Christmas. A Christian holiday?

Jesus said; "a little leaven ferments the whole lump”. Would you drink from a large glass of clean water if you knew someone had just put one drop of sewage in it? Why mix paganism, even a very small amount, with Christianity if knew you didn’t have to? Like I said before Jesus did not like or condone the Jews mixing false worship with true worship, do you really think that he feels any different about “Christians” who do the same, even if they do call themselves “Christian”?

 

OWB- I truly respect your beliefs, and am honestly sometimes humbled by your knowledge of Scripture; however I think you dodged my question.

I understand that any pagan belief (eggs, rabbits, Christmas trees, et cetera) is bad and therefore should not be incorporated into Christian worship in any way. But is there a problem in Christians getting together on a Sunday of Passover to remember the resurrection, that according to St Paul gives our faith merit (cf. 1 Corinth. 15:13-19) even though Christ himself did not say for us to do it specifically.

Should we mourn Christ's death and suffering on Good Friday? Not because he told us to, but because our Lord and Saviour is suffering. Does a country not mourn their monarch in death, so should the world not mourn their Monarch, Christ the King?

 

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to dodge your question. Sometimes I’m answering 3 or 4 threads at a time and I get into sort of a groove, a lot of the posts that I answer seem so similar that I get to racing, hoping to get to the end of the pat answers and to thoughtful posts that will help my understanding. Thanx for slowing me down and for your thoughtful post.

Seeing as the Bible says; do not be forsaking the gathering of yourselves together, there is no problem with Christians getting together to remember the resurrection, in fact it might be a good thing if Christians got together more often and meditated and reflected on Jesus life. The problem comes in when these gatherings become more important than what Jesus told us to do or the actual celebration that Jesus himself started at his last Passover meal.

Mourn may not be the right word, One should remember that Jesus death meant that he had perfectly completed his assignment here on earth and was to be resurrected to a position of honor and glory in heaven. Remember he is not dead but very much alive. So instead of mourning, perhaps we should meditate on and soberly reflect on how we should live our lives, seeing as such things have occurred. Myself I like to follow Jesus life, in the Bible, day by day for the week leading up to the celebration that he started and then continue on till his resurrection. I use the first full moon after the vernal equinox as the date of the celebration. If you want to get technical it should be the first full moon visible in Jerusalem.

Hope I didn’t dodge your question this time. If I did, I'll try to give it another shot.

 

I wouldn't presume to speak for OWB, because he knows way more than I do on this topic. But it seems to me that he is making a distinction between Christ's recorded words and how The Church (man ... largely white man ... often with a very worldly agenda such as power and control) interprets those teachings and transmutes them into mindless ritual and arbitrary dogma.

Though I still don't know what I believe, I'm a big Jesus fan. The Church? Not so much. It's The Church that turned Jesus into a commodity, dumbed him down, made him into a Santa Claus and an Easter Bunny. Adopting pagan rituals to attract early followers was just the first distortion.

Now (and I can speak only for Catholicism because that's how I was raised), it's beer festivals and bingo nights and ashes on foreheads and spraying incense, etc, etc.

All relatively harmless, of course.

Then on the uglier side it's homophobia, misogyny, political fear mongering, general intolerance and hypocrisy. Yet it's all part and parcel of the same distortion, and Jesus would have none of it.

So I see OWB's argument as a reminder of the large gap between how Jesus taught us to live and how, 2000 years later, we actually live. A lot has been lost. But the church doesn't seem to mind as long as they maintain power and that collection plate fills up every Sunday.

 

Nope that was more than what I expected. Perhaps mourn might not have been the correct word, but you seem to have captured the spirit of what I wrote. I understand what you are getting at too when you speak of "large gatherings".

Basically my point was that you aren't opposed to Easter/Velykden'/et cetera per se, but that you are opposed to pagan traditions as well as taking the focus away from God. That seemed to be what you were saying, but your rhetoric almost went so far as to say that all resurrection celebration was pagan, or that all Christmas celebration was pagan; in reality what you meant was that the traditions that were incorporated were pagan, but not the Feast idea behind it (I use feast not in the sense of eating lots of food, but of a day set aside by the Church, not specifically the RCC, as a day to specifically remember a moment in the life of Christ and/or a Saint).

 

Why not incorporate other traditions? If Christians dye eggs or give chocolate, that doesn't change the fact that to them the time is about the death of Christ.It doesn't make it less real to them or change the importance. Would Jesus really mind as long as he was still kept at the centre?

Traditionally birthday cakes were not as they are today, does that mean we shouldn't use them because they have changed over time? Even though the meaning is still the same?

The name may have been taken from the Germanic calendar, but the true meaning of the resurrection hasn't been taken from anywhere. What does the name or origin matter, it's the meaning that counts.

 

Well except for the comment on chocolate, I'd agree whole-heartidly. Whilst I do buy int a bit of the commercialization of Christ, I do not think that is what should be incorporated. Instead, as throughout Christian history, I think that local customs can and should be adapted into Christianity. For example, the Sviat Vechir supper in Ukrainian Christianity is eaten with hay amongst your icons of Jesus, Mary and possibly Joseph to remind us of the stable he was born in. Your animals are supposed to be given the first bites of the meal to remind us that the animals were the first witnesses of the birth of Christ. A didukh, or a bundle of wheat, is kept under the table for a good harvest next year. I am sur some or all of these traditions have pre-Christian Slavic origins, but I do not see a harm in incorporating them. It goes along with the idea that pre-christian traditions around the world may have been worshiping God before being Christianized, just that they weren't worshiping him fully.

 

I'd absolutely agree, I don't see any real reason not to celebrate anything really.

 

Yes. I'd agree too.

 

I would suggest that you ask yourself why "God's People" the Jews were rejected by God and why he turned his attention to the nations to take out a people for his name. Jesus, himself said that there would be some, who call themselves Christian, which he would reject. Why would he do that? Could it be for the same reasons that the Jews were rejected.

 

Are you suggesting that God will reject people because they eat Christams pudding to celebrete the birth of His son?

 

Pudding no but Christmas... on Dec 25th…He might think that you’re celebrating the birth of the sun, rather than the birth of his son, something he never asked you to do anyway.

 

It needs to be on one day right?!

 

But if he is an all knowing God, he would be able to look into the heart and see the motive was a pure one.

We might assume too that God would know that in most cases anyway, we no longer believe in the re-birth of the sun, as we know that it is simply a function of the earth's rotation around the sun.

But does God 'think'? Or does He have a superior way of knowledge? It may be that attributing thinking to God is a human projection. Because we rely on reason etc we assume God does too. But there's actually no reason to make such an assumption..

 

What can I say to a person who thinks defiling True Worship with pagan worship is okay as long it’s done with a “pure heart”?

Maybe you should take a look at the history of the Jews in the Bible, when they kept dragging false worship home and calling it “True Worship”, was God pleased? Did it go well with them when they did? When they cleaned out all the false worship, how did they fare? Weren’t those the times they prospered? Can it be different for Christians?

Has God now changed his mind about False Worship? Is it now okay to defile True Worship with False, if you do it with a “pure heart”? Is False Worship okay because you now call it “True Worship”? Does the admonition at; (2 Corinthians 6:14-18) no longer apply?

I’m not telling you or anyone what to do, so go head celebrate your Easter and your Christmas and eat your Christmas pudding.

As for me and my household we will take our Worship unadulterated.

 

No doubt at the same time looking down on all those semi-pagans eating up their puds.

 

No, not at all. Love the sinner and hate the sin and all.

Anyway this thread is about whether Christmas is for Christians. The bottom line is whether God approves or not, not whether I approve. The Bible shows plainly that God does not approve of False Worship even if it has been whitewashed to look like True Worship.

Now it's up to you to either please God by sticking to True Worship and removing the False or continue to please yourself by mixing True and False.

 

But I don't think people regard using things like holly or miseltoe as worship. It's just traditional deco which rightly or wrongly they associate with Christmas.

 

That is exactly what I'm talking about. Christmas is part of their worship, yet it is filled with things like holly and mistletoe. Where does holly and mistletoe come from, they're not in the Bible? In fact the only thing that about Christmas that has anything to do with the Bible is the first part of the word "Christ"mas everything else is of pagan origin. They can't even get the story right; the "Wise" men didn't even show up till Jesus was almost two and living in a house not a manger. The whole thing is a thinly disguised pagan holiday that people celebrate not to please God but to please themselves.

 

Well I think you just have to accept that Christianity is a hodge podge of Jewish and Pagan influences.
Even the word 'logos' for the 'word of God' used in John is derived from Greek Pagan philosophies.
Further, during it's development a lot was taken on board from other sources.
In england when we had the civil war and the puritans took over briefly, with their ban on Christmas celebrations, we had one of the darkest and most oppressive periods in our history.
I think that if you take away all that has grown up in the way of traditions, you wouldn't have much left which would appeal to people, or attract them towards God.

Since the 'original' Christianity is lost forever thanks to the church, we'll never know how they celebrated or didn't celebrate Christmas.