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I have read several articles these few days of the Christmas festivity with some concerns. As a member of the Christian community and a concerned theologian, I find it necessary to respond.
While there are good reflections, given in some of these pieces, I notice some worrisome and possibly misleading statements I wish to point out to the Christian body that has an opposing view on the Christmas celebration. I want to state that it is a critique, not a criticism of anyone’s work. Any future response from anyone is welcome.
This way, I am confident we can together appreciate God’s diversity for our individual worship as it has always been since the establishment of the Christian Church in 30 AD. I, therefore, hope my cherished readers treat this little piece as a healthy discussion of our theological perspectives about Christmas rather than an attack on a group or a church.
The controversy of celebrating Christmas in some churches is fascinating. What is more important to celebrate than God’s love for humanity in the incarnation of God’s word? That which came to dwell among us, the only son who came from the father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).
To begin with, I want to make this emphatic statement that Christians do not celebrate Christmas because Christ Jesus was born on December 25th. I have met many scholars and learned Christian Theologians, and none has ever said so. We celebrate Christmas in honor of God’s love for humanity.
In that, the father lost everything for our sake so that we could replicate the same for our brothers. Christmas is only a time we formally reflect on this loving decision of God for us; to dwell in that which is not God, signifying God’s supremacy and sovereignty. Concurrently, Tanner, the Past President of the American Theological Society, writes in her book, Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity: “God is not God because God always allows and only associates Godself with who or what is perfect, but most importantly, because God can transcend Godself in the impure, the imperfect, and the disabled, bringing them into a state of perfection in God.”[1]
We do not deny the history and background of Christmas, just like our identity as Gentile Christians. We are not ashamed that our ancestors were gentiles or whatever names others called them, Pagans, traditionalists, or whatever. As much as we love the nation of Israel and the Jewish people and regard every person as an image of God, we are not in any way interested in changing our identity.
God knows why God made us who we are. Black, brown, white! If God could receive even us, the humans, pagans by religion, to justify us in Christ, what makes it hard for God to accept our festivities, food, names, and whatsoever of us that we do in God's honor?
Many people have tried to associate Emperor Constantine with these festivities. They claim it was a deliberate attempt he made to corrupt the church into apostasy. Again, they further support these assertions with the prophetic books, especially the book of Revelation, in their own interpretations. Unfortunately, as revealing, and insightful as these arguments may seem, they are very misleading. Constantine did not accept Christianity falsely nor did he replace anything Jewish Christians were practicing with any idolatrous belief or practices.
The Changing of the Sabbath into the first day did not come from Constantine. Christians were doing that long before Constantine. The early Christians made Sunday a mere resurrection commemoration day. Following Paul’s admonishment to the diaspora Jews in Hebrews 10:25, there should not be anything wrong with that: “… not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” In Christ, we are free to assemble ourselves anytime, anywhere.
The same thing applies to Christmas and Easter. In 325 A.D., the debate was ascertaining a workable date for all the churches to celebrate these festivities because different groups celebrated at their choicest dates. The disparity of the celebration times was a challenge the old Bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp (69 – 155 AD), had tried to solve but was unsuccessful.
He preferred that we celebrate Easter at the same time as the Jewish Paschal. Unfortunately, Polycarp's view was not accepted by many. Anicetus, the first bishop of Rome, and other bishops disagreed with him because they did not want to associate themselves with the Jews, perhaps. After all, the Jews had betrayed their Christian brothers and sisters at the time, instigating and cheering their persecutors because the Christians were professing an illegal religion, Christianity, to them.
The Warden of Keble College, Oxford, and Stuart G. Hall, the retired priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church recount in the writings of Eusebius on Constantine’s reports to the Churches following the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, as he writes, “In the first place it was decreed unworthy to observe that most sacred festival in accordance with the practice of the Jews; having sullied their own hands with a heinous crime, such bloodstained men are as one might expect mentally blind.”[2]
The Church Fathers have this to say also in the book Martyr of Polycarp, "... This he said at the suggestion and urgent persuasion of the Jews...The centurion then seeing the strife excited by the Jews, placed the body in the midst of the fire, and consumed it.”[3] The hostility of Justin, Cyprian, and many others by the Jews are few to mention. Constantine, many years after, only gave freedom of religion so Christians and all other religious groups could practice their belief in peace and safe from persecution by issuing the ‘Edit of Milan’ in 313 AD.[4]
Despite the pronouncement of blessing in the bible for celebrating the Jewish feast (the feast of Passover, the feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Tabernacles), because Judaism was the religion of the time, the impression that the Christian festivities carry no such blessings today, to me, is very misleading. Neither do I consider truthful any inconsiderate association of our Christian festivals to any Pagan Deity today.
I call them mere Propagandas!!! That could be said when our fathers were Pagans but not today when in Christ we are Justified as a coheir with the Lord. Jewish Christians have a culture they are pretty much familiar with, and nothing stops them from observing festivities that they better connect with historically to glorify Christ. However, that is not and should not be seen as the only way to know God because not even the scripture says so.
As Paul echoes, “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Gal. 3:28.
God gave God's word to human (through the bible) in other for the human to be like Christ (a Christian) in whatever CULTURE human lives in, to teach and spread Christ's love to the rest of the world. The Bible, Christianity, and our respective cultures hence are inseparable.
Any attempt to change anyone's identity to become like a Jew and call it the ONLY way to know God is a complete fallacy! That is not the Gospel! We do not read it anywhere in the Bible that Christ or His Apostles attempted to change people's identity or forced them to become Jews. Paul rebuked many of the Jewish Christians for attempting so instead. Gal. 2:11-21.
We are Gentile Christians, just like Rome and many other places where the apostles traveled with the gospel. Out of their labor came not only the Roman Catholic Church but the Orthodox Catholic, Coptic Church, and many other Eastern Churches in Africa.
All these churches connected their CULTURAL CONTEXT with the SCRIPTURES. It is important to note that sometimes things in our cultures and traditions do not conflict with the word of God. Some of the customs and practices enable us to convey the gospel very well through the existing traditions in each culture. Easter and Christmas have stood the test of time as two of these things out of the pagan culture that conveyed the gospel exceptionally well, just like the concept of the unknown God, Apostle Paul, used in Athens, Acts 17.
In order words, we had our own festivities before the coming of the Gospel. But coming into Christ, we gave up some of our traditional festivals and Christianized other traditions of our cultures to point to Christ. Christmas and Easter are some of these works our Church fathers did, and we will thankfully continue to do more because that is the essence of the gospel.
We are not ashamed – Romans 1:16. Basing on scriptural selectivism to condemn Christian festivities or make a bruhaha out of it as if there is a fire on the mountain is mere Theological Propaganda thus. I hope this will be some food for thought and spark a respectful and nursing conversation about our church and Christian practices.
Merry Christmas with a lot of love!! Let's continue to make Christ the reason for the season!!!
By
Eniyekpemi Fidelis Oyinpreyebi
Luther Seminary
(Leadership & Innovation in ministry)
12 – 30 – 2024
Bibliography
Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall. 1999. Eusebius: Life of Constantine. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Fathers, The Church. 4th Century. The Martyrdom of Polycarp. Eusebius.
Tanner, Kathryn. 2001. Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity. Edinburgh: First Fortress Press.
[1] Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity (Edinburgh: First Fortress Press, 2001).
[2] Cameron Averil and Stuart G. Hall. Eusebius: Life of Constantine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999) 122 - 128
[3] The Church Fathers, The Martyrdom of Polycarp, 337
[4] Cameron Averil and Stuart G. Hall. Eusebius: Life of Constantine, 40
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