Defending Christmas!

 

I love Christmas and as you can tell by walking into most churches in our community, the church supports celebrating the birth of Jesus! 

Yet, Christmas does need defending and you might be surprised that most of the battle occurs with Christians!

As I was reading the small book of Jude this morning, one of the themes of this book is defending the faith and guarding against false teaching. That was an issue then and it is certainly an issue now. 

"Dear friends, I had been eagerly planning to write to you about the salvation we all share. But now I find that I must write about something else, urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once and for all time to his holy people." (Jude 3)

There is much about the Christmas story that needs defending and there are many Christians who claim we should NOT celebrate Christmas. I strongly disagree. But, I cannot cover all the misinformation about this wonderful story. One of my "pet peeves" about the Christmas story is how we treat Joseph. In the modern version of the story, Joseph was completely inept and because he lacked any kind of preplanning, Mary and he had no place to stay once they arrived in Bethlehem. 

Joseph needs defending

I read a great book called "Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes" by Kenneth Bailey. One of the topics in this book is a complete study of the story of Jesus' birth. (This is a great book about the culture during Jesus' life and how that should impact our reading of the New Testament.) I love the part that explains the "no room at the inn." The word we translate to "inn" was not the same as a commercial inn, it was probably a guest room which meant Mary and Joseph would have to stay in the main room of the house where the animals stayed at night. The manger would have been in that room and was used to feed the animals at night while they were inside the home. AND there is no mention that these two travelers arrived exactly on the day Jesus was born. As a matter of fact, Luke says:

"And so it was, that, WHILE THEY WERE THERE, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered...." (Luke 2:6, emphasis added) 

There is no sense that this was a last-minute emergency birth. There is no sense that Joseph misjudged the due date. There is no sense that they had no place to stay!

Joseph was an honorable man and he knew what he was doing. He planned on going to Bethlehem and would have planned a place to stay. He wasn't inept and a poor planner. After all, HE WAS A RELATIVE OF KING DAVID! ANYONE in Bethlehem would have gladly welcomed this couple!

I bring this up as an example of the misinformation about Christmas. Another BIG piece of information about Christmas is that this holiday was originally a PAGAN HOLIDAY. That also is NOT TRUE!

The earliest celebration of December 25th came from a historian, Sextus Julius Africanus, who researched when Jesus PROBABLY was born. He surmised that Jesus would have been conceived on March 25th, and thus December 25th was his conclusion. This historian started the trend of celebrating Christ's birth on December 25th. He wrote his book, Chrongraphai, at the end of the second or the beginning of the third century. This was way before any of the pagan holidays we are accused of copying.[1] I have read many other historians who support this view. I share what RC Sproul said about Christmas when he said, there are very few times of the year Christians can publicly, in a unified way, show their love and faith. Christmas provides us with a great opportunity to celebrate JESUS!

Yes, secularism has overtaken the true meaning of our celebration. Yes, we added some aspects that are NOT from the Bible. BUT, WOW, GOD CAME TO LIVE WITH US. ISN'T THAT REASON TO CELEBRATE?

So, this is a long post to say:

Celebrate the birth of Jesus! Enjoy the blessing and gift that God came to earth to live with us. He sacrificed himself for us so that we might have eternal life. All of that started with the birth of a little baby in the town of Bethlehem. If we can't celebrate that, maybe we need to relook at our faith!

1- https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/article/christmas-isnt-pagan/