From the Pulpit: Missing Christmas?
M ost people in the world will miss the next Christmas. But how can that be? How can anyone miss Christmas, given the amount of advertising, publicity, and promotion the whole thing receives each year? Because although many celebrate Christmas every year, most don ' t know what it ' s about. The majority of people will miss it because it has become so obscured. For those of us who know and love the Lord Jesus Christ, Christmas is a time to focus on His birth. But even we can get caught up in the bustle of activity around Christmastime and can miss it in a practical sense. Secularism has so cluttered the Christian concept of Christmas with such needless stuff that its true meaning is easily lost. A potted History of Christmas – don’ t be shocked now! 😊 Most scholars doubt that December 25th is the true date of Christ ' s birth. There is no biblical support for it, and there is some against it. That date was decided upon by the church in Rome in the fourth century. They had a specific reason for doing so. Most humans in the world were once sun worshipers because they depended on the sun ' s yearly course in the heavens. Most people held feasts at the time of the winter solstice( mid-December), a time when the days were shortest. They built bonfires to give the sun god strength and bring him back to life again. When it became apparent that the days were growing longer, there was great rejoicing. The fathers of the church in Rome decided to celebrate Christ ' s birth on the winter solstice. It was their attempt to Christianise the popular pagan celebrations. But they failed, Instead the heathen festivities continued, and we are left with a bizarre marriage of pagan and Christian elements that characterizes our modern celebration of Christmas. The following examples will give you some idea of how much pagan customs make up what we know as Christmas. To the Romans the month of December marked the Festival of Saturnalia( Dec. 17-24). One of their most common customs during that festival was giving gifts to one another. As far as we know that is where the idea of exchanging presents came from. The evergreen wreath also derives from the Saturnalia festival, during which homes were decorated with evergreen boughs. The Druids of England gathered sacred mistletoe for their ceremonies and decorated their homes with it. It is believed that the first Christmas tree was instituted by Boniface, an English missionary to Germany in the eighth century. He supposedly replaced sacrifices to the god Odin ' s sacred oak with a fir tree adorned in tribute to Christ. Certain accounts claim that Martin Luther introduced the Christmas tree lighted with candles.
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