Christmas is not a Christian Festival
 

Anyone any thoughts on the notion that Christmas is not a Christian festival at all . . and is in fact based on a pagan mid-winter feast of consumption of food and drink.? Now I am not a religious person but I happen to know that Santa is not mentioned in the bible very often . . . nor is the custom of bringing outdoor trees into your home and sticking a ballerina on top (how surreal is that if you stop to think about it?!).

For how many people is the Christmas season religious in any way? Precious few . . its all shopping, drink, presents, food, drink, decorations, drink, parties, drink, family gatherings, drink, holidays, office fun, drink, movies, music, plasma screens and perfume . . . . . and drink.

ofcourse, christmas is a product of compromise between people and religion :) i for one am very happy about it :)

I guess you have been good this year then TawG! Dont forget to lkeave out the cookies and milk!

It is based on the pagan holiday thats a fact

The celebration is based on the Birth of Jesus Christ, the timing is another story. Ofcourse you guys are referring to the secular consumer seasonal celebration.

How bout this... pagans call it whatever they want er like "Midwinter Festival" and Christians will continue to call it Christmas.

Any religious holiday is going to be secularized, but that doesn't make it any less holy or memorable for the people who want to keep it holy and memorable. Mojo's right on this one - Christians celebrate (or are supposed to celebrate) Christmas for Christ. Its pagan foundations have very little bearing on Christians today.

you are right sledge . . . but since a tiny proportion of so-called Christians attend church or consider their religion in any meaning ful way during their typical week then equally you could say that its Christian foundations have very little bearing on the way 90% of people actually participate and enjoy the festive period. I suggest that the pagan foundations and the mid-winter feasting is the more dominant energy nowadays.

excellent cnor . . . . didnt realise this was a topic so recently! Apologies . . . should have searched first!

Actually, Santa is modeled after the dutch "Saint Nicolas" guy. We celebrate his birthday on the 5th of december, someone just shifted him to fit in with the whole christmas birth of christ thing... That was probably a commercial thing.

To confuse things even more, this Saint Nicolas guy was introduced to replace the tradition of worshipping the nordic god Wodan (if I'm not mistaken).

And in another twist, the Saint came from a Turkish/Greek island (depending on whose side you're on), which was later conquered by the Spanish; as a result, these days, he's said to come from Spain.

(And I haven't even mentioned his assistants: formerly water spirits, they're now Moorish slaves. Yes, totally non-PC.)

That's a good point, duckznutz. I agree: Christmas is an orgy of consumption. Some of my Christian friends try to keep it pure by honoring the birth of Christ instead, though, and for them I think the holiday is as holy as any. I suppose it is all relative.

My family is pagan and celebrates yule dirung the time of winter solstice....we do also celebrate christmas with our christian family members for our youngest kids. As a sideline...I believe it has been accepted that Jesus was acyually born in the springtime , and christmas was created by the roman empire to appease the gauls.

Christmas is, or was not too long ago, and entirely Christian holiday. The worshipping the birth of the christ-child and all the REAL reasons behind it are totally religious, not pagan. The timing, not religious. It is a well accepted fact that there is no way that Jesus could have been born at the end of December. The timing we celebrate the holiday on is based on the pagan traditions, amongst other things. The non-christian side of christmas, what with the gift giving, christmas trees and feasting, partying and drinking and all....comes from the pagan holidays, cultural tradition, and marketting scams. Example... Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was entirely and totally made up as a marketting tool by Montgomery Wards in 1939. A christmas time tradition around the world....and it started out as a way to increase sales.

That is my understanding of things, but i could be wrong.

Christmas was a pagan holiday. The evergreen tree symbolizing life, survival and vitality was turned into a Christmas tree. I was fired from teaching Bible study at my church for protesting the sale of Christmas trees for that reason.

Easter is the same way. It was originally a celebration for Aster, a symbol of fertility. Thats why the bunnies are associated with it. Christian missionaries routinely incorporated native traditions into Christian celebrations. It much harder to get people to stop doing something they love than it is to change it a bit and hope the original meaning gets lost in the generations that pass.

Santa comes from Saint Nicolas who put small presents in the shoes of kids in Russia. He's not from the bible, stop assuming that if it's not in the bible it's not Christian.
Christians can have different customs and such and it be not biblical. I mean having youth groups is not in the bible although there are many good youth groups that are Christian.
The Christians invented christmas as an easy way to convert the pegans to christianity because it coincided with their winter holiday. Plus, it's just a holiday as a representation of the birth of christ, not the actual day. If it was the actual day, it christmas would have been somtime in the spring/summer where the Romans had their census.
Read up on your theology kids, some of you know your stuff, some of you don't.

Christmas has been comercialised, no doubt, that's what it is now that doesn't mean it's not Christian.

That's all for now.

Pah, that's a Dutch custom! The Russians obviously stole it from us. :P

Thanksgiving was even moved by FD. Roosevelt to the third week in November to increase the Christmas shopping season. However, voters didn't like that too much, so the holiday was moved back to the position it now holds on the 4th Thursday of the month.

christmas itself is a christian holiday, but the date on which it was celebrated changed to coincide with the pagan winter solstice festival. Up until the 18th century, december 25th was like a huge mardi gras.

C'mon, did you really think anyone could be born in a manger in the middle of winter? that's pretty inhospitable!

Here's another theory for the mix....

Sami reindeer herders, high on halucinogenic fungus, tell a tale of a man on a flying reindeer driven sled dropping presents onto the fire through the chimney hole in their teepee style tents.

Hey, it's summer down here ;-)

Well, Christmas coincides more or less with the solstice, and also with the Roman Saturnalia, which was a whoop-ass end-of-year festival in ancient times.

Interestingly enough, Christmas wasn't a big deal in Christianity up until 100-150 years ago. I read some American colonial accounts of Christmas in which some of the colonial bigwigs wanted to stop celebrating it, because it was mainly an excuse to get drunk and rowdy. In those days, Easter was the big Christian holy day -- and really still is, from a religious standpoint. But like somebody said, the marketers got hold of Christmas and the rest is history. In Japan, Christmas is an excuse to rent a fancy hotel suite and get laid -- that's how the Japanese saw all those GIs on leave celebrating Christmas back in the '40s, '50s, and '60s, and so that's how they see the holiday (most not being Christians anyway).

you are right sledge . . . but since a tiny proportion of so-called Christians attend church or consider their religion in any meaning ful way during their typical week then equally you could say that its Christian foundations have very little bearing on the way 90% of people actually participate and enjoy the festive period. I suggest that the pagan foundations and the mid-winter feasting is the more dominant energy nowadays.

Very good point.

Do a search on yule and you'll (get it) find a great deal of info on the pagen winter solstice stuff. I think the christian movement used an existing event to market their own thing and gain converts!

The yule log is of finnish origin--they would cut down a tree and stick the trunk end into the fire place, slowly inching it forward as the end disintegrated.

how odd that for christmas one tree would be revered and decorated, and another would be slowly mutilated to death...that's hypocrisy if anything is...

What I don't understand is why christians don't use the proscribed holidays? I mean, the feast of the first fruits and the days that follow are highly symbolic of the messiah, yet people don't use them. Each of the pagan celebrations have a corresponding (and appropriate) christian/Jewish holiday. They are very easy to look up in the big book, and there are simple instructions to conduct them.

Why continue to use what one knows has pagan origins (which christians were commanded not to follow) instead of the deity given festivals (which followers were commanded to follow and not forget)?

Who cares about gods being born? I like how me and my family get together, eat food, open presents and have FUN !!

I believe that it is unclear whether or not there was a historical St. Nicholas.

Because these festivals are jewish in origin, and the early Christians decided that converts were not required to follow Jewish Law. As Christianity slowly ceased to be a Jewish sect, any Jewish trappings that may have originally been present eventually withered away.

i think it's the same reason that hannukah (sp?) has taken on a greater significance for jews as christmas has become a more popular and dominant holiday (at least in the US).

Thank you for pointing out that those festivals are Jewish in origin. I'd like to point out that christians are Jewish in origin :)

I can understand that some people interpret certain scriptures to mean that they don't have to abide by Jewish regulations. However, this isn't a regulation, it's a festival that stands for what christians claim to be celebrating.

In any case, while christians might rightly believe they don't need to abide by the Jewish customs (I don't believe it but that's my own understanding), there isn't any justification for replacing those customs with pagan ones.

If you don't want to do something because it creates a burden on you, then don't do it. But I don't think it's a very good idea to go and do something that you were explicitly told not to do in its stead. We know the origins of the current festivals are pagan in origin--we ought not to do them. My understanding is that doing something you know is wrong is sinful.

Now, I understand the human propensity to resist that logic and continue doing what what we know is wrong--because I understand the Bible to say that humans are sinful and will consistently choose to do what they want even if they know it is wrong, that's why they need salvation.

On a different note, even laying doctrine aside, why would a christian who claims to love his or her savior and deity continue to do something that offends them/she/he/it? It seems to me that to continue to do something out of habit or because one has the right to do so (i.e., somebody said converts don't have to follow the rules because they are too burdensome), even when the deity explicitly said that the practice angers him, is placing the self's desires over the deity's will. Again, this shouldn't surprise anyone since the Bible clearly states that humans consistently choose their own interests over those of the diety. It even states we have the right to do so, but it doesn't say we will not be punished if we don't stop. In fact, it says the opposite.

To me, this boils down to a test of fealty. Do you choose to do that which you know is wrong (worshipping and celebrating in ways intended to please false deities would fall under this, IMO), or do you choose to do that which you know pleases the Lord--even though you aren't commanded to?

I would just like to add that if anyone is unfamiliar with the Jewish festival of the first fruit (which Yeshua called himself), they would be pleased to find what it represents.

I know that many denominations go through the symbolic nature of many of the Rabbinic teachings, buildings, and etc. which pointed to Messiah's coming. I wish people would familiarize themselves with the symbolic nature of the Jewish festivals because I think it would give them a deeper understanding of meaning into what Messiah is/was--that is the meaning of symbols, after all.

According to many beliefs, people need symbols to fully understand the significance of their reality. The deity gave us many symbols to point us towards that deeper, spiritual understanding. It's a very simple process to crack one's Bible and leaf through the festivals and meditate on their symbolic meaning. Place what you come to understand next to the symbolic meanings behind the trappings of christmas. I think you will readily see the difference and which one would make the most sense to follow and provide spiritual meaning and blessing.

Of course, none of this will make sense unless you have been given eyes to see and ears to hear, right?

So believers should probably pray for spiritual insight before meditating on the Scripture (and hopefully before discounting outright what I typed).

Have a pleasant day, regardless. In peace.

I don't mean to say that I necessarily think it's a good thing that we don't celebrate the jewish festivals, just to try and give an explanation. And I've long thought that the so-called pagan origin of Christian festivals has been overstated. Just because the date of a festival was chosen to correspond with a pagan holiday doesn't make the holiday itself necessarily pagan. It's just good marketing. Of course, I am a little disturbed by all the attention Christmas gets these days. As has been pointed out, Easter is really the central Christian holiday.

Or perhaps I should be glad Easter doesn't get the attention Christmas does; this way, it's not nearly as commercialized as Christmas.

The dates don't bother me as much as the actual activities. From what I've read, almost every activity done during those two holidays come from pagan tradition and served the purpose of pleasing the pagan belief system or deities.

For example, I read in an encyclopedia that the ancients chopped down the trees to release spirits from the stumps. The balls and tinsel represented planets and stars, etc. Each component is derived from ancient belief systems--but I don't want to trace each one down, because I'm not really trying to lecture anyone (sorry if it sounded like that :))

As for easter, there is a very appropriate festival for that, as well. It revolves around celebrating the fact of the rebirth instead of chasing eggs around (which was a Greek celebrationg of fertility) or giving people chocolate bunnies (again related to fertility).

I would say the opposite of what you stated is true; that is, the only thing linking those two holidays to christianity is that christians continue to participate in them--not the fact of the time or the activities done on them.

But I do agree with you that a celebration of the rebirth is of more significance than the birth of messiah--just not that easter is the way to celebrate it. I can't think of one activity related to easter that has origins in judaism or christianity.

Thank you for discussing this with me.

Actually, the only things I do for Easter is go to church in the morning and go out for breakfast with a group of Christian friends. And it's not a festival of rebirth in general -- it's a celebration of the resurrection of Christ. (Though, often, rebirth in general is a subsidiary theme.)

i believe that christmas has become a holiday of the masses but no matter what it still is the celebration of the birth of Christ.