01:04:07

I am like you, Matthew. I am huge on teaching the real story of St. Nicholas. And I've really tried to research this out.

01:04:14

And there's actually some documentation about the fact that he was potentially censored after Nicaea, which means the strike may have actually occurred.

01:04:24

This is where I'm holding my fingers crossed, saying it may have happened because he was disciplined as a result.

01:04:30

So if that is true, that is cool. If it's not, I'm okay. But I'm hoping that he took a whack at Weezer.

01:04:37

And if you're a Steel Magnolias fan, you get that, which you're men, so you're probably not. But my wife will love that I made that reference, though.

01:04:48

Anyway, but we do, and this is something I think this may be a little controversial. I hope nobody gets too upset about it.

01:04:54

I do think there's a certain amount of what we would call pretend play that happens when the kids are really small.

01:05:00

And like right now, my son is convinced that he could make his own Spider -Man suit, and that he could make his own web shooters.

01:05:09

And so he asked me, Daddy, can we work on making some web shooters together? Now, I know the limits of what is possible for that technology.

01:05:21

But I also know that my son and his mind and the age that he is, he thinks this is possible. And I don't want to ruin that image in his mind that there's something he could do here that's powerful and important.

01:05:34

And when I think about the Santa story, I do think there's a certain level of pretend play that happens when children are very small.

01:05:39

And as they begin to get older, they begin to lose some of that imagination.

01:05:44

And I like to hold it for a little longer, not telling them lies, not, you know, I don't do the whole naughty or nice thing or anything like that.

01:05:52

But as my kids are imagining things that to them are not beyond the possible, the world's going to spend most of their life telling them that things are not possible.

01:06:05

And I just like the idea of pretend play. And so, you know, we, you know, as I said, I quote

01:06:10

Seinfeld all the time. He said, When I was a kid, Superman, Batman and Spider -Man were not fantasies, they were options.

01:06:17

They were this is, this was the way I looked at life was I was going to be either Superman, Spider -Man or Batman. And and so I'm not as I'm not as quick to correct my children, if they talk about the magic of Santa Claus or something like that.

01:06:31

But we do, of course, focus primarily on the incarnation as the reason why we're doing this.

01:06:38

Christ is the focus. Christ is and even St. Nicholas bows at the foot of the cross.

01:06:44

So so that that's that's sort of our take on it. And, and why we, you know, we're careful with with how we, with how we handle that.

01:06:52

So that's, that's, that's a thought. So Matthew, you, you wanted to add? Sure. And this is I apologize to the person who originally gave me this.

01:06:59

I'm shamelessly stealing this directly from you. And I don't remember who you are, but God does. So I love you. But what this person said was that when they're opening gifts on Christmas morning, and the kids are all excited and all that they don't, they let them have that moment.

01:07:13

They don't, they don't take any, whatever. But afterwards, they'll say, and why did you get that gift?

01:07:20

And what they're, here's the thing they're teaching is they're, they, they're teaching the kids not to say because I was good.

01:07:27

What the kid, what they're, what they're teaching the children is that the kids respond, because mommy and daddy wanted to.

01:07:34

And they said, and what's that called when we get a gift that we didn't deserve? That's called grace. And, and even as a two year old, a three year old, a four year old, you can understand that because it immediately disconnects any kind of sort of workspace, gift giving kind of thing, even down that small, they get that they really do.

01:07:54

They may not understand justification by faith alone at four years old, but they can understand here's the thing that you really want.

01:08:01

And why are you getting it? Because we decided to, because we love you. And we want to give you good gifts. It's not because of your behavior.

01:08:07

It's not because of anything you've done for us. It's because we want to love you. And you know, that rather than using it, which it only really works from like late

01:08:17

November onwards, rather than using the threat of withholding Christmas gifts as some sort of behavioral, you know, wedge, that's how they do it.

01:08:25

And I think that's a wonderful thing. And I'd like to emulate that as well. Sure. Absolutely. Amen.

01:08:31

Amen. Well, brothers, we have, we've talked about all these things. And unless Christian, unless you have something to add about gifts,

01:08:37

I do think we it's about time to draw to a close. Did you have an idea or something you wanted to mention about? There was one thing

01:08:42

I wanted to say is he said that, you know, Seinfeld put it as, as a kid, those were options. Well, I'm going to be 50 and it's not an option.

01:08:53

See, Captain America, not an option. It's my buddy. Chris is my personal

01:08:58

Captain America. And I am the Calvinist Batman. So yep.

01:09:06

I heard a guy the other day, he said, he said, if you could be any superhero, what would you be? He said, I'd be Batman. And then

01:09:11

I would quit being Batman and just be filthy rich. Okay.

01:09:22

Well, brothers, I'll give you both a last word on this. And then I'm going to draw us up to a close. I want to thank you again for being a part.

01:09:29

Matthew, go ahead first. Sure. So I would just say kind of as the takeaway here, um, don't, uh, don't let anyone act as your judge when it comes to new moons or feasts or festivals and sort of thing.

01:09:41

And if you think that that language of even referencing new moons and feasts and festivals sound dangerously pagan, I invite you reader to read

01:09:48

Colossians two, because that's a not direct quote right out of the end of Colossians two, Paul is very concerned, um, that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free and that people not take these kinds of issues and use them as a wedge for division or exclusion.

01:10:04

Uh, we did a podcast one time about three different sort of tiers of Christian belief. You're sort of definitional and then middle category and outer category.

01:10:12

Almost all of these discussions should exist in category three. And what this means is that mature

01:10:17

Christians should be able to go to the same church together while believing different things on this matter and leave that as a matter for Christian freedom.

01:10:25

Again, if you're actually worshiping a Christmas tree, please stop and repent and believe the gospel and don't do that.

01:10:31

Um, don't. Um, so, but if you're not, and you just have one up and you have some cool ornaments that symbolize parts of your life and you intend to give each other presence on the 25th, please know that it is the position of the three of us that you do not violate any precept of the scriptures in so doing.

01:10:49

Uh, just keep your heart inclined towards Christ. Remember that it was his arrival in a way that any other religion considers impossible for God to enter his own creation.

01:10:59

Uh, but it was his arrival. That is the reason for, uh, for all of our celebrations and ultimately our hope.

01:11:05

So have this Advent season as a time of hope, not as a time of division. If I can find the

01:11:11

Bob Newhart saying, stop it. That's exactly, that's what you just said.

01:11:17

All right, Chris. Love that skit. Okay. Um, I absolutely agree with my brothers here.

01:11:24

Um, this Christmas time for the Christian, while not something specifically commanded to scripture is a reminder of Christ's incarnation.

01:11:34

And apart from the incarnation, we don't have a gospel message. Christ came on into this earth and took on humanity for the express purpose to live a life as our representative that we could not live.

01:11:47

He did so perfectly obeying everything that the father commanded in thought, word, and deed. That is something worth remembering and celebrating.

01:11:56

And so the idea that, um, oh, you can't do that because that these possible correlations may make it pagan is simply,

01:12:05

I'm sorry, it's foolish. And those who try to push that on you, um, my, my opinion don't have, it's not worth that discussion.

01:12:15

Don't, just don't. Uh, 90 % of this is going to be discussions online. The mute button is a perfectly valid option.

01:12:22

So you not have to be drawn into discussions with people who demand your time to tell you not to celebrate the incarnation of Christ.

01:12:31

It's just not worth it. Now, the cultural trappings that come with it, this is a matter of conscience. What you choose to do is, you know, is going to be what you believe the scriptures are commanding of you through your study of them.

01:12:45

And what you, uh, what you are permitted to do through your God -informed conscience.

01:12:51

If you feel that you can do those things and you're not sinning and doing that, then by all means, partake of it.

01:12:57

If it troubles your conscience, look, scripture's clear to violate consciences to sin. So don't do it because we think it's okay.

01:13:04

Do it because you are convinced by soundness of scripture that you have the freedom to do so. So don't, don't do something because, well, those guys say it's okay.

01:13:13

I don't know. Go to the scriptures, study, pray, go to your pastor, talk about it, and then move forward and make those decisions from there.

01:13:22

That being said, where, where we all have a variance in what, to what degree or another we will celebrate certain cultural aspects of this, this is not worth dividing over.

01:13:34

And this is certainly not worth stumbling a brother who, a weaker brother, and it's not worth insisting upon our rights just so we get what we want.

01:13:43

And those who are the weaker brother, guess what? You don't get to be a professional weaker brother. You don't get to attack your brethren because they are, they have, they believe they have that freedom.

01:13:52

We do not divide over something like this. This is not, you know, this is not an issue that is salvific.

01:13:59

It is not an issue, a major issue of doctrine. It is, while all doctrine is important, this is an area where we should debate and we should have iron sharpening iron.

01:14:09

We should not, not divide over this. So let's not do that.

01:14:16

Engage with charity and grace in these discussions, and be willing to embrace one another as brethren.

01:14:23

If you divide over this, I'm going to, I'm going to believe that you're, you're sinning because there's an issue of pride.

01:14:28

And I think that's just simply wrong. But whatever you do in this season, whatever you do, wherever you land, it, make it about that remembrance of Christ.

01:14:38

Make it about that remembering what he came for. He came because sinful, wicked people like us, pride, prideful, thickheaded knuckleheads like us, thought we had it all right.

01:14:51

And we're, we've got everything fine. And to my utter shame, I was the one who would say, Well, God will just have to take me as I am.

01:14:57

Oh, that's a dangerous statement. Don't ever say that. Even in my heart of hearts, I knew that was really wrong to say.

01:15:04

Yeah, heretical garbage. Yes, heretical garbage. Don't ever say that. But he came in human flesh that he might redeem thickheaded, knuckle -dragging, sinful rebels.

01:15:17

And that is worth celebrating. And so guess what? We now, when everybody is celebrating this, we have the greatest reason to share with them why we celebrate

01:15:28

Christmas. So that would be my 2 cents on that. Amen. Amen. And if you have a particular issue with any of this,

01:15:35

I have another tag group called, I don't know, man, go ask your elders. It's literally what the tag group is called. So like, if you're having trouble with this, open a

01:15:42

Bible, go ask your elders and submit to their direction on this very much tertiary issue.

01:15:47

Amen. Amen. Amen. And you know, I was just thinking as you guys were talking, and, and, and one of the wonderful things about this season is, is this is an opportunity to be reminded of what

01:15:59

God did to save sinners, that God entered into His own creation and the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the second person of the

01:16:06

Trinity became a man. The Bible says the word became flesh and dwelled among us.

01:16:13

And we have so many songs that we sing in this season to remind, I was just looking at the lyrics of Hark the

01:16:19

Herald Angels Sing, which says that, mild He lays His glory by, born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.

01:16:30

How important is it that we remember those truths and that we are reminded of them always, what

01:16:38

God has done to save sinners. So I want to thank you again for being a part of Conversations with the

01:16:43

Calvinists today. I thank both of my co -hosts today coming on and sharing their wisdom and ideas and thoughts.

01:16:50

And I pray that this will be a good addition to your Christmas season. I want to remind you again that we do a new

01:16:57

Conversations with the Calvinists every week, but we're coming up to a break here soon. I'm going to take a little time off at the Christmas time,

01:17:02

Christmas season, take a couple of weeks off. So I won't be doing a regular show for probably two weeks and come back in January.

01:17:07

And we have a big surprise in January coming. So be looking for that. I want to thank you again for listening to Conversations with the