Leaving Christmas
Why I Ceased
Observing Christmas
A personal
testimony
Raul Enyedi
I,
too, as many others Christians, have been saddened and upset by the increasing
secularization of the winter holidays, which, by every year that’s passing by,
become more superficial, losing more and more of their traditional values.
The commercial seem to swallow up these values and use them only to
increase profit. I, too, as many
others, once had a nostalgia and a longing for the old times when traditions
were respected, when the Christmas day had such an emotional charge, more than
any other day of the year. I was
among the voices that cried out: “Let’s bring Christ back into Christmas!”
I wanted Christ
to be back into the center of the holiday and to receive once again the worship
he received from the shepherds and the wise men.
And I was even one of those who insisted that Christmas was not about
Santa, but about Christ. The carols
I was singing talked only about Christ.
I wanted, from all my heart, a truly Christian Christmas.
But I knew that in order to have that, I had to do everything according
to the Scriptures and eliminate all that was contrary to it.
And so it was that I began my study, to find what the Bible really does
say about Christmas. Very early I
found that the New Testament does not contain any commandment to observe the
birth of Christ. This was a bit
odd, since in the Old Testament, when the Lord gave the Law to
Not only have I
found no specific commandment in the New Testament about observing the birth of
Christ, but I found no exact date of his birth either.
After all my inquiry, I was able to find only an approximate period,
sometime late September or early October.
There was no way Christ’s birth could take place at the end of December,
because the shepherds did not keep their flocks out on the fields during this
month (see Luke 2:8), and a census would have been impossible at that time, too,
for the traveling conditions in Israel were very difficult in the midst of the
rainy season (Luke 2:1-3).
My next discovery
troubled me even more. The Bible
says nothing about the Christmas carols, the tree, the exchange of gifts, the
special church programs and the preparing of rich tables in honor of the birth
of the Savior. There is no
commandment and no example in the Bible for anything that we do at Christmas.
I asked myself, how can I have a Christian, scriptural Christmas when
nothing that I do is found in the Bible?
How did we, Christians, come to observe a holiday not commanded by the
Bible? Why did we choose an
obviously wrong date and customs that resemble with nothing in the Scripture?
And if everything that pertains to Christmas, things that I assumed to be
Christian, do not come from the New Testament, where did they come from?
Oh, how great a surprise was the answer to the latter
question.
All the
encyclopedias I read showed me that the origin of the holiday is not biblical
but pagan. And they told me all the
books about myths and history of religions.
The Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholic sources openly confessed the
pagan origins of Christmas. And so
I learned that the ancient pagan nations had a great festival dedicated to the
birth of the sun god, which had different names, according to the different
lan-guages.
The Egyptians called him Osiris, the Babylonians Tammuz, the Persians
Mythra and the Romans Saturn, and gave him the title
Sol Invictis, the Unconquered Sun.
It was the same god everywhere, only the names differed.
All these pagan nations celebrated the birth of the sun god in the winter
time, just after the solstice (December 21st), because that’s when
the day starts increasing again.
The Romans celebrated the Saturnalia during this time, the holiday dedicated to
Saturn. During this period, there
was an excess of eating, drinking and all sorts of orgies, a merry time for
pagans. And December 25th
was the climax of pagan “spirituality.”
The Christmas carols are also directly connected to this pagan holiday.
The Romans called them calendae.
Groups of people went from house to house, wishing luck,
happi-ness and fertility to their hosts.
The Christmas tree is also an ancient pagan symbol.
And so is the Christmas exchange of gifts, which the pagan Romans called
sigillaria, during which the children were
given gifts of small figurines of clay or wax.
How did we
Christians come to observe a holiday not commanded by the Bible: a holiday pagan
to its very core? History tells us
that Christians decided to celebrate Christmas after they began to depart from
the Scriptures and started giving their own laws and rules.
After the time of Constantine the Great, ruler of the Roman Empire from
AD 306 to 337, when Christianity became the official religion of the Empire,
making a lethal compromise with the State, multitudes of pagans were
“Christened,” while still devoted to their own gods.
Not being able to separate them from their idols, the Church decided to
keep the pagan date and customs, but give them Christian names.
John Chrysostom (AD 347-407), among many others, associated the pagan
holiday with the name of Christ.
Says he: “But they call it the ‘Birthday of the Unconquered.
Who indeed is so unconquered as Our Lord...?
Or, if they say that it is the birthday of the Sun, He is the Sun of
Justice.” Such was the way in which
the Christianized pagans were kept satisfied.
For it did not matter to them by what name their god was called, as long
as they could keep their pagan worship customs.
They did not worship Jesus Christ, but they worshiped the sun god, whom
they could also call Jesus Christ.
Upon finding
these troubling things, I started asking others why we keep this holiday, why at
a pagan date with pagan customs, hoping to find some light in their answers.
When I asked: “Why do we observe Christmas?,”
I received many answers, some even childish.
I will only mention the answers that made me think and ponder.
1. It is a
good thing to set a day or two apart to remember that Jesus was born to bring
salvation to mankind.
I was not satisfied by this answer, because I asked myself: who decides
what is good for me as a Christian?
God or men? I believe that God, my
Father, knows better than anyone what is good and what is bad for me.
He is a good Father, and wants the best for me.
And he told me in the Scriptures what is good.
Now, if the Bible does not tell me that we need to have a holiday
honoring the birth of the Lord, this means that I do not need such a holiday for
my spiritual welfare. I ask all
those who tell me that it is good to have such a holiday: Do you think that God
hid or refused to reveal something good for us?
If Christmas is something good, and God did not tell us about it, it
means that He hid something good for us.
This monstrous idea is nothing but the same seed of doubt planted by
Satan in Eve’s heart, suggesting to her that God does not want our good
completely, but keeps something good from us.
If Christmas would be good or necessary, our Lord and His apostles would
definitely have taught us to observe it.
Apostle Paul told the elders of the church in
2. “We need a
special day to remember Christ’s birth.
It does not matter what day, and December 25th is just as good
as any other day.” I can’t help but
wonder then, if we are so honest in our desire to pay our homage to the birth of
our Savior, why didn’t we choose a date that is closer to the time when He was
born (end of September, beginning of October)?
Why was December 25th chosen, from all the days of the year,
knowing that it is the most pagan of all?
Is it just a coincidence? I
don’t think so!
3. “What is
not explicitly and implicitly forbidden in the Scriptures, is allowed.
The Bible neither approves nor disapproves of such a holiday, therefore
it is up to us.” Could we
possibly understand the silence of the Scripture as being permissive in such a
case? Or rather its silence is the
strongest argument against observing the holiday?
Let us remember that all the Christmas customs that we have today also
existed in the time of Christ and the apostles: Not with the Christians,
however, but with the pagans!!! The
date, the celebration of the birth, the carols, the tree, the gifts, the rich
tables and many other details related to the feast existed in the time our Lord
walked on this earth. Did He
identify Himself with any of these?
Did He commission His apostles to go to the pagans and teach them that He is the
Unconquered Sun celebrated by them: that the Christmas tree represents Him?
The answer is an obvious and absolute NO!
All the analogies between Christ and this holiday were made much later,
by “Christians” who thought that they can change and improve the Bible and who
were looking for excuses for their desertion from the boundaries of the
Scripture
!
The feast of the
Nativity cannot be dissociated from its pagan origin.
The Christian’s stubborn persistence in celebrating Christ’s birth on
December 25th, with carols, Christmas tree, gifts, a special service
at the church and a festive table at home – just as the pagans celebrated their
god – prove that we identified ourselves with the paganism and borrowed from it
in our worship to the true God. And
in this respect, the Scripture is not silent at all, but repeatedly condemns
the association of true with false worship, and teaches a complete separation
from idols and their worship. The
identification with paganism, the borrowing of pagan gods or pagan models of
worship is expressly condemned in the Bible, both in the Old and in the New
Testament.
The Orthodox and
the
4. “It is good
to take advantage of the fact that the lost world is thinking about Christ and
His birth in this time of year and preach Christ to them.”
But what kind of Christ do these people
have and desire? Isn’t it strange
that the world hates Christ but loves Christmas?
Why is that? Because they do
not worship Christ! They really
worship the sun god which they have become accustomed to call Jesus Christ, and
whom they called by lots of names before the fifth century.
But the world is not willing to accept the true Jesus Christ, the Lord of
heaven and earth! Our
identification with them in this holiday does not help us to show them the true
Jesus Christ, but rather it strengthens their conviction that we worship the
same god as them, the one they falsely call Jesus.
5. “We should
not judge anyone that observes Christmas, because ‘One
man esteemeth one day above another: another
esteemeth every day alike.
Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that
regardeth the day, regardeth
it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day,
to the Lord he doth not regard it’” (Romans 14:5-6).
The attempt to justify the adoption of a pagan holiday with this text is
childish and it shows that people love this holiday so much that they will twist
the Holy Scripture in order to excuse Christmas.
The text in Romans 14 does not speak about pagan holidays, but about the
Old Testament feasts, which were commanded by the Lord to
6. Finally, when
those whom I have asked admitted that there is no biblical foundation for
Christmas, they usually asked in return: “But what is wrong with celebrating
the birth of the Lord, because we worship the true Jesus, and it is Him we adore
in our carols? Even though the
customs are pagan in origin, we changed them so that now Christ is in the center
of the holiday.” I asked myself
the same thing. When I ran out of
arguments, this was the last question thrown in the battle, the last line of
defense for Christmas. My heart
was desperately trying to hold fast to the feast, while upon my mind were
working the convincing arguments of Scripture, logic and common sense.
And this is the conclusion I reached:
Observing this
holiday is wrong and harmful because:
It means to go
beyond the Scriptures, to deny their authority, to doubt that God revealed in it
everything that is good for me. It
means rejecting the Sola Scriptura!
It identifies me
with the lost world and not vice versa.
The nature of Christianity is such that when it is combined with
paganism, the latter will never become Christian, but Christianity will always
end up being pagan.
The true worship
is “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).
The false worship is in the flesh and in error.
Is the Christmas worship “in truth,” when we sing and say and preach that
Christ was born on December 25th, when we know He was not?
We lie in everything we do or say that associates the birth of Jesus
Christ, directly or indirectly, with Christmas.
The Christ of the Bible was not born on December 25th!
Will God accept our worship if it is not in the truth, but is founded on
a pagan lie?
I eventually
surrendered to these arguments: they overwhelmed me.
More than 10 years have passed since I quit celebrating Christmas.
Some call me fanatic and narrow minded.
Others doubt that I am a good Christian or a Christian at all because I
don’t observe Christmas. However,
I felt like I was set free. I did
not miss any spiritual blessing since I don’t believe in Christmas any more.
Quite the contrary. Serving
God far from paganism, in freedom and within the boundaries of the Scripture is
a far better experience than trying to serve Him as men see fit.
Christmas is a
pagan holiday. Everything done at
Christmas time is rooted in paganism.
Paganism is drastically condemned by the Bible and pagan worship is an
abomination before the Lord. But
men want to keep it, thinking that they can get something good for us and
pleasing to God from this pagan holiday.
They judge me for not observing Christmas and for testifying against it.
But judge for yourself whether it is right before God to obey men rather
than God!