Should Christians celebrate Christmas? Is Christmas even a Christian holiday? - Podcast Episode 56

You couldn't tell by what I'm wearing today, we're going to be talking about Christmas, specifically the question, should Christians celebrate Christmas? The episode released a couple episodes ago was the top 10 Christmas questions.

This is one of those, but we only touched on it super briefly in the episode, so today we're going to be diving in a little more in-depth. So with me today is Jeff, the administrator of BibleRef .com, and Kevin, the managing editor for GotQuestions Ministries.

Why Christians Celebrate Christmas as the Birth of Christ

And so we're going to be discussing this issue. And just to kind of give you a feel for why this is even a big question, every Christmas we get a lot of people who will express strong opposition to Christians celebrating Christmas because of some of the pagan origins that are attached to some of the Christmas traditions, or just people who think it takes away from focusing on Christ, or people who will say, the Bible doesn't tell us to celebrate Christmas, so why do we celebrate Christmas when we don't celebrate some of the biblical holidays?

So it's questions like that that come up. For most Christians, this isn't, how could we not celebrate Christmas? It's Jesus' birth. But no, there is a significant number of people out there who have either questions, concerns, or even opposition to celebrating Christmas.

And so that's what we wanted to discuss today. Again, I hope throughout this conversation you hear that our emphasis is on Christian freedom, that you are free to celebrate Christmas, and you are free not to celebrate Christmas, and that we should all show each other grace and be able to come to different convictions on this issue.

So Kevin, why don't you get us started on the conversation, should Christians celebrate Christmas?

Luke 15 and the Joy of Celebrating Good News

Yes, and I want to make sure that we're on the same page here, that we're not talking about whether or not we should have a Christmas tree, or hang lights, or hang stockings, or hang mistletoe, or things like that.

We're talking about celebrating somehow, though, observing Christmas, the birth of Christ, in some manner, in some way. And I think that Christmas does give us reasons to celebrate in some way. Now, a celebration is an acknowledgement of a special event, or a significant event, with happy activity.

And celebration is presented as a good and natural thing in Scripture. In Luke chapter 15, Jesus told a series of three stories, and each one of them includes a celebration of some kind. There are three parties in Luke chapter 15.

So when the shepherd finds his lost sheep, he calls all his friends and neighbors together and says, rejoice with me. When the woman finds her lost coin, same thing, she calls all her friends and neighbors together and says, rejoice with me.

Then when the prodigal son comes home, the father throws this lavish party, a feast, really. And then Jesus says they began to be merry. So we've got these parties in Luke 15, three events that were worth celebrating, and it was a good and natural thing for the people to celebrate.

And I think that Christmas marks a significant event that should be accompanied by happy activity. So we celebrate Christmas at our house, and we celebrate Christmas at our church, because it's a special thing.

So people might say, well, he wasn't born on December 25th. Well, probably not. But does that really detract from the fact that he did come, that he was born into this world? I think that we should celebrate the fact that God became flesh and entered our world.

It is altogether appropriate, in my opinion, to mark that occasion with happy activity. So in Luke chapter two, the shepherds are out in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night, and an angel of the Lord appears to them, and he speaks to them.

And part of what he says is, do not be afraid, which is usually how the angels had to start talking to people, because we tend to freak out when we are confronted with the supernatural. And so he says, do not be afraid.

But then he says this, but then he says this, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which will be to all people. Then he tells what that good news is. For there is born to you this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

So the angel said that the birth of Christ was good news. Now it is natural to rejoice over good news, and it's natural to share it, which is exactly what we see the shepherds doing later in the narrative.

They rejoice and they share. The angel also says that this news of Jesus' birth was of great joy, and it was for all people everywhere. The expression of joy is natural and appropriate. It's expected.

Joy is not meant to be suppressed. Joy is naturally effervescent, and it's a good thing to express joy. So in this story, we have good news. We have great joy. We have universal application. It's for all people.

And that to me equals a celebration of some kind.

I think it is good that we make those points, because a lot of people do, as Shea was saying, they have concerns. They have questions about celebrating Christmas. And sometimes we get focused on why not sort of arguments when we talk about Christmas, when it's really good to sometimes talk about, well, why should we be celebrating Christmas?

And I appreciate that you brought up the fact, Kevin, that this is not a question of things like ugly sweaters and hats. This is not about Christmas lights. This is not about trees and things like that.

Each of those things individually by themselves kind of come with their own questions and their own ideas. It's just a question of, is Christmas in and of itself something to celebrate? Now, that doesn't mean that you can completely separate it from the traditions that are tied to it.

And that's where some people do get hung up. They get hung up on the idea that celebrating Christmas means participating in things that are tied to non-Christian, unbiblical ideas. That's where some people are concerned.

They point to a lot of different things in history. They talk about Roman celebrations like Saturnalia. They talk about other pagan concepts. They bring up ideas about candles and ringing bells and how certain practices, even with Christmas trees, were somehow related to those things.

I think in that point, we need to remember that there's a lot of mist in history. There's a lot of fog back there. So knowing exactly where some traditions specifically come from can be a little bit fuzzy.

But we also have to acknowledge that where something originated in does not necessarily mean that that's exactly what it's being used for today. There are cultural ideas. There are concepts that we use today in modern society that are very, very different from the way that they were intended in the past.

Sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad. When we were talking in the previous podcast, when we had talked about our top 10 issues, one of the issues that we brought to everybody in that was the concept that a lot of traditions that we use, that we associate with our Christian life, do have origins in something that's not explicitly biblical.

Wedding rings being an example. Those were not common in Christian circles for hundreds of years after Christ's earthly ministry. And the reason that we originated that idea of wedding rings is very much tied to Greek and Roman spiritual concepts.

But believers in churches are not practicing paganism when they put on wedding rings. Those ideas have now been brought into the Christian circle and they're being used for Christian purposes. A lot of the celebrations that we do at Christmas have a little bit of the same flavor.

Yes, there were Roman celebrations around the end of December that definitely involved some negative things, but Christians weren't participating in those negative things. There was almost a sense of spiritual warfare where believers were saying, we're going to choose to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ instead of these other things.

There's all the historical arguments about whether or not Jesus was actually born on December 25th and whether or not that really matters. It doesn't really matter. So the fact that we might be celebrating on a date that's not the actual date is not really the point at hand.

The point is that modern celebrations of Christmas, when they're done the way that they should be done, are celebrations of Christian ideas and Christian ideals. If we're giving people gifts as a reflection of the gift that God gave us in Christ, that's a positive thing.

If we are lighting candles and ringing bells and spending time with family and singing Christmas carols about Jesus, all with the intent of celebrating what God has done for us, that's obviously a positive thing.

There's no paganism involved in any of that. Now, if Christmas for us is all about beating people to the Black Friday sales and what do I get and what do I give and just how tipsy can I get at the company party?

Well, then yes, there's obviously some problems involved with those. But it is not only possible for Christians to celebrate Christmas in a way that's honoring to God, but it's possible to do it in a way that's directly counter to the way the world approaches faith and spirituality.

So I don't think we need to be as concerned about supposedly pagan origins of certain things unless we're doing something that's explicitly pagan. I think that's a big difference. If we're not doing things that involve the mysticism and the oracles and the pagan deities, then we're not.

If we're celebrating Jesus, then we are celebrating Jesus. Yeah. So what I think is most interesting about.

This, in some senses, it's similar to Easter. Some people get so hung up on the fact that our culture is adapted to Easter bunny, Easter eggs, and all those other trappings. And because of that, we shouldn't be celebrating Easter.

It's like, well, the resurrection of Christ is imminently worth celebrating. So to celebrate the resurrection of Christ on that day, you'd be calling it something different. I mean, just because the culture has attached things that distract from it, doesn't mean there isn't some inherent value in actually celebrating the event itself.

It's an interesting story. A few years ago, we took a vacation in early December, so we didn't put up our Christmas lights. And one of our neighbors, once we got back, was like, I was really surprised you guys didn't put your Christmas lights up because I know you guys go to church.

So for him, Christians put up Christmas lights because they're celebrating Christmas. But then I've heard people take the Christmas lights back to, oh, people lit candles and put them on or in their homes to scare away demons or to worship some pagan deity or whatever.

But in our culture now, most people view Christmas lights as a symbol that the family that lives in that home are celebrating Christmas, and they still attach some connection to Jesus to the Christmas lights.

So for us, that was a powerful reminder to us. It's like, yeah, if some people are going to find it strange that Shay and Melissa are Christians and yet they don't have Christmas lights up, well, hey, we're going to put Christmas lights up because we want people to have that connection with them.

Yes, there are a family that celebrates Christmas and Christmas lights was one of the ways they do that. Or it's another funny but kind of quirky story. Someone told me after our church went Christmas caroling one time that, oh, did you know where Christmas caroling came from?

So in the ancient Roman holiday of Saturnalia, people would get exceedingly drunk, strip naked, and then go around their neighborhood and come to people's houses and then sing drinking songs to them. So that's where Christmas caroling came from.

It's like, okay, I do not have the time nor the desire to actually research whether what this person described was actually happening 2 ,000 years ago. But how completely opposite is that from what Christmas caroling is?

I mean, we're not getting drunk, not stripping naked, especially not in Colorado in December. That would be exceedingly uncomfortable. But no, we're singing songs that point people to Christ, that point people to the true meaning of Christmas.

And we're doing it in order to bless and encourage people and even to opportunity to invite them to church for Christmas Eve service and those sorts of things. So it's that whole almost any cultural practice we have.

If you look hard enough, you can find something 2 ,000 plus years ago that remotely resembles it, and that maybe there's some lineage tracing all the way to our practice today. But ultimately, what we're celebrating now and how we're celebrating has nothing to do with that ancient practice.

And so therefore, the fact that that ancient practice involves some things that Christians should definitely not be involved in is irrelevant to whether we celebrate it today.

Our church has caroling scheduled for the week of Christmas, and I can guarantee we're all going to be fully clothed as we are out singing those Christmas carols to honor Christ's birth. Can't guarantee we're all going to be in tune, but we will be honoring Christ in all of that.

And as far as the Christmas decorations outdoors, I think, Shea, you bring up a good point with the testimony that that gives to our neighbors. Everybody in my neighborhood knows that I'm a pastor and a believer in Christ, and they expect to see Christmas decorations when they come by our house.

And so we've got decorations out there that honor the birth of Christ, that point to Christ specifically, and I just see it as a testimony to the neighborhood that, yes, we believe in Jesus and we rejoice at His birth.

And personally, whatever a person decides to do as far as celebrating Christmas, that's between Him and the Lord. As far as my family goes, our conviction is that we will celebrate Christmas. And I look again at that message that the angel had to the shepherds in Luke 2, where the angel says to them that the good news that he was bringing involved Christ being born the Savior of the world, and that He was the Lord.

The angel gives three titles for Jesus in that message. He calls Him Savior, He calls Him Christ or Messiah, and He calls Him Lord. So Jesus is the Savior who delivers us from sin and death. He is the Messiah or the Christ who fulfills the law and the prophets and shows God's faithfulness to rescue His people, and He is the Lord.

He's the Holy One who came down from heaven. The Almighty took on human flesh and dwelt among us. He is truly Emmanuel, which is also part of the Christmas story in Matthew chapter 1. He is God with us.

So we were in darkness and God sent the light. We were in a dry and thirsty land, and God sent us the living water. We were hungry spiritually. God sent us the bread from heaven. We were like sheep gone astray, Isaiah says.

God sent us the Good Shepherd. We were enslaved by sin, and God sent the Deliverer who was greater than Moses. We were, in fact, dead in our trespasses and sins. God sent us the life. Plenty of reasons to celebrate.

The coming of Christ into this world. One of the things that people sometimes get hung up on is those connections, as you were talking about, even though we use them for positive things. I think, Shea, you made a good point that if you go back far enough in history, you can associate almost any thing with something negative.

That applies to things like dates as well. There's going to be something that happened on almost any date in history that somebody somewhere is going to come up with something negative about it. It's going to be some tragic event.

It's going to be some bad person's birthday or something else like that. There are plenty of children in the world who have been born on September 11th. That's a date that strikes a lot of people in the United States with a certain feeling and emotion.

But there's no reason for people to say, no, you cannot celebrate your child's birthday because September 11th was a tragic event. It's not that you're denying that there was a tragedy that happened on that date, but clearly that's not what's being celebrated at this time.

So even if we were able to point to something pagan happening on December 25th, even if Christmas caroling originally started as a bunch of drunk, naked Romans ringing each other's doorbells, well, that doesn't mean that that's what we're doing now, and we cannot do those things.

Christian Liberty, Conscience, and Romans 14

My take a lot of times on the trappings of Christmas is a little, I guess a little bit different. To me, it's important that people recognize that there is that sense of Christian liberty and difference that's involved there.

In other words, for me, if people say something about my Christmas lights, my point is to say, I like the way they look. I think they're pretty. It's part of the festive nature of Christmas. I am celebrating Christmas, but for me and my house, my explanation to them is that as far as we're concerned, those lights don't really have anything per se to do with Christmas.

They're part of how our culture does things. They're traditional type of thing, but they're not really what Christmas is meant to be about. That's not the purpose of those things. So it's an opportunity to have those conversations.

You can actually discuss with people, what does this mean and what does this not mean? The same thing with other Christmas traditions, which there again, we can debate just how closely connected and reasonable they are.

Elf on the Shelf and Santa Claus and all those other things are basically separate to the issue of what are we celebrating and why are we celebrating it? It's not the same thing to say, I like the traditions.

I like the jingling of the bells and the snow and the caroling and so on and so forth. That's a different thing from saying this is intrinsic to how I celebrate my Savior's birth. I think for our listeners,.

I think you're going to be detecting in this that to varying degrees, Kevin, Jeff, and I all do celebrate Christmas. Probably celebrate differently, probably have different traditions we do or don't do, but don't hear us saying that we're convinced that everyone has to celebrate Christmas.

In Christian freedom, we firmly believe that you are free to celebrate Christmas or you are free to not celebrate Christmas. If after studying the different traditions, if you have a conviction that you cannot in good conscience celebrate Christmas, well, we would say you need to follow your conviction and not celebrate Christmas.

At the same time, we need to show grace to those who come to a different conviction than us, whether that's celebrating Christmas or not celebrating Christmas. Romans 14 has a couple of verses that definitely apply to this.

It's not specifically talking about Christmas, but to him, whatever is not of faith is sin. If you are not fully convinced, and that's the other verse, that each person should be fully convinced in his own mind whether he, in that context, observes one day different than the others.

The principle applies that you should have faith that you're doing honors God. You should be fully convinced, based on your study of Scripture, that this is something that Christians are free to do. If you have those convictions, you are free to celebrate.

If you don't have those convictions, you are free to not celebrate. Please do not hear any pressure from us saying every Christian has to celebrate Christmas, because that's not what we're saying. My biggest hang-up with the questions that we receive around Christmas time is the people who take such strong viewpoints against Christmas.

Christmas is so hopelessly pagan at this point that no Christian could possibly honor, glorify God by celebrating Christmas. I strongly disagree with that viewpoint. Then the other people on the other side, which is rare.

I mean, most people will tend to understand if someone else doesn't celebrate Christmas. They think it's weird, but it's like they don't feel the need to try to convince them to have the same viewpoint.

But let's show one another love and grace, because Christ's coming to this earth to be the Savior is the most precious gift imaginable. And as Kevin said, so worth celebrating. Nothing worth celebrating more than what God did for us, the precious gift He gave for us in Christ.

So that's the point we want to give across. There is Christian freedom in this. Our conviction is that the birth of Christ is worth celebrating, and that it's worth being a light to the world in how we celebrate.

But in no sense do we feel the need to force this conviction on others, especially if they are of the conviction that they do not want to celebrate.

So please hear that spirit coming from us today. One of the things that matters to me when we talk about people who take such a strong stance against Christmas, and it's a point that's at least worth asking.

Like you said, nobody's obligated to celebrate Christmas. If a person sincerely believes that there's something wrong about it, then they should be following their conscience, and that's a good thing for them to do.

But the people who say that they should just demand that nobody should be celebrating Christmas, one of the questions I want to ask is then, what are you doing? Do you not think that the birth of Jesus is something worth celebrating?

Why just cross our arms and stand in a corner and say, we're just going to hand over this entire season to commercialism and paganism, and so on and so forth. I would rather be the kind of person who says, I understand that some people may be celebrating the Christmas season in a wrong way, or for the wrong reasons, or whatever else, but I'm going to choose to make this about Jesus.

I'm going to choose to celebrate that Jesus Christ came, and I'm going to explain to people why I'm doing the things that I'm doing, and why I'm not doing the things that I'm not doing. Instead of me just saying, well, there's something about this that I don't like, so I'm just going to abandon it and hand it over.

I think it's at least worth asking, how does that help anything? What does that do for our Christian witness? How does that explain the gospel to other people? There's a difference between a person saying, I just don't think that this is something I can do and I can celebrate, versus saying, I think we should just hide and do nothing at this time of year, especially when, ostensibly, we're celebrating something that is so.

Valuable and so important. So Jeff, Kevin, Merry Christmas to you both. I'm excited that the two of you get to come to Colorado Springs to celebrate the staff Christmas party with us this year, so looking forward to that.

And to our listeners, Merry Christmas to you. Again, do not interpret us as saying we have to celebrate Christmas, because that's not what we're saying, but the birth of Christ is worth celebrating, because without Christ's birth, we cannot have his death and resurrection, which is the atoning sacrifice for our sin and the evidence that his payment was sufficient.

Therefore, through faith in Christ, we can have our sins forgiven and spend eternity with God in heaven. And that is absolutely worth celebrating. Amen. I hope this conversation has been encouraging and beneficial to you.

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