It frustrates me when I hear someone, especially a believer, say Jesus was born on Christmas Day. That is not correct. Christmas is the day we celebrate Christ’s birth…and there is a big difference! First of all, and everyone knows this, we do not know the specific day that Christ was born, instead the Church chose the date. In the Western world, the birthday of Jesus Christ has been celebrated on December 25th since at least AD 354, replacing an earlier celebration date of January 6th. Christians in the day had encountered many pagan festivals and traditions of the season and changed the date as a means of stamping the pagan festivals celebrated on December 25th out. Unfortunately, they did a poor job of eliminating the pagan festivals…and by trying, created a monster the world now calls Christmas. Secondly, and I think much more important, I hate to hear people say that Jesus was born on Christmas day as it sounds to me like Christmas was an established holiday when Jesus was born! I think the Church is failing to get the correct message out to today’s culture. It’s as if we are trying to incorporate Jesus into the world’s Christmas holiday rather than teaching that Jesus is the reason for this season and the giving we experience is modeled after God’s gift to us! Should we celebrate Christmas? Sure! Should we know why we celebrate? Absolutely…in fact the world should know!
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