Why Christmas

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 21 December 2007 22:36:21

A Churchless Faith mentioned finding it hard to celebrate Christmas, wondering if this is what the early church did, or just the pagans at solstice. It started me exploring. Did the early church celebrate Christmas?

Apparently the first mention of Christmas as Dec 25 was 336. Before then Christians in different areas of the world were celebrating Christmas at different times. That's the disadvantage of a pre-internet world. Synchronizing festivals takes a bit longer. This article briefly summarises the different dates Christmas was celebrated in the first few centuries of the church.

I think it was quite an impressive act of incarnational mission to take a pagan drinking festival to celebrate the coming of the sun and turn it into the celebration of the coming of the Son to bring life.

This is a song sung at Christmas in the Orthodox church. I am quite impressed that it makes references to Jesus as the Sun, which would have meant a lot to those who were previously celebrating the solstice.

Your Nativity, O Christ our God,
has shone to the world the light of wisdom!
For by it, those who worshipped the stars,
were taught by a star
to adore you, the Sun of Righteousness,
and to know you, the Orient from on high.
O Lord, Glory to you!

It turns out, as I'm discovering is so often the case, that the same questions we have today were discussed thousands of years ago. Here from Christianity Today is a famous Christmas sermon from Gregory of Nazianzus given on Dec 25th, 380. This is what he has to say, which applies very nicely to our Christmas today, no longer a festival to the sun, but perhaps a festival to 'the market.'

"Therefore let us keep the Feast, not after the manner of a heathen festival, but after a godly sort; not after the way of the world, but in a fashion above the world; not as our own, but as belonging to Him Who is ours, or rather as our Master's; not as of weakness, but as of healing; not as of creation, but of recreation.