25/12/2024
We can summarize anti-Christmas argument this way:
➡️ Premise 1: Everything we must believe must be written in the Bible.
➡️ Premise 2: The Bible neither told us explicitly that Jesus was born on Dec 25 nor commanded us to celebrate His birth yearly.
✅ Conclusion 1: Christmas is unbiblical.
➡️ Premise 3: If something is not found in the Bible, it must be from pagans.
✅ Conclusion 2: Christmas is from pagans.
Let us debunk these premises.
RESPONSE:
1. Where in the Bible it is mentioned that everything must be written in the Bible? None.
This attitude is called "Sola Scriptura" which assumes that everything must be written in the Bible before we believe in them. The problem is that it is self-refuting: nowhere it is written in the Bible that we must accept only what was written in the Bible.
On the contrary, the Bible itself tells us that there is another source of Divine Revelation: Sacred Traditions, the unwritten preachings and practices handed on by the apostles by words and examples (1 Cor 11:2; 1 Pet 1:25). Together, the Bible + Apostolic Traditions + the Church (2 Thess 2:15; Acts 15) give us the framework for everything necessary for Christian living.
Moreover, just because something is unbiblical (not found explicitly in the Bible) doesn’t mean it is anti-biblical (contrary to teachings of the Bible).
2. We can Christianize paganism.
Let’s just assume for a while that Christmas is copied from pagan (which is not). So what? This doesn’t automatically make Christmas wrong. If you think of it, instituting a Christian feast so we can squash paganism is a good thing!
Just as we can baptize pagan people in order to make them Christians and build churches over pagan lands, we can also change or replace pagan customs and give them new meanings in Christ. After all, that’s exactly what Paul did: he used pagan writings and ideas to communicate Christian message (Acts 17:22-23,28).
3. Christmas is Biblical and Scientific.
Where? In Luke 2, the account of the birth of Jesus. That itself is the first Christmas. As Christians who love Jesus, we would be joyful to celebrate His birth once a year. The Bible says the birth of someone, especially men from God, is a cause of joy for us (Lk 1:14, 2:10-14).
We also have hints in the Bible that point to the birth of Jesus being on December 25. Jesus was born 6 months after John the Baptist (Lk 1:36). John the Baptist was conceived after Zechariah's service at the Temple (Lk 1:23-24). According to some scholars, this service happened at the Day of Atonement, some time around September. If this is true, we can add 9 months and we get June as the birth of John. Add 6 months and we get December as the birth of Jesus.
The idea that the birth of the Messiah will come during winter solstice (the beginning of lengthening of day and shortening of night) came from a prophecy from Malachi 4:2, “For you who fear my name the sun of righteousness shall rise.”
Modern researches also show that December of 1 A.D. is the most likely month and year of the birth of Jesus. This conclusion was made by backtracking the movement of stars and planets and the occurrences of lunar eclipse, based from what we know from Scripture (such as the star seen by the Magi) and historical documents (such as that of Josephus who noted that there was a lunar eclipse when King Herod the Great died).
4. Christmas is not pagan. Christmas is Christian.
No single Christian—not a single one—who celebrates Christmas today thinks that doing so honors a pagan god. It's all about Jesus, not any pagan deity.
If we read history, we will see that the early Christians were already celebrating Christmas on December 25 long before the Roman Empire instituted a pagan festival on the same date.
The two pagan festivals referenced by anti-Catholics are Saturnalia and Sol Invictus. But Saturnalia was celebrated by pagans on Dec 17-23, not Dec 25. Sol Invictus was indeed on Dec 25 but it was instituted only in the year 274 A.D. by Emperor Aurelian. We have evidence as early as 70-250 A.D. that the early Christians were already celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25. For example:
“We ought to celebrate the birth-day of our Lord on what day soever the 25th of December shall happen.”
- St. Theophilus of Antioch (c. 171-183 AD)
“The first advent of our Lord in the flesh occurred when He was born in Bethlehem, eight days before the Kalends of January.”
- Hippolytus of Rome (c. 204 AD)
In other words, Christmas pre-dates pagan feasts, and it was paganism that copied Christmas, not the other way around.
