38. Christmas and Other Holidays
This is an area in which various Christadelphians
hold a wide spectrum of opinions. We confine ourselves, therefore, to the
simplest facts — and, as much as possible here as elsewhere, refrain from
judging others in what their consciences allow.
As men and women baptized into Christ, we have
been called out of this pagan, apostate world, and sanctified by the Word of
God. In consequence we are “a peculiar people”, a holy nation, no
longer walking in the careless ways of men, but in the narrow yet joyous way of
God. The faithful men of old who worshiped God acceptably were most careful to
shun the false religions and false religious practices around them.
“This do in remembrance of me”, said
Jesus, as he passed the bread and the wine to our brethren with him in that
upper room. He commanded them to remember his death and resurrection. No
instruction has been given us to remember his birth in any special way, or at
any particular time of the year. In history, there is no record of
Christ’s birth being kept as a feast before the third century, nor was the
feast at all popular until the fourth century. Christmas (which, of course, is
literally “Christ-Mass” — betraying its Catholic origins) was
introduced into the “Christian Church” at the same time as all the
other gross pagan beliefs and practices now held by the Roman Church and others.
The “christianizing” of these pagan rites was in the spirit of the
famous advice given by Pope Gregory I to his followers, that by all means they
should meet the “pagans” halfway and so bring them into the
Church.
That Christmas is to some degree a pagan festival
is, then, without doubt. Many of its customs are directly traceable to the
ancient idolatries of various European peoples. The real question is: Given
these associations, to what extent do we, as disciples of Christ, feel justified
in observing its less pagan elements?
Much of what might be stated in regard to the
commemoration of Christmas applies with equal force to “Easter” and
other official “church” holidays: Most of them have little or no
Bible connections, but are primarily fabrications of myth and superstition with
the thinnest veneer of Scriptural justification.
Under this heading might be mentioned the display
of the “cross”, supposedly a Christian symbol — but in actual
fact appropriated from pagan religious sources and made to do service in the
“Church”: another example of the Catholic Apostasy’s use of
idolatrous symbols. The true believer understands the teaching of the cross of
Christ, but he does not revere it, flaunt it, or worship it — as those in
the false churches so often do.
