"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
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