Around this time of year, we get a lot of talk about how Christians should celebrate Christmas. For some, it is nothing more than a pagan festival that we should have nothing to do with. For others, it is an absolutely vital and important time of year where we really ought to remember the incarnation. Others still insist even if it has problematic roots, or intermingled with materialism, Christians can reclaim it nevertheless. No doubt other opinions can be found elsewhere too.

I think it is helpful to cut through a lot of that discussion and think of Christmas in two ways. First, Christmas is not in the Bible. Of course, the incarnation is – Jesus had to come into the world for Christianity to come into existence! But Christmas is not a festival that Christians are commanded to celebrate. It is not the Christian version of Passover (Pesach), the feast of weeks/Pentecost (Shavuot) and the feast of booths (Sukkot). These were festivals that God’s people were commanded to keep in the Old Covenant. The New Covenant has no such festivals and neither Christmas nor Easter are commanded of Christians.

Of course, just because something is not prescribed does not mean it is proscribed. Just because we aren’t commanded to keep Christmas as a religious festival doesn’t mean we are forbidden from enjoying it. The point is that Christmas is not commanded in the scriptures. Our celebration, or non-celebration, is not a matter of biblical fidelity. If Jesus doesn’t ask us to celebrate it, then the particular way we do (or don’t) celebrate Christmas can’t really be a big deal so far as the measure of our love for Jesus is concerned. If the Bible is our final authority and contains everything necessary for faith, if it doesn’t contain instructions about keeping Christmas, Jesus evidently doesn’t think the way we approach it matters a great deal so far as pleasing God and loving him goes.

Second, given Christmas isn’t in the Bible, it pays to remember it is a cultural festival. In the UK, what is cultural is often tied up with what is religious. This is the reality of being a Christianised culture in which the Church of England remains part of the establishment with its supreme governor the Head of State. What is cultural in the UK is inextricably bound up, to a lesser or greater degree, in the religious. Our culture did not develop in a vacuum and our history has left its own particular stamp on our national consciousness, as every country’s history does for them.

Nick Needham makes the following observations about the origin of Christmas:

The celebration of Christmas on 25th December also became an established practice in the 4th century. It is first mentioned in Western worship in the year 336. The date was the Pagan festival of the birth of the sun, taken over and Christianised by the Church… The customs of the old Roman festival of the Saturnalia on 17-21 December, when candles were lit, parties held and gifts exchanged, also became attached to Christmas. In the East, 6 January was for some time the preferred date for celebrating Christ’s birth, but in 379 Gregory of Nazianzus introduced the Western date in Constantinople when he was bishop there. Still, it was not until 431 that Egypt accepted 25 December as the date of Christmas; Palestinian Christians did not accept it until the 6th century; and the Armenian Church still celebrates Christmas on 6th January to this day.

Needham, N., 2000 Years of Christ’s Power, Vol 1: The Age of the Early Church Fathers, Grace Publications Trust, 2023, p.196

What Needham makes clear is that the celebration of Christmas was adopted under Constantine when Christianity had become the de facto religion of the empire. Some argue that Constantine landed on 25 December for biblical reasons – following the logic of Tertullian – and the date landing at the same time as the festival for the birthday of Sol Invictus is merely coincidental. Regardless, what is clear is that the festival is a 4th century product of Christendom that borrowed the traditions of other festivals e.g. gift giving and candles and Christianised them to mark the birth of Jesus. Similarly, different regions of the Christian church landed on different dates and followed different practices to mark the festival. The festival took on particular cultural forms and was driven on by the established imperial religion.

Given that Christmas is not in the Bible – it’s not a Christian festival that Christians are commanded to keep – and its 4th century introduction was a cultural development that led to different forms in other regions, Christmas must be viewed fundamentally as a cultural festival. It is not required of believers, its forms are not prescribed in scripture and it exists primarily because of the history of Christendom and takes the particular form it does because of of the cultural heritage of our particular country. In that sense, it is no different to Bonfire Night, which is a peculiarly English festival that exists because of real historical events and cultural conditions (and, because they are linked, religious sensibilities) in the aftermath. That festival has changed in form and even meaning over the years because English culture has developed since and religious sensibilities have changed (unsurprisingly, it is no longer deemed legitimate to celebrate the burning of Catholics and/or effigies of the pope!) Christmas, though having longer heritage and existing beyond our country, is here today for essentially these same reasons.

What, then, does that mean for us in practice? Several things. Ultimately, it means Jesus does not insist you celebrate in a particular way, nor that you celebrate it at all. Christmas is an extra-biblical festival that you can celebrate if you want, how you want, without it being any sort of measure of your Christian faith. I think Paul’s words in Romans 14 are apt for whether you celebrate or not and whatever form your Christmas celebrations may take:

² One person believes he may eat anything, while one who is weak eats only vegetables. ³ One who eats must not look down on one who does not eat, and one who does not eat must not judge one who does, because God has accepted him. ⁴ Who are you to judge another’s household servant? Before his own Lord he stands or falls. And he will stand, because the Lord is able to make him stand.

⁵ One person judges one day to be more important than another day. Someone else judges every day to be the same. Let each one be fully convinced in his own mind. ⁶ Whoever observes the day, observes it for the honor of the Lord. Whoever eats, eats for the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; and whoever does not eat, it is for the Lord that he does not eat it, and he gives thanks to God.

Let your celebrations (or non-celebration) take whatever form it will. Jesus is more concerned with your heart, I suspect more concerned with your regular and ongoing walk with him than he is about one day per year so, as I judge it, he simply isn’t fussed what you do for Christmas.

Second, if Christmas is a cultural festival more than it is a religious one, then it is worth noting it is culturally significant if not religiously significant. As a good Baptist, I am not in any way beholden to the Anglican Church calendar. But I do recognise – regardless of what I think may or may not happen in church – this is a culturally significant time. Most people are thinking about Christmas during December. Some may even have their thoughts turn to the Lord Jesus in a way that they might not think about him at any other time. Given the cultural significance of this time of year, it makes some sense to capitalise on it evangelistically where we are able and it is worthwhile to do so.

Third, because it is culturally significant, we have to accept it isn’t culturally significant everywhere. Whilst we may think of non-Christianised cultures across the world where this may be true, it is similarly true in the UK. Our area of Glodwick, which is overwhelmingly South Asian Muslim, does not find Christmas all that culturally significant. I say we should capitalise on the evangelistic opportunity where it is worthwhile because, in areas like mine, that opportunity is seriously limited and close to non-existent. We still meet as a church on Christmas Day, mainly because of the message it sends when our community think we should be in church. You can read more about the reasoning for that here. But we do it as a public witness i.e. it looks bad to our community if we don’t seem to care about celebrating the birth of Christ NOT because we think we must nor because there is any evangelistic opportunity to be had. Outsiders are unlikely to come to our Christmas services nor are they particularly thinking about Jesus or the gospel at this time of year. But our public witness matters and so we meet for wider, local cultural reasons without making much of Christmas evangelistically because there is limited value in doing so.

Fourth, in a multicultural church like ours, it is difficult to have a “traditional Christmas” because there is no one culture present. What is “traditional” differs across cultures. The Africans in our church celebrate differently to the Eastern Europeans who celebrate differently to the Brits who are similar, but nevertheless different, to the Americans. The Iranians, Afghans, Iraqis and Kurds don’t celebrate Christmas at all. Few believers, of course, object to the thought of thinking about Jesus and his birth. Most welcome the opportunity to think on the incarnation. But there simply is no one way to do Christmas when so many cultures are represented. But that is absolutely fine because Christmas isn’t a religious festival but a cultural one.

I, personally, love Christmas. I love all the bells and whistles. I enjoy every bit of it. But for me, it is a cultural festival that has no ultimate religious value of itself. Whilst the opportunity to think about the incarnation is not objectionable to me at all, it’s not as if I – an evangelical Christian pastor – am not already thinking about Jesus, his gospel and the incarnation quite a bit already. We preach systematically through the Bible and are going through Matthew’s gospel, so we’ve been thinking about this as a church in the year already. It’s not a problem to me that we think about it again, but it doesn’t strike me as vital to do right now for us nor that we won’t think about these things if it wasn’t forced upon us culturally at Christmas.

Of course, there are biblical principles that govern what I do. I am not suddenly to go and get smashed on port and eggnog because the Bible says something about getting drunk. I do think a bit about the materialistic, consumeristic stuff that has built up around Christmas and don’t want to buy lock stock into that though I do think we can be so concerned about that we end up ruining what could just be a perfectly fun and enjoyable thing (more on which tomorrow). I don’t pretend the Bible doesn’t have things to say about how we celebrate in general. But these are the things of general Christian life. They are the things that govern, not just Christmas, but the entirety of my life. Drunkenness isn’t expressly forbidden at Christmas, but something we ought to avoid all the time. Consumeristic greed isn’t something unique to Christmas but is something we have to contend with on a daily basis. The Bible has some stuff to say about how I might celebrate, but not specifically because its Christmas and more because it has stuff to say about whatever I do as a Christian in general.

But as a cultural festival that I enjoy, I don’t think my love for the Lord Jesus is measured by how I treat Christmas per se. My love for Jesus is measured by my desire to be faithful to him every day. It is measured by my desire to do the things Jesus asks of me in his Word, not in how I celebrate a festival once per year that isn’t in his Word and for which he gives us no instructions. Which means I can celebrate and give gifts and enjoy all the trappings without having to make every bauble on my tree speak of Christ and every gift spiritually significant. The Bible simply doesn’t say any of these things. I am free to enjoy Christmas however I will, focusing on whatever I will, whether using it as an opportunity to think of Jesus or as a cultural festival that is simply there to be enjoyed if I wish. Indeed, if you don’t want anything to do with Christmas, that option is open to you too. In the end, celebrate (or don’t) however you want and let your love for Jesus be seen less in whatever you do at Christmas and more in whether you have any desire to obey him in the things he actually asks of us in his Word.