Pastor's Wifery

Should Christians Celebrate Christmas or Have Christmas Trees?

This debate has many arguments on both sides.  I have been on both sides of the issue myself, and now I think I’ve settled on what is true.

If I were someone who lived alone, without any people in my life who I am trying to reach for Jesus Christ, I probably wouldn’t bother with the tree or Christmas.  But since I am called to be light in this world, and to reach out to my family and others, I do recognize Christmas as a holiday but I handle it with care and use it as a springboard to witness the Love of Christ.

Matt. 5:14-16: “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

When I teach about Christmas in my Sunday School class and when I lead the children’s Christmas Program at church, I am very careful to explain to the children that Dec. 25 is likely not Jesus’ Birthday.  I explain, in terms kids can understand, how people from other countries long ago had solstice celebrations during this time.  In order for the Christian Church at the time to help people avoid pagan rituals, they began to instead celebrate the birth of Christ (rather than the birth of the sun god).

This is similar to what churches (including ours) are doing today in response to Halloween.  Our church has a Hallelujah night to help families guide their children in this culture that we live in.  It’s a culture of vampires and ghosts on Halloween.  Instead of the paranormal, we focus on Christ.  God made all the days — none of them are ordained by the devil — so to have Hallelujah Night as an alternative for Christian families, in a spirit of God’s grace, is commendable.

Likewise, as a church, we help the families who live in this culture understand the origins of all the symbols of secular Christmas.  I think it’s very important because there are pagans and secularists who mock Christians for embracing such things blindly and being ignorant of what they mean.

There is an argument that says we shouldn’t celebrate the birth of Christ because God never said to.  I think that’s an interesting point but I don’t agree with it because there are a lot of things that we do every single day that God didn’t specifically tell us to do.  (He didn’t tell us, for example, to celebrate winning a football game, or the victory of a presidential race but we do.  We are human and God put celebrating in us.  As Christians our celebration should always glorify God for the victory!)

To me, when a Christian celebrates Christmas in a Christian way, it is an amazing opportunity to talk about and witness the love of God for mankind.  It isn’t the method that is sacred.  It is the message.  Christmas in our family is very Christ-centered.  We attend Christmas Eve service, and Santa is not a part of our family culture.

But we do live in a secular culture, so how do I deal with Santa?  I never told my children there was a real and living Santa because I didn’t want to lie to them.  If I were to tell them this, and they discover the truth, how are they to believe me when I tell them there is a God who loves them and Who died for their sins?

Another argument is that Christians shouldn’t celebrate this holiday because people who aren’t Christians celebrate it.  That seems silly to me.  Then don’t celebrate Thanksgiving or Veteran’s Day.  Again, this is the culture we are called to.  We were born in this time and in this country and this culture for a reason.  We can either just be hermits and hide or we can be bold and take back each day for Jesus Christ.  Certainly, there is a danger in celebrating that we might not “do it quite right.”  But there is that same danger if we hide in a cave and refuse to be salt and light in the world.  I think God is more pleased with our efforts to do something positive to promote His Name rather than hide our light by being passive.

What a lot of people don’t know is that my paternal grandmother was a Jehovah’s Witness.  She was the most committed woman of faith I know, but she was very legalistic, blind and deceived.  There was no grace in her practices.  And I experienced a lot of pain in my family because of it.  But that’s not the reason I celebrate Christmas today.

When I decorate my pretty tree in my home, I’m just making my home pretty.  I’m not doing it toward some god.  It is very different than the rituals used for fertility that some pagans used in the past.

We are in this world, and there is no way to walk perfectly untouched by secularism.  Every day of our week is the name of a pagan god, and we use those words every day.  The constellations in the sky are named after pagan gods.  We use those, too.

Pagans didn’t make trees, God did.  And they didn’t use evergreen trees in their rituals, either.  In fact, evergreens were used by very early Christians as Paradise trees to celebrate the annual feast of Adam and Eve on Dec. 24..  Christmas trees didn’t even become popular in the USA until about 1850.  And they certainly weren’t made popular as pagan fertility trees. They were made popular because they were pretty. Of course, just because something is pretty doesn’t automatically make it acceptable.  I do know that Satan appears to us in beautiful ways.  I just don’t believe he has done so in the form of a Christmas tree.

Pagans also practiced baptism.  Does that mean Christ’s baptism was a pagan ritual?  Of course not!  Why would Christ command us to baptize the world if it were considered pagan just because the pagans did it?  It was the baptism in the NAME that made the difference.

The fact is, we are the human race, and we have a lot of things that we do in common.  There are trees all over the world, and they are used for good or they are used for bad.  God made the trees.  They are not inherently evil just because you put one up in your house and make it pretty.  If you decorate it in the hopes of conjuring up fertility spirits or some other such thing, then I’d say you are practicing a pagan ritual.  As for me, I’m fertile enough, thanks.  I decorate a tree because it’s a pretty way to decorate my house during a season when my family dedicates a month of activities that focus on worshiping Christ and His love for us.

I know that some families have used trees to explain the story of Christ through the symbols of the tree.  The evergreen = eternal life; lights = light of Christ; red = Christ’s blood; white = redemption, etc.

Other families I know use their tree as a Jesse Tree and add one ornament each day until Christmas that tells the entire story of the Bible from Genesis to the birth of Christ.  I love this idea.

You can use a car for evil or you can use a car for good.  I think it’s the same for trees.  I’m sure there are probably people out there that exalt the tree above Christ, but that’s not me nor is it other loving Christians I know.

We need to be careful what we fuss over and keep the main thing the main thing.  1 Corinthians 10:23-33 warns us about being too legalistic: “Even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved.”

And Romans 14 warns us not to judge those who do have issues with Christmas Trees.  We need to have compassion on them.  (I realize this passage speaks of meat, but it applies to things people think are “unclean.  “I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean”  Romans 14:14.

If you have more questions, please ask, and I have listed some interesting sites that speak on both sides of the issue below.  I welcome healthy debate, but will not answer hateful responses.  “Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another”  Romans 14:19.

May God bless you in your search for the true meaning of the reason for the season!  God Bless You.

http://www.mountainretreatorg.net/faq/histchrist.html

http://www.gty.org/Resources/Articles/529

http://www.religioustolerance.org/xmas_tree.htm

http://www.sovereigngrace.net/should.htm

http://protestantism.suite101.com/article.cfm/christian_attitudes_towards_christmas_trees

http://www.christmas-tree.com/where.html

http://www.mountainretreatorg.net/faq/histchrist.html

http://www.crivoice.org/greens.html

http://www.crivoice.org/symbols/ornaments.html

http://www.crivoice.org/jesse.html

Words Are Important

Here’s a post I wrote for my writing blog.  But it has to do with church drama, so I’m posting it here, too.

envisionpublishing:

All writers know this.  Every word counts.  Every word is chosen and carefully placed by the writer.  Some of  us love our words so much that cutting them is painful.  But today, I learned yet another lesson about words.

I wrote the Christmas play this year for our church as I usually do.  I have a background in music theater and it’s just a natural thing for me to do and there is no one else to do it.  It saves the church money because they don’t have to buy scripts.  Besides all that, I enjoy doing it.

I was confronted today by someone who let me know that someone else was upset about something I wrote.

There is a line in the play that says, “A lot of people get confused at Christmas because when our nation was just beginning, people brought customs with them from other lands.  Santa was someone people made up to remember Saint Nicholas, a very kind man who used to leave money in the stockings of young girls who didn’t have enough money to get married.”

One of the Moms was upset because she thought I was going to stand up and announce that Santa isn’t real.

I have my own opinions about Santa.  I never told my children he was alive and real and bringing them gifts because I didn’t want to lie to my children.  I was afraid that if I told them there was a Santa, and they found out it wasn’t true, that they wouldn’t believe there really is a God and that Jesus came and died for them.  Right or wrong, that’s how what I’ve always believed.  (I realize that not all Christians agree with me about this.)

However, this Mom who is upset is a new believer, and Santa is a huge part of their holiday.  Her son actually came up to me today while I was playing the offertory at church and said, “Are you going to read that part in the play that says Santa isn’t real?”

Now, you and I both know, that wasn’t exactly what I wrote.  But it was what I meant.  The play is about different Christmas symbols and what they mean, where they came from, etc.  People are no longer ignorant.  Pagans laugh at Christians because we have adopted so many of their rituals as part of our holiday celebrations.  I want children and their parents to know the difference.  It’s part of my husband’s ministry — to teach TRUTH and stand by it.

But I did understand this mother’s dilemma.  I do have Santa come in at the end of the play and bow at the manger.  I want that picture to be in the minds of the children in the play.  I want it to send a strong message that Christians celebrate Christmas for no other reason than Christ’s birth.  (Or, should I say, that’s what we are supposed to be doing.  We all know that things have gotten way off course where Christmas is concerned.)

If I didn’t live in this culture, if I weren’t planted where I am planted, personally I would do away with Christmas trees and Santa and all of it.  But I am part of an American culture, and I have families who are baby Christians, and to “throw the baby Jesus out with the bathwater” so to speak, would be foolish.

I need to be wise.  Sure, I felt attacked a little bit as a writer.  But, I took a look at that line and I changed the wording this way:  instead of saying, “Santa was somebody people made up to remember” I wrote, “Santa reminds us of.”

It’s pretty much the same meaning, but gentler.  A child may not catch what it says.  But adults will get it. And when Santa bows at the manger, the kids will get it, too.

As a writer, I need to be as “wise as a serpent but as harmless as a dove”  (Matt. 10:16).  However, I still need to write the truth, and I need to make sure I’m not being a sell-out.  Sure, it was painful to be confronted this way, but in another way I was rejoicing.  My words had made someone think!  My words had MEANING.

Isn’t that why we write?  To change people’s lives in some way?  To make them feel things, think things, see things in ways they never had before?

I am excited.  Maybe I have more drama ahead in regard to this play because it challenges some of our customs.  But that will be okay with me because I am learning.  I am a work in progress.  And I am glad to learn to make every word count.  Words are important.

What do you think?  Are you willing to change your words to make them more palatable?  Or do you think that’s being a sell-out?