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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