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Christmas, as universally known, is the annual Christian Holiday commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ. Catholics and the Protestants alike celebrate Christmas on December 25, and members of the Eastern Orthodox Church observe their most important day on January 6.

For the rest of us, Christmas is a secular holiday, the season where most companies pay their employees year-end bonuses to end the Old Year and make a fresh and positive start to the New Year.

The Roman Catholic was the first known Christian denomination to have celebrated Christmas, then known as the Feast of Nativity, as early as 336 AD, three centuries after Jesus.

The word Christmas entered the English language sometime around 1050 AD as the Old English phrase Christes maesse, meaning "Festival of Christ". Christmas was originally celebrated as a Christian festival. Over time this tradition crystallized into religious symbolism of birth of Christ.

The absence of any festivities for first 300 years after Jesus leading up to the first celebration may surprise many readers.

The low key affair of Jesus' birth and lack of any festivities during his lifetime is a clear indication that Christmas was a borrowed tradition of the Romans and a latter day innovation. The actual date of birth was never mentioned in the Bible contrary to what we were made to believe.

With limited information available on Jesus' birth, the Biblical scholars analyzed the circumstantial evidence of events surrounding the birth to get to an approximation. They analyzed the activities of the ordinary people during the birth and found out that during Christ's birth the shepherds were tending their flocks up in the hills in the evening.

Drawing inferences from limited information, it is ascertained that the birth most likely took place during a warmer longer summer's night than during the colder shorter days of December as most of us were made to believe - somewhere between April and September.

Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on Luke 2:8, notes: "It was a custom among the Jews to send out their sheep to the deserts, about the Passover, and bring them home at the commencement of the first rain: during the time they were out, the shepherds watched them night and day.

As the Passover occurred in the spring, and the first rain began early in the month of Marchesvan, which answers to part of our October and November, we find that the sheep were kept out in the open country during the whole of the summer.

And as these shepherds had not yet brought home their flocks, it is a presumptive argument that October had not yet commenced, and that, consequently, our Lord was not born on the 25th of December, when no flocks were out in the fields; nor could he have been born later than September, as the flocks were still in the fields by night. On this very ground the nativity in December should be given up."

Unfortunately, the exact birth date of this Great Messenger of God is lost in the quagmire of history and never be known. For the few and the faithful the exact date will be irrelevant, however, for many believers the emotional attachment to this date is fairly unmistakable.

To celebrate Christmas on any other day is sacrilegious even if they have to disagree with the findings of their own Biblical scholars. To break away from overwhelming evidence and tradition is agonizing. Unfortunately, faith without knowledge is blind.

So, how did December 25 come about? Most Christian scholars and historians believed that Christmas originated in the 4th century as a Christian substitute for pagan celebrations of winter solstice.

Before Christianity, each year beginning in December 17 the Romans honored Saturn, the ancient God of agriculture, in a festival called Saturnalia. This festival lasted for seven days and included the winter solstice, which usually occurred around December 25.

During Saturnalia the Romans feasted, postponed all business and warfare, exchanged gifts, etc., the practice we normally associate with Christmas. Many Romans also celebrated the lengthening of the daylight following winter solstice by participating in rituals to glorify Mithra, the ancient God of light.

Roman Catholics, as the name obviously suggests, were the first among Christian denominations to borrow and adapt a Roman pagan custom and celebrate Christmas. It is that fusion of Roman pagan practices with the Christian faith that we celebrate Christmas as we know today as Roman Catholics have done since 300 AD.

In England in 1644, Parliament banned Christmas calling it "the Profane Man's Ranting Day". The Puritans disapproved of the Catholic implications of "Christ's Mass" and worldliness associated with the holiday. Even here in America, it was once against the law to celebrate Christmas, and anyone caught doing so was fined.

"In 1659, Massachusetts passed a law fining anyone caught celebrating Christmas." Throughout New England, Christmas was suppressed. Although the Catholic influence was hard to suppress for long, and those laws were repealed some 20 years later, public schools remained open in Boston on December 25th until 1870.

"In the United States traditional Christmas customs were at first suppressed (as in England under the Commonwealth), because of the Puritan objection to them as pagan in origin, but since the middle of the 19th century the celebrations have become increasingly popular and commercialized."

Today few Americans know that Christmas was once outlawed in their country. Of course, we are not suggesting that laws be passed banning Christmas; only that sincere Christians honestly decide whether they should participate in such an unscriptural pagan festivity.

It is interesting to also note that even the Christmas Tree, a symbol associated with Christianity, is a borrowed pagan custom: "For the customs of the people (pagans) are in vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not" (Jeremiah 10:3-4). Christmas tree existed even before Jesus.

When churches display nativity scenes with three wise men (incidentally 'three' was never mentioned in the Bible), understand that they distort the text and either display their ignorance of the Bible or propagate a myth.

Church owes an explanation to the public in general and its members in particular as to why December 25th is celebrated when there is no proof that Jesus was born on this date. It is a higher moral duty to do so. Adapting and changing pagan customs as one's own is not the better tradition of Christianity.

Jesus had the wisdom to understand the threat of paganism and their eventual influence on the true message of Christianity. He made an ominous warning about honouring Him with festivities and worshipping Him as divine as pagans did during and before His time.

He told the Jews: "This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." (Matt. 15:8-9)

Let's take heed of His advice and not honour Jesus Christ with festivities He did not approve and worship Him as divine. Christ's spiritual teachings are more than superficial festivities we traditionally associate Him with.

The lesson from history is a poignant reminder why we should not follow one's faith blindly - whether it is Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism.

We should always refer back to our Scriptures and test it against our faith and our common sense over and over again. Too often we follow tradition thinking that it is a religious duty to do so.

Simply following a custom blindly because it is convenient to do so will take us nowhere in matters of faith. Whenever Christians longed for true spirituality and returned to the Bible as their source for all practice and belief, one of the first things they did was to forsake the unscriptural Christmas celebration.

Tuan Riza Rassool, USA.

www.Pathmaconstruction.com

www.ceylincoproperties.com

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