'Tis The Season

Jesus is the reason for the season.

As a child, Christmas = presents. Sure I did the Christmas play at church and said my speech. But I left cookies and milk out for Santa and I wrote my wish list for Santa (and the family). You know, its strange how mangled together the celebration of Jesus' birth and Santa's gift giving is. When I was younger (probably middle school aged) I tried to separate the traditions in my head.

It seemed to me that the idea of placing a star (or an angel) on the top of a tree came from the biblical passages about the birth of Christ. These would symbolize the angel and the star that guided the wise men, perhaps. Naturally the notion of gift exchange would fall under the lore of Santa Claus--though a person at my church did try to convince me that it was from the wise men bringing Jesus gifts.  I think that's a bit of a stretch. A lot of other things were left in question... Why decorate your yard with lights? Why pine and holly? Green and Red?

A lot of people thought my questions were dumb. Why did it matter what the answer was, they wanted to know. Well, if karma stays true (and I'm sure it will), if I ever have a child, I know they'll ask the same questions. What's more, I'd be responsible for shaping them spiritually and have to answer! Some people think its harmless to tell children about Santa, as long as they know the real reason for the season. Other people think its horrible and for this reason elementary schools now have strict rules on what can be mentioned about the holidays. In fact I'm not sure you're allowed to say Merry Christmas as a teacher--it's politically incorrect. -_- And of course, I just want to know!!!

Leave it to me to start asking the preacher "the worst" questions. I mean, how is it that Christianity only has 2 holidays and both "coincidently" land on the exact same day as a pagan holiday? No one wants to answer that one, huh?

If you do some research, one of the age old questions is just this: Was Jesus actually born on Dec. 25? Its hard to cite a reliable source with an answer on this, but a simple glance through materials will show more people believe He was not born on Dec. 25 than do. After all, if you look at a map, Bethlehem is roughly along the same latitude as South Carolina and Georgia. If you think about it, the weather could have been anywhere from the mid 20's/low 30's to the upper 50's in December (if you check weather.com's forecast for this Christmas the high is 55). While 55 isn't so bad, I'm sure it dipped into the upper 30's at night. That's not really good travel weather when you're riding camels and donkeys... Its not really good weather to be laying out in a field shepherding a flock either... We're talking BC time period, when people died from the common cold!

Well I'm sure Jesus was born, but honestly, I wouldn't bet much on Him being born on Dec. 25.

In the Bible, Jesus never talks about His birth... Throughout the Old Testament, God explains exactly what the Hebrews are supposed to (and not supposed to) do. Jesus clearly celebrates the passover with disciples. He talks about believing in Him for everlasting life... He never says "celebrate My birth!" No where in the New Testament does anyone tell us to create a holiday from His birth. Since the disciples didn't start the tradition (in which case the New Testament would mention it), I'm inclined to believe this is something the early church came up with on its own and is a little fudged in terms of detail.

The way I see it, the early Christians, under persecution from Rome, were sitting around chatting and someone said "Hey! We should celebrate the birth of our savior! That was life changing!" Then someone agreed and from there a debate began about what day He was actually born. This was followed by someone saying "let's just celebrate it on the 25th of December. Then we can blend in with the pagan holiday while praising our Lord without being detected by the Romans!" (of course they would have been on a different calendar so the proposed date would have been Dec. 25th's equivalent). Or maybe they picked a date close to it (somewhere in between Hanukkah and the pagan winter festivities) and the two holidays (Christmas and the winter festivities) just became absorbed into each other. As time has passed, I believe it's become more and more entangled with the pagan holiday traditions until now it's quite hard to separate. Think about it, there is no other name that delineates Santa's holiday from Jesus' holiday. Christmas encompasses both...

So, Jesus may not actually be the reason for the season...

Can't say for sure what happened, but food for thought: What are we celebrating? Why are we celebrating it? Does God want us to/Does it matter if it's actually Jesus' birthday?