The left overs from Thanksgiving dinner have only just been finished and the environment has changed. The pumpkin patch has given way to tree sales and the cornucopias in people’s front gardens replaced with lighted animals and angels. The supermarket shelves eggnog and other seasonal treats for those planning ahead. Musak everywhere has rediscovered Rudolph and his red nose. Christmas is coming! Christmas is frequently criticized for its materialistic elements and self indulgent approaches, elements that are the antithesis of the standard of life of Jesus Christ, the person that Christmas is supposed to represent. Each year someone tries to reconcile the two opposites to salve the fevered brow of those who are concerned that the spirit of Christmas has been lost. But few venture to even consider the thought that the followers of Jesus Christ never celebrated his birthday for probably the first two hundred and fifty years. For one, observant Jews who were the majority of the first disciples always looked upon birthdays as something the pagans undertook. The exact date of the birth of Jesus Christ is not given in Scripture, and like so many elements that are considered essential to Christianity today was of no interest to the first followers. Origen of Alexandria, writing over two centuries after the death of Jesus follows this same line when he recorded a diatribe against the memories of birthdays, indicating that at the time of his writing, a day to remember the birth of Jesus was not part of the church calendar. In his Homilies on Leviticus, speaking on the aspect of birth, Origen states: . . . not one from all the saints is found to have celebrated a festive day or a great feast on the day of his birth. No one is found to have had joy on the day of the birth of his son or daughter. Only sinners rejoice over this kind of birthday. For indeed we find in the Old Testament Pharaoh, king of Egypt, celebrating the day of his birth with a festival, and in the New Testament, Herod. However both of them stained the festival of his birth by shedding human blood. . . . But the saints not only do not celebrate a festival on their birth days, but, filled with the Holy Spirit, they curse that day.
In reality, the hedonism that is presently displayed in Christmas activity especially in the western world has a heritage much older than the birth of Jesus Christ in approximately 5 BCE. The date of December 25 or as it was known in the Roman world has a history of indulgence and excess in the pagan world for hundreds of years before Jesus. It was the date associated with the winter solstice under the Julian Calendar -- established by Julius Caesar -- and hence a time to rejoice in the rebirth of the sun. To make Christianity palatable to pagans, the date was co-opted by church leaders in the 3rd century. The result, people could continue to keep their own ways and claim to be christians as well. So actually, the spirit of Christmas has never changed. We worship the self and our indulgence. Jesus Christ has never had a part in Christmas. It is not about him or for him that it is kept. (Origen quote: Gary Wayne Barkley, Homilies on Leviticus: 1–16 / Origen (The Fathers of the Church; Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1990), 156.)
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