In my experience, the few people who do a lot of work in the area of Christmas apologetics are individuals who think highly of the Christmas holiday. I've been working in this field for a long time, and I can't think of a single person who's at the forefront of defending a traditional Christian view of Jesus' childhood who's opposed to the Christmas holiday. I'm not saying that opponents of Christmas never do any good work in this area. But the general trend seems to be that supporters of the holiday are much more concerned about these apologetic issues and are at the forefront of doing the work that needs to be done. It would be good if opponents of Christmas would spend less time watching dubious YouTube videos about the alleged pagan roots of Christmas, reading unreliable web sites on the subject, etc. and spend more time doing the apologetic work that needs to be done. Instead of tilting your head, squinting your eyes, and reading between the lines to see some sort of alleged pagan significance in a Christmas tree or the lights hanging over your neighbor's porch, you ought to be more concerned about the false ideas being promoted by the likes of Brown, Ehrman, and Lincoln.
Monday, December 23, 2013
The False Priorities Of Christian Opponents Of Christmas
Earlier today, Michael Brown had his annual radio program about the debate over whether Christians should celebrate Christmas. I've been posting at Brown's site on a variety of related topics. Here's part of what I wrote:
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Are you contending there is no biblical evidence to a reason one should not engage in pagan worship, or are you contending Christmas does not have pagan roots?
ReplyDeleteDo you only use the New Testament letters for your support of do you use the Old Testament writings, that the New Testament writers used, for their doctrine?
Are you a believer that God changes or is He a God that changes not?
Last question. Are you intolerant of those that hold to a conviction of not celebrating Christmas or do we all work out our own salvation with fear and trembling? You can email be directly at brsm@bellsouth.net
@one eighty
Delete1. Are these meant to be false dichotomies?
2. Are you asking loaded questions?
3. Are you going to commit the genetic fallacy?
4. Are you overly invested in the debate over Christmas and paganism due to your allegiance to a variant of Messianic Judaism or the Hebraic Roots movement?
Since this wasn't my post, I don't have a dog in this fight. But I'll make a few observations:
Deletei) The distant historical origin of a practice is irrelevant to what motivates contemporary practitioners. You're superstitious if you think the ancient "roots" of something have a mysterious influence on the present.
ii) Christmas has explicitly Christian roots. It's a holiday specifically intended to celebrate the birth of Christ. To commemorate and celebrate the Incarnation. The Christian roots supplant the allegedly pagan roots–just like ancient Jews moving into Canaan.
iii) The Bible was written in Greek and Hebrew. Well, the Greek and Hebrew languages have pagan roots. The very names for God (Elohim, Theos) originally designate pagan gods.
one eighty,
DeleteYou can read the thread I linked, as well as my previous posts on Christmas, to see what I think about issues like the ones you've raised.
Are there particular works you recommend concerning the history of Christmas? I am reading Stephen Nissenbaum's "The Battle for Christmas" right now and I have found it quite fascinating, especially how Christmas was celebrated in the 17th and 18th century English speaking world.
ReplyDeleteMSC,
DeleteI haven't read much about the history of Christmas in general. I'm more interested in the earliest history of the holiday, though its later history interests me to some extent. I don't agree with these sources on every point, but there's some significant information in the following:
the Christmas section of Tom Schmidt's blog
Susan Roll, Toward The Origins Of Christmas (The Netherlands: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1996)
Bruce Forbes, Christmas: A Candid History (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 2007)
J.P. Holding, Christmas Is Pagan And Other Myths (Tekton Apologetics Ministries, 2013)
By the way, due to the success of his e-book on Christmas, J.P. Holding has said that he's going to publish one on Easter as well. It's supposed to be out before Easter 2014.