E.J. Waggoner's Thoughts on Christmas

"What Is Christmas?” 

Possibly ninety-nine out of every hundred people who give the

matter any thought at all, would answer that it is the anniversary of the birth of Christ. 

So general has this idea become, that many people regard Christmas as a sacred day...In the Catholic Church it is regarded as far more holy than Sunday.  

 

---As a matter of fact, nobody knows the month nor the day of the month on which Jesus of Nazareth was born. 

--The only place where we could hope to find any definite information on the subject, namely, the Bible, is utterly silent regarding the matter. 

---The fact that the Bible gives no sanction whatever to the celebration of the birth of Christ, not even mentioning when it occurred, is sufficient evidence that the Lord did not wish to have it celebrated. 

 

---There is only one thing that we can know with any certainty about the birth of Christ, and that is that it did not take place on the twenty-fifth of December, nor in the month of December. Read the record: “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” Luke 2:8-11.  

Winter in Palestine is the season of rain. Snow falls, and there are sharp frosts. While it is a subtropical country, it is certain that in the winter season sheep are not kept in the field, and shepherds do not in winter, watch their flocks by night “all seated on the ground,” as the hymn has it. 

 

---No one thought of celebrating any day as the birthday of Christ until about three hundred years after His ascension. 

Dr. Schaff tells us that we first find Christmas in Rome, “in the time of the Bishop Liberius, who on the twenty-fifth of December, 360, consecrated Marcella, the sister of St. Ambrose, nun or bride of Christ, and addressed her with the words, ‘Thou seest what multitudes are come to the birth festival of thy bridegroom.’ This passage implies that the festival was already existing, and familiar. Christmas was introduced in Antioch about the year 380; in Alexandria, where the feast of the Epiphany was celebrated as the nativity of Christ, not till about 430.”

 

When we recall the fact, stated by Mosheim, that in consequence of the introduction of pagan philosophy into the church, the heathen came into the church in great numbers, without thinking it necessary to materially change any of their former practices, we can understand how the opposition between the church and the world came to be softened by the general “conversion” of the heathen. 

 

As Dr. Schaff says, Christmas was adopted after the close of persecution, when abhorrence of everything heathen had ceased. 

Mosheim tells us that even in the second century, a large part of the Christian observances and institutions had the aspect of the pagan mysteries. This was because “the Christian bishops purposely multiplied sacred rites” for the purpose of conciliating the pagans. As illustrating the spirit of compromise he quotes the following from Gregory Nyssen’s life of Gregory Thaumaturgus: “When Gregory perceived that the ignorant and simple multitude persisted in their

idolatry, on account of the sensitive pleasures and delights it afforded, he allowed them in celebrating the memory of the holy martyrs, to indulge themselves, and give a loose to pleasure (i.e., as the thing itself, and both what precedes and follows, placed beyond all controversy, he allowed them at the sepulchres of the martyrs on their feast days, to dance, use sports, to indulge conviviality, and to do all things that the worshippers of idols were accustomed to do in their temples on their festival days), hoping that in process of time they would spontaneously come over to a more becoming and more correct manner of life.”-Ecclesiastical History, Cent. 2, part 2, chap. 4, section 2, note 3.

 

....says that “the heathen calendar still regulated the amusements of the people.” These amusements, be it remembered, where the festival days of the church; so that the “church year” is but little else than the old heathen round of festivals.

 

The existence of such festival days in the professed Protestant Church to-day, only shows how incomplete was the work of the Reformation of the sixteenth century. That was only a beginning, and much yet remains to be done; for when Christ appears the second time He will find a church as free from Paganism as it was when He left it.  

---The finishing of the work of the Reformation will not be brought about en masse, nor by any general or formal action, but by individuals taking the Bible alone as their guide, and daring to be counted peculiar for the sake of Christ. 

---Who will be among the number?" E.J. Waggoner