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A Christmas party in session

Cuthbert Mavheko
THE festive season is upon us once again and Christians the world over are celebrating the birth of the greatest prophet who ever lived – Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Traditionally Christmas is a time when friends and families get together to eat, drink and be merry.

Of all times in the year, the festive season is indeed a time to be jolly. Ironically, it’s also the time of the year when suicides, family fights, murders, depression and drunken-induced car accidents reach a peak.

My late parents were devout, God-fearing Catholics and one of the things they taught me as a child was that Jesus Christ was born on December 25. Like most children, I never questioned my parents’ beliefs. Very few people, it seems, have ever reflected on why they believe what they do? Why they follow the customs they do? Or where those customs came from. We were born into a world that has heterogeneous customs, beliefs and practices.

One pertinent observation that I’ve made over the years is that people generally believe what they do because the society with which they’re connected believes that way. By nature we tend to follow the crowd, whether right or wrong. This perhaps explains why people today have accepted a lot of things about Christmas which are not biblically-based. However, God Almighty through his written word (the Holy Bible) counsels us “to prove all things and hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). As Christians, we’ve a sacred obligation to follow the example of the Bereans of ancient Greece, who searched the inspired scriptures daily to ascertain the authenticity of what the Apostle Paul preached to them (Acts 17:11).

Like the Bereans, let’s also carefully examine the Instruction Manual (Holy Bible) for rational answers to the following pertinent questions: Was Christ born on December 25? And did He (Christ) instruct his disciples, who constitute the first New Testament Church, to celebrate His birthday on December 25? It’s insightful to note that the early church, which was founded on the day of Pentecost in AD 31, modelled a Christianity that all who claim devotion to the Christian faith should follow and emulate. Sight should not be lost of the fact that Jesus Christ is the originator and founder of the Christian faith and Christianity is founded on His teachings. Today millions of professing Christians know very little about Christ or His teachings because they don’t use the Holy Bible in its entirety as the source of their faith. Instead, most Christian churches follow the precepts of men that are primarily based on misinterpretation of the inspired word of God and faulty human reason. Thus Jesus Christ remains to many professing Christians “the man nobody knows” as advertising executive Bruce Barton called Him in his best seller The Man Nobody Knows.

Concerning the birth of Christ, Luke 2 verse 8 states that when He was born “there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night.” This is a chronological fact, which actually depicts the time of the year when the Nativity (the birth of Christ) occurred. Many Encyclopaedias and other historical sources are unanimous in their assertion that Christ’s birth didn’t occur in winter as many Christians are wont to believe. One should state here that shepherds in Judea, where Christ was born, always brought their flocks of sheep from the mountainsides and fields and corralled them in shelters around mid-October. They did this to protect their flocks and themselves from the cold that followed. Winter in Judea is a time of storms, rain and snow not permitting shepherds to be out in open fields at night (Songs of Solomon 2:11; Ezra 10:9-10).

Contrary to what most Christians believe, the exact date of Christ’s birth is unknown. In any event, if Christ intended his followers to celebrate his birthday, then He obviously would have instructed that it be done. He would also have revealed the date in the Holy Bible, but He didn’t do that. There is absolutely no biblical record of Christ, his disciples or the early church commemorating his birth on December 25, or any other date for that matter. Conversely, Christ commanded his followers to commemorate his death (Luke 22:17-20; Matthew 26; 19-29 and John 13; 1-17).The simple truth is that Christmas has no Christian origins and it gravitated into the Catholic Church from paganism.

According to the 1944 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Christmas customs are an evolution from times that long antedate the Christian period. The customs are a descent from seasonal, pagan, religious and national practices that are hedged with legend and tradition. Christmas wasn’t celebrated in the first century as it was the norm, at the time, to celebrate the death of remarkable persons rather than their birth. Further to that, Christmas wasn’t included on the Roman liturgical calendar until the fourth century. The Encyclopaedia Britannica further explains “…A feast was established in memory of this event (the Nativity) in the fourth century.

In the fifth century the western church ordered it (the Nativity) to be celebrated forever on December 28, the day of the old Roman feast of the birth of Sol(the sun) as no certain knowledge of the date of Christ’s birth existed. It should be noted that in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, Christ’s birth was observed even prior to AD 354, but on January 6.

Be that as it may, by the fifth century most of the Eastern Church had also adopted December2 5 as the anniversary of Christ’s birth while keeping January 6 to commemorate His baptism. It’s generally accepted within the Christian fraternity that polytheism (the worship of more than one God) is antithetical to the Christian faith. Paradoxically, polytheism lies at the very root of Christmas.

Let me explain. Christian religious leaders chose December 25 to celebrate the birth of Christ for the simple, politically expedient reason that much of the Roman Empire observed their most popular holidays at the beginning of winter. Furthermore, Roman soldiers had, at the time, added the Persian sun god Mithras to the celebration since he was said to have been born on December 25. In so doing, the religious and political leaders of the Holy Roman Empire found it much easier to convert large segments of the population to Christianity.