Make-believe and celebrations: Christmas message ignored

This is a delightful season for summer fruit from the tropics and temperate climes. I purchased a pawpaw that looked just right. I struck a problem when I opened it.

It wasn't seen from the outside, but around the stem, there was a small bad spot that had developed mould on some of the seeds inside. Once the bad section had been removed, the remainder of the pawpaw was delicious. I would never have written off the entire pawpaw because of some contaminated seeds.

But that's what some people want to do with Christmas. The season has been commercialised with festivities that disguise the true message of Christmas. Also, there are opponents of Christ who raise objections to Jesus' nativity events recorded in the New Testament (NT) Gospels.

Paddling in the Christmas shallows

Let's clear away some debris. December 25 is not the date of Jesus' birth. There is no biblical mention of the exact day of his birth. A few hints in the texts indicate it was not in the middle of the northern winter. Shepherds were in the fields overnight guarding their flock (Luke 2:8). This suggests a time of more temperate weather.

There were discussions about the date of Jesus' birth by early church leader in northern Africa, Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-215). He wrote: 'There are those who have determined not only the year of our Lord's birth, but also the day; and they say that it took place in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus, and in the twenty-fifth day of [the Egyptian month of] Pachon'. This is 20 May according to our calendar (The Stromata1.21).

For the first 300 years of the church's existence, it did not celebrate Christmas. December 25 was adopted in AD 336 when Constantine was emperor. In 354 a list of Roman bishops was compiled. The words that appeared in 336 were, '25 Dec: natus Christus in Betleem Judeae', i.e. 25 December, Christ born in Bethlehem Judea.

Around that time there were pagan festivals honouring the Roman god of agriculture, liberation and time – Saturn. Mithra (Mithras) was worshipped by the Persians (Iran, Iraq and vicinity) as the god of light. Could this have been a tactical decision by a christianised Emperor, Constantine, to encourage people to consider the new faith of Christianity?

The Santa sham

I well remember the deceitful fun my parents had with us kids at Christmas with the gifts under the tree. The jolly old Santa was played by Dad as part of my family's tradition. We children knew no other way to celebrate Christmas. Now we know it's pretense, but who wants to spoil the fun for kids?

This legend has been traced back to the monk, St. Nicholas, born around AD 280 in Patara, modern Turkey. He was esteemed for his godliness and kindness. Many legends have sprung up around his story.

As for the name, Santa Claus, it emerged from Nick's Dutch nickname, Sinter Klaas. As for the chubby, bearded fellow in the red suit, those features originated in 1822 when Clement Clarke Moore, a USA Episcopal minister, wrote a lengthy poem for his three daughters, 'An account of a visit from St. Nicholas'.

He was cautious about publishing it because of its petty subject. However, that poem seems to have been responsible for the contemporary image of Santa – the tubby old man in red who could climb up a chimney (history.com).

This year, I visited a major department store in the Brisbane region to purchase a nativity scene for my house. When I asked the person at the front door for directions to the department where I would find such a scene, she naively responded: 'What do you mean?' She had no idea of the true meaning of Christmas and where a nativity scene fits into the picture. To her knowledge there was no such scene in this large store. She was correct.

However, there were many promotions for Santa, tinsel, lights and Christmas trees. Some may read my emphasis as being that of a party pooper who throws a wet blanket over genuine celebrations.

To the contrary, this expose is designed to reveal …

The charade that covers up these truths

Is the biblical Christmas story wrapped in history or myth? That's for another article, 'Christmas truth or fiction'.

In this season, lost is the realisation that Christmas is first of all a celebration of the birth of the Saviour. He is all but forgotten – thoughtlessly smothered in the haste, commotion, partying and flamboyant commercialism of this season.

Please don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting that this season should be only solemn, sombre, grim religious observances without any cheer. It should be a time of real joy and gladness as exemplified in the Christmas carol with words by Isaac Watts and music by George Frederick Handel:

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.

This is not manufactured sentiment and wild revelry that characterises the way the community celebrates Christmas.

What do Santa, reindeers, lights and Christmas trees disguise?

(1) The virgin birth, including its prophetic fulfillment

Even from within the church, former Roman Catholic priest, John Dominic Crossan objected: 'The stories of Jesus' birth are religious fiction, or parable, if you prefer…. This does not mean that they have no value, but … they are not to be read as literal history' (Crossan & Watts 1999:10).

Objections are at the core of the Christmas story. Even Mary was a doubter herself about the virgin conception. The angel Gabriel appeared to a virgin in Nazareth who was pledged to marry Joseph. Gabriel's message was that Mary was 'highly favoured. The Lord is with you'. Those words disturbed Mary and she was 'greatly troubled' by what the words meant.

The angel told her that she would conceive and give birth to a son to be called Jesus. He will be 'the Son of the Most High', given the throne of his father David, and reign over Jacob's descendants forever. This kingdom will never end (Luke 1).

Then Mary's fears rose like today's sceptics. 'How will this be,' Mary asked the angel, 'since I am a virgin?' The angel answered, 'The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God' (Luke 1:34-35).

Why is there resistance from Mary down to John Dominic Crossan in the late twentieth century?

(1) In a materialistic, commercial age dominated by naturalistic explanations, many find it more difficult to believe in a virgin conception than Jesus' walking on water. Since God is so omnipotent he could speak the heavens and the earth into existence (Gen 1:1), doubt about God's powerful actions has crept into our society through evolutionary theories. A flow on is resistance to the virgin birth.

(2) No matter one's worldview, we live in a miraculous world where God's providence means 'he causes his sun to shine on evil people and good people. He sends rain on those who do right and those who don't'. It would be sound thinking during this Christmas season to understand the everyday miracles we need to survive. What happens when the rains are not sent by almighty God – for his reasons?

(3) Genuine Bible prophecy is held in low regard. This miraculous event was prophesied in the Old Testament (OT). The history of the Western world turns on this result. The Christ child's birth in Bethlehem was prophesied in Micah 5:1-2 that he would be born in Bethlehem, 700 years before his birth. And it happened as predicted.

Yet sceptics respond with this type of question: Where is the evidence that 'Messianic prophecies of the OT weren't manufactured after Jesus birth, life and death by his disciples?

One fact removes this possibility. It is in the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran, Israel, on the west bank of the Dead Sea. In 1946-47, Bedouin shepherd boys found every book of the OT except Esther in desert caves. Here is proof that the Messianic prophecies predated the incarnation of Jesus. Copies of Isaiah, Psalm 22, Daniel 9 and other OT prophecies have been dated to 335-100 BC by paleography, scribal and carbon 14 dating – secular methods. This was a significant find because it demonstrated the fulfillment of the prophecies was not manipulated by Jesus' disciples.

Isaiah 7:14 prophesied: 'Therefore the Lord himself will give you [plural] a sign: the virgin [or, young woman] will conceive and give birth to a son, andwill call him Immanuel [meaning, 'God with us']. This was confirmed – not invented – in Matthew 1:22-23.

You couldn't believe the academic and other theological gymnastics that surround the meaning of 'virgin', with some wanting to translate it as a 'young woman' and not inferring virginity. In Isa 7:14, the Hebrew word used is almah whose root meaning could be either 'maiden' (virgin) or 'young woman'. Old Testament scholar, Gleason Archer (1982:269), stated, 'It is … not as precise a word for virgin as the Hebrew betulah' (see Gen 24:16). However, for the seven times the singular almah is used in the Hebrew OT, the word always refers to a woman who has had no sexual relations – a virgin. We know from the Isa 7:14 fulfillment in Matt 1:24 that Joseph had no sexual liaison with Mary 'until she had given birth to a son'.

When the Hebrew OT was translated into Greek (the Septuagint) about 250 BC by seventy Jewish scholars, parthenos was used to translate almah, which can only be translated as virgin and not young woman. This also is the case in Matt 1:23 where the Greek for 'virgin' is parthenos. The Greek used numphe for bride or young woman.

Why is the virgin birth important in the records of the first Christmas?

Am I nit picking in emphasising Jesus' virgin birth rather than his birth to a young woman? Not at all! There are at least five reasons why the virgin birth is important to Christianity (suggested by Don Stewart):

1. Because Mary 'was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit' (Matt 1:18), it guaranteed his heavenly identity of being God the Son.

2. Jesus lived a sinless life since there was no sexual liaison between a male and a female for his conception. With a human father, he would have inherited a sinful nature. The sin nature is passed down through the male as it was Adam who was responsible for the first sin of disobedience (Gen 3; Rom 5:12). The virgin birth guarantees that Jesus 'appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin' (1 John 3:5). No sinful human being could guarantee cleansing from sin.

3. For the cleansing of human sin, God required a perfect sacrifice in the OT (Ex 12:5) and the sinless Jesus, with his crucifixion, was a sin offering for Christian believers (2 Cor 5:21). Hebrews 7:26 confirms that Jesus was a high priest who truly meets our need because he was the 'one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens'. This was possible because of his virgin birth.

4. Christ's unparalleled attributes are revealed in Scripture. Don Stewart's summary of this matchlessness is:

What the virgin birth does is show the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. No one else has ever come into the world the same way as Jesus. The unique and miraculous nature of Jesus carried on through His entire life. His birth was a miracle, His public ministry consisted of miracles, Jesus miraculously lived a sinless life, He miraculously came back from the dead, and left this world in a miraculous way. From His entrance into this world until His departure, the life of Jesus Christ was a miracle.

5. The historically reliable Bible confirms Jesus' virgin birth. Discussion of the trustworthy Bible content is for another time.

With commercialised Christmases, these core elements are ignored and replaced.

(2) The meaning of nativity

Nativityis a special name for a baby's birth place. If I was born in Brisbane, you could say my nativity was in Brisbane. However, it predominately refers to Christians' pointing to the birth place of Jesus Christ. Nativity 'comes from the French word nativité, which also means "birth." The Latin root word is nativus, "born or native"'.

Often Christian nativity scenes include the Christ child in the manger, Mary and Joseph, shepherds, some barn animals, three magi and angels.

Should there have been angels in the first nativity scene? Luke 2:8-9 informs us that the shepherds were out in the fields watching their flocks at night when an angel appeared to announce the Messiah's arrival. The shepherds 'were terrified'. So the angels should not appear in a nativity scene.

As a passing comment, to talk about angels appearing today could cause great anguish amongst many because we don't believe in that such characters. They are made for movies!

To the contrary, the Bible teaches that 'angels are only servants-spirits sent to care for people who will inherit salvation' (Heb 1:14). We hear about the dark side of evil angels (demons) today, but discussion of angels is far from our thinking of reality.

The late Billy Graham wrote a book on Angels: God's Secret Agents. He said angels are real, are not the product of our imagination, and 'if we had open spiritual eyes we would see not only a world filled with evil spirits and powers-but also powerful angels with drawn swords, set for our defense'.

Corrie ten Boom, who harboured Jews and others in her house's basement in Holland during the Nazi Holocaust, wrote:

Are there angels here on earth? What do they look like? Do they have any influence on the history of mankind? Do they really have anything to do with the lives of human beings? The Bible writers believed in them and thought they were important because they wrote about them hundreds of times, much more than about evil spirits and Satan. So why do we hear so little about them these days? (God is Still a God of Miracles)

These dimensions of the Christmas story are ignored, by-passed or laughed at when commercialisation crushes Christmas.

(3) The star guided the Magi

Often in nativity scenes, there are three wise men (magi) accompanying the manger, Jesus, Joseph and Mary. The setting is in a stable. Jesus may have been born in such a place but it is as probable that he was born in a house's lower level where there were animals sheltering for the night.

Luke 2:7 states: 'She gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn'. It was in the kataluma (Greek word), which is best understood as 'the guest room'. It was not a commercial lodging for which Luke had a word, pandokheion, which he didn't use.

Which new mother with her firstborn would want to give birth in a public inn?

Even though the wise men often show up in nativity scenes for Jesus' birth, the evidence points to the magi visiting Jesus later. It is difficult to create a time line for their visit to Jesus. We know the situation when King Herod found out about the city where the Messiah was born and sent the magi to find him:

Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in that entire region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. (Matt 2:16).

This is an indicator that Jesus was a young child, under 2-years of age, when Herod realised he had been deceived by the magi and then issued this edict to kill all male children in that age group.

Can the star that guided the wise men be identified? While the regular Greek word for 'star' was used, the text of Matt 2:1-11 doesn't name the star. It appeared only to the magi, so it would be reasonable to assume it was no ordinary star because of its purpose of identifying the location of the baby Messiah.

(4) Jesus born to die a sacrificial death

Every human being is born to die: 'Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment' (Heb 9:27). What was subdued in emphasis at that first Christmas was what the angel told Joseph, husband of Mary.

An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins (Matt 1:21-22).

However, Jesus of Bethlehem was born to be Jesus, the crucified One, who 'will save his people from their sins'. This is glossed over at Christmastime. The real meaning of Easter is like a hand in glove event with Christmas.

I met a person recently who said: You Christians always (hyperbole) talk about sin. Please quit it! The reason sin (breaking God's law) is an issue is because it is what separates all sinners from God. We needed a sinless, perfect sacrifice to bridge the gap between a holy and just God and human beings. Jesus, the baby in the manger, grew to become that sacrifice so that all who believe (trust) in Jesus may receive forgiveness and eternal life.

These are God's requirements and not those any human being formulated.

(5) The baby was a wonderful counsellor, mighty God, everlasting Father and prince of peace (Isa 9:6).

This prophecy from Isaiah has a question that needs answering among the Christmas glitz.

How can the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, be prophesied to be the 'everlasting Father'? At first sight, it sounds contradictory. How can the Son be the Father?

It is doubtful 'everlasting Father' is the best translation of the Hebrew, abiad, which literally means 'Father of eternity'. The first part of Isa 9:6 stresses the incarnation, 'For to us a child is born, to us a son is given….' So 'Father of eternity' refers to the 'Author of eternity', from the beginning of time/creation to the consummation of all things. 'This title points to Christ as Creator of the world' (Archer 1982:268) as indicated by John 1:3, 'All things came into being through Him….'

(6) The baby who started Christianity and its peaceful spread

Christianity spreads through peaceful proclamation. Any other way is an aberration, e.g. the Crusades, John Calvin's endorsement of the death penalty for Servetus who was not a Trinitarian, and support of slavery. Christianity is not spread through force or violence.

Even an atheist/agnostic such as scientist, Richard Dawkins, inferred the benefits of Christianity. A Fox News headline was, 'Atheist Richard Dawkins warns against celebrating the alleged demise of Christianity in Europe'. Why would Dawkins, an anti-Christian, say this?

'Before we rejoice at the death throes of the relatively benign Christian religion, let's not forget Hilaire Belloc's menacing rhyme: 'Always keep a-hold of nurse – For fear of finding something worse….

Dawkins has previously voiced concern over the decline of the Christian faith, "in so far as Christianity might be a bulwark against something worse," which he echoed in his tweet'.

The baby born to the virgin Mary at Bethlehem is the Messiah who is the 'prince of peace' and Christianity's spread worldwide is based on its theology, 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God' (Matt 5:9).

Conclusion

The season has become infected with profiteering and extra effects such as Santa, reindeers, tinsel, lights and Christmas trees. All of the above biblical information surrounding the birth of the Messiah is concealed by the contamination of Christmas celebrations.

Commercialisation of the Christian message or a bad experience should never testify against the real person and events at the time of Jesus' birth.

Mouldy pawpaw seeds did not deter me from enjoying a special piece of summer fruit. Neither should a contaminated Christmas season stop us from remembering the Person who began this celebration in about 6-4 BC, Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world.

The intrusion into the Christmas season of foreign symbols and signs detracts from the meaning of Christmas. I was pleased to enter a Woolworths' supermarket on the day I'm writing this article and to hear Christmas carols being played through the store's PA system, instead of 'Frosty the Snow Man'.

Jesus is the One whose human birth we celebrate every Christmas. The extravagance of the season should never blind us to the fact that Jesus is the reason for the season.