There is actually no evidence that Christmas traditions come from paganism. Most Christmas traditions originated in Europe after the region had been Christianized and Christmas had nothing to do with either Yule or Saturnalia. Please watch the videos below!
K, so I watched the beginning of the first video. I already am a little wary of believing him because:
1. He immediately shuts down people who believe Christmas is pagan. In my articles I always make sure to share both sides of the argument and portray them in neutral ways. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and beliefs!
2. He skipped a lot of the Deuteronomy 12 passage, specifically the part about “do not add or take away”. Since Christmas is not specifically in the Bible, that would be adding to the Bible. Now I know what most people would say to that: well the Bible doesn’t say to brush my teeth, so therefore I shouldn’t be brushing my teeth? No, this is about worshipping God. God tells us how to worship him. Brushing our teeth is not a way that we worship God, that’s just daily hygiene. But celebrating his birth is worshipping him in a certain way, and he says that he does not want to be celebrated in that way. The Bible never actually says to celebrate his birthday. It does actually give us a list of holidays we are to celebrate (Leviticus 23. I’ll go over all those holidays in a later post.)
3. Again, his tone was really rude in my opinion, and I didn’t see a straight forward argument. If you’re trying to persuade someone, you need to clearly display a point, and not in a downplaying manner. It’s okay if someone disagrees with you!
Thank you so much for responding! I really value your feedback. I also really appreciate that you took the time to read my post! Thank you! ☺️
And, as always, I love these discussions so I’d love to keep talking about it.
I think my struggle with this argument is that, even a consumerism Christmas isn't anything like how the pagans celebrate their gods...like they legit had orgies, did blood magic, conjured demons, sacrificed women and children... they were savages.
A consumerism Christmas would fall more under idolship so ya, definitely not a celebration of Christ.
In Luke 2, we see an Angel of the Lord come to the lowly of those on the social ladder to say:
[10] And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. [11] For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. [12] And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
I don't see God condemning us for wanting to celebrate the good news of Jesus's birth after 400 something years of silence. Especially because after this announcement the angels did this:
[13] And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, [14] “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
These angels brought some of the best news in human history, that there would be hope for our relationship with God!
This historical moment is now the reason why thousands upon thousands of people, every year are exposed to the gospel in some way. God can use our mistakes to further His will, which is for all to come to Christ and be reconciled.
2 Corinthians 5:18-20 ESV
[18] All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; [19] that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. [20] Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
Maybe we aren't celebrating like the ancient Hebrew culture, but God knew we wouldn't celebrate that way this far down the line in time. He absolutely still uses our celebrations as a way to draw sinners closer to Him to change their hearts.
As long as we aren't celebrating with sacrificial murder, orgies, and drugs, we aren't anywhere near celebrating like pagans.
Ooh, interesting! Thanks for writing the article! Personally I feel that the most important part is where the attitude of your heart is when celebrating Christmas, not necessarily what your doing. :)
Someone could make cookies, decorate their house, and sing Christmas songs, and may or may not actually care about Jesus and the wonderful things he's done in their heart of hearts.
I think it's less important what you choose to do or don't do to celebrate, or where those traditions started, but rather, how you feel about Jesus. :)
Thank you for your comments, Rebecca!! Yes, heart posture is SO important! I definitely don’t think Christian who are celebrating Christmas are satanic or doing evil. I also think it really matters about what God personally convicts us of.
We’re all in a different place in our journey with God, so there’s no one size fits all 😁
Ok so you’re saying it’s ok to do a wrong thing if you have the right heart. I believe Jesus addressed that in the parable of the sons who were told to go work in the vineyard. Mt 21:28-31
Also Luke 12:47-48 addresses being accountable for what you know or don’t know. But it’s still wrong to do that which God says is wrong. He tells us how to worship him and how not to worship him.
When God tells us to do something “forever” and throughout all our generations- he means it!
First off, I want to commend you for writing a very professional, respectful article defending your position. Not many people can do that these days 💀🤣
Second, I will say that I disagree. I'm not well read into the whole debate, so I won't pretend to have any real air of authority on it, but I'm just gonna put my two cents in here. I'm not sure how valid the claims are about all the pagan holidays & traditions being at the root of Christmas, but for the sake of this comment and to be fair to the author, I'll assume they are valid.
So, operating under that assumption:
I have yet to see anything wrong with what we do right now. A modern Christmas is full of laughter, joy, family traditions, gifts....all good things God has given us. If that's true, and Christmas today is way better than the sacrifice-orgy-dark magic bloodfests of the pagans, why would we give it up and stop doing it? Evidently, we've made Christmas far better than it used to be.
Then again, it's helpful to keep in mind the fact that while ancient pagans may have done those things, they definitely weren't the first. I'm willing to put quite a bit of money that the ancient Christians had a celebration of Christ's birth the same way we do, albeit possibly a very different kind of celebration.
All in all, the world is ours, even though we don't belong here. The King of this world is not Lucifer, but Jesus of Nazareth. The pagans have to steal OUR good things in order to twist them. So I say we take our good things back, and do so with a smile on our face.
I'd love to hear what you have to say to that, (if you want to take the time to read the whole comment xD). Again, I'm no authority on the topic, just sticking my two cents in :)
While we Christians don’t celebrate Christmas in an evil way, there are people *now* who do celebrate it that way. And that makes me pretty uncomfortable 🥴
The Bible actually gives us sooooo many HOLYdays (yes, the word holiday originated from holy day) with all of those things! And yet…I only know one or two families in my community who actually celebrate those holidays.
People often say to that, “well it was in the Old Testament. We are now in the new covenant”.
BUT. Jesus celebrated those holidays!
(I’ll be covering those in a later post.)
Okay, I know that was a bit of a rant and not entirely related to your comment 😂, but those are my thoughts!! If I missed anything you wanted me to cover or you have anymore questions, I would love to keep chatting about this!
Oh interesting 🤔 i'll be the first to admit I could be completely wrong on when it originated XDD.
Do you have a modern example of ppl now who celebrate it in an evil way? I'm curious bc I've never rly heard of anything outside of boxing day or kwanzaa.
Also thats a pretty decent point about Jesus celebrating the holidays, but I've heard it explained this way: The new covenant wasn't actually ushered in until he died on the cross. All of those holidays were observed by him BEFORE he died on the cross. And then after, he says outright to Peter that the old covenant ritual laws are done away with, and has him eat meat no Jew would ever eat. So that's my explanation for that XD. Plus, Jesus didn't fully observe old covenant ritual things (i.e. he was breaking the Sabbath all the time with his disciples), so it could inferred that he didn't care about the OT ritual stuff, but still observed it for whatever purpose.....
- first off, not only did Jesus observe all of these holidays, but so did all of his disciples, including Paul. Here in 1 Cor 5:8 Paul is talking about Passover (one of the feasts in Leviticus 23): Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
- second, Jesus never broke the Sabbath instead he was busting the traditions that the Pharisees had created. It never says that you can’t eat wheat that you hand harvested bc you were starving on the Sabbath: that was a tradition that the Pharisees had set up. Jesus absolutely obeyed the Torah.
- third, Peter himself interpreted the vision of the sheet with all the animals. right after he has the vision he says to [I don’t remember exactly who] that God had told him to accept everyone. Acts 10:28: Then he said to them, “You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of another nation. But God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean.
So just some random points I had! I hope you don’t feel like I’m shutting you down! I really appreciate your comments and I love talking about this!!! 😁
yeah, those are some good points. Tbh, i'm not super well versed, and probably not well enough to counter those....I would just say that we're not living under the OT ritual law anymore at all....if we were, there's no reason for Christ to come and die on the cross.
First, im about to launch a podcast called the Junk Drawer and the first episode is going to be on this, you should subscribe (yes, that’s a plug) and/or let me know if you want me to message you when its released and give it a listen!
Also, watch saving Christmas, Darren Doanes movie. It’s great!
Personally, I've always celebrated Christmas and will continue to do so. I celebrate the birth of Christ on Christmas day. For me, Jesus is the reason for the season. However, whether or not you celebrate Christmas doesn't make you Christian or non-Christian. I'm not going to call you a heathen if you don't agree with me.
Thank you for sharing! I think it’s pretty hard to end the “Christmas is pagan” (or not) argument, so I would say my main point for not celebrating Christmas is that none of the disciples or early church celebrated it.
I really appreciate your response! Thank you for reading my post!!
Why does it matter if the disciples or the early church celebrated it or not? Is there something wrong with worshiping Christ and his coming to earth for our salvation? In Luke chapter 2 we see that the angles sang songs of praise and worship because of the birth and coming and coming of Christ:
[10] And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. [11] For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. [12] And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” [13] And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, [14] “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:10-14 ESV).
As for your claim that the argument for Christmas being a pagan holiday is difficult to dismiss, I completely disagree. There is NO credible evidence or argument that suggests that Christmas has pagan roots. Every argument is rooted in deeply flawed understanding of the historical facts surrounding the topic. I shared with you a simple video that addresses each point that you have brought up in your essay, but if you have further concerns we can discuss them. However, at the end of the day there is nothing wrong with worshiping God and giving thanks for the gift of salvation that was given to us.
Where is the Christmas tree in the Bible? Stockings? Evergreen foliage inside the house? Easter bunny? Easter eggs? Rabbits don’t lay eggs, btw. It’s not about Jesus- it’s a pagan fertility festival. It’s worth looking into why we celebrate pagan holy-days instead of God’s holy days in Leviticus 23. The entire book of Acts shows the entire early church still celebrating them all (including sabbath) which is all after Jesus’ ascension. But modern Christians are so uninformed about the Old Testament that we don’t even notice what Luke is saying. Let’s do Bible things in Bible ways and not be deceived into the ways of the world. We are called to be set apart. In the world but not of it.
Yes!! That is something I plan to cover 😄 I think I will cover Easter first just bc it is arriving before Halloween, but after I cover the more time-relevant holidays I will get to it!
Thank you so much for reading my post! It means so much!
There is actually no evidence that Christmas traditions come from paganism. Most Christmas traditions originated in Europe after the region had been Christianized and Christmas had nothing to do with either Yule or Saturnalia. Please watch the videos below!
https://youtu.be/4bWSrF7kNpM?si=P7mN97cr4V7b2Y4g
https://youtu.be/UlEQW-NPqWI?si=-DkHWBwVJdyoGJsp
https://youtu.be/ca_Yx3aMCiE?si=obsPLgzOjei9hr3f
https://youtu.be/DfcvJWPTY64?si=XWswh5iIdhMHALX-
K, so I watched the beginning of the first video. I already am a little wary of believing him because:
1. He immediately shuts down people who believe Christmas is pagan. In my articles I always make sure to share both sides of the argument and portray them in neutral ways. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and beliefs!
2. He skipped a lot of the Deuteronomy 12 passage, specifically the part about “do not add or take away”. Since Christmas is not specifically in the Bible, that would be adding to the Bible. Now I know what most people would say to that: well the Bible doesn’t say to brush my teeth, so therefore I shouldn’t be brushing my teeth? No, this is about worshipping God. God tells us how to worship him. Brushing our teeth is not a way that we worship God, that’s just daily hygiene. But celebrating his birth is worshipping him in a certain way, and he says that he does not want to be celebrated in that way. The Bible never actually says to celebrate his birthday. It does actually give us a list of holidays we are to celebrate (Leviticus 23. I’ll go over all those holidays in a later post.)
3. Again, his tone was really rude in my opinion, and I didn’t see a straight forward argument. If you’re trying to persuade someone, you need to clearly display a point, and not in a downplaying manner. It’s okay if someone disagrees with you!
Thank you so much for responding! I really value your feedback. I also really appreciate that you took the time to read my post! Thank you! ☺️
And, as always, I love these discussions so I’d love to keep talking about it.
I think my struggle with this argument is that, even a consumerism Christmas isn't anything like how the pagans celebrate their gods...like they legit had orgies, did blood magic, conjured demons, sacrificed women and children... they were savages.
A consumerism Christmas would fall more under idolship so ya, definitely not a celebration of Christ.
In Luke 2, we see an Angel of the Lord come to the lowly of those on the social ladder to say:
[10] And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. [11] For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. [12] And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
I don't see God condemning us for wanting to celebrate the good news of Jesus's birth after 400 something years of silence. Especially because after this announcement the angels did this:
[13] And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, [14] “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
These angels brought some of the best news in human history, that there would be hope for our relationship with God!
This historical moment is now the reason why thousands upon thousands of people, every year are exposed to the gospel in some way. God can use our mistakes to further His will, which is for all to come to Christ and be reconciled.
2 Corinthians 5:18-20 ESV
[18] All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; [19] that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. [20] Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
Maybe we aren't celebrating like the ancient Hebrew culture, but God knew we wouldn't celebrate that way this far down the line in time. He absolutely still uses our celebrations as a way to draw sinners closer to Him to change their hearts.
As long as we aren't celebrating with sacrificial murder, orgies, and drugs, we aren't anywhere near celebrating like pagans.
True! And thank you for your response ☺️
I definitely don’t think that you are celebrating demons or doing witchcraft or anything like that. But other people are 🤷🏼♀️
Yes, Jesus’s birth was incredible!! We would not be where we are today without it!!
However, I don’t see the early church celebrating it so I’m not going to 😁
I really appreciate your reply! Thank you for reading my post!
Ooh, interesting! Thanks for writing the article! Personally I feel that the most important part is where the attitude of your heart is when celebrating Christmas, not necessarily what your doing. :)
Someone could make cookies, decorate their house, and sing Christmas songs, and may or may not actually care about Jesus and the wonderful things he's done in their heart of hearts.
I think it's less important what you choose to do or don't do to celebrate, or where those traditions started, but rather, how you feel about Jesus. :)
Oh, also, as I was thinking about this topic, I was remembered this chapter in 1 Corinthians 8. This sort of thinking might apply to this topic. :)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%208&version=NKJV
And also these verses in Romans. :)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%2014%3A5%E2%80%936&version=NKJV
Thank you for your comments, Rebecca!! Yes, heart posture is SO important! I definitely don’t think Christian who are celebrating Christmas are satanic or doing evil. I also think it really matters about what God personally convicts us of.
We’re all in a different place in our journey with God, so there’s no one size fits all 😁
Ok so you’re saying it’s ok to do a wrong thing if you have the right heart. I believe Jesus addressed that in the parable of the sons who were told to go work in the vineyard. Mt 21:28-31
Also Luke 12:47-48 addresses being accountable for what you know or don’t know. But it’s still wrong to do that which God says is wrong. He tells us how to worship him and how not to worship him.
When God tells us to do something “forever” and throughout all our generations- he means it!
https://yrm.org/yahwehs-feasts-forever/#:~:text=Yahweh%20said%2C%20“And%20this%20day,%2C”%20Exodus%2012%3A14.
First off, I want to commend you for writing a very professional, respectful article defending your position. Not many people can do that these days 💀🤣
Second, I will say that I disagree. I'm not well read into the whole debate, so I won't pretend to have any real air of authority on it, but I'm just gonna put my two cents in here. I'm not sure how valid the claims are about all the pagan holidays & traditions being at the root of Christmas, but for the sake of this comment and to be fair to the author, I'll assume they are valid.
So, operating under that assumption:
I have yet to see anything wrong with what we do right now. A modern Christmas is full of laughter, joy, family traditions, gifts....all good things God has given us. If that's true, and Christmas today is way better than the sacrifice-orgy-dark magic bloodfests of the pagans, why would we give it up and stop doing it? Evidently, we've made Christmas far better than it used to be.
Then again, it's helpful to keep in mind the fact that while ancient pagans may have done those things, they definitely weren't the first. I'm willing to put quite a bit of money that the ancient Christians had a celebration of Christ's birth the same way we do, albeit possibly a very different kind of celebration.
All in all, the world is ours, even though we don't belong here. The King of this world is not Lucifer, but Jesus of Nazareth. The pagans have to steal OUR good things in order to twist them. So I say we take our good things back, and do so with a smile on our face.
I'd love to hear what you have to say to that, (if you want to take the time to read the whole comment xD). Again, I'm no authority on the topic, just sticking my two cents in :)
Well I really appreciate your reply!!! Thank you so much for reading my article!
So I did a really quick google search for “when did the holiday Christmas originate” and this is what came up: https://substack.com/profile/104453507-eowyn-bolivette/note/c-82385762?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=1q6sub
While we Christians don’t celebrate Christmas in an evil way, there are people *now* who do celebrate it that way. And that makes me pretty uncomfortable 🥴
The Bible actually gives us sooooo many HOLYdays (yes, the word holiday originated from holy day) with all of those things! And yet…I only know one or two families in my community who actually celebrate those holidays.
People often say to that, “well it was in the Old Testament. We are now in the new covenant”.
BUT. Jesus celebrated those holidays!
(I’ll be covering those in a later post.)
Okay, I know that was a bit of a rant and not entirely related to your comment 😂, but those are my thoughts!! If I missed anything you wanted me to cover or you have anymore questions, I would love to keep chatting about this!
Thank you so much for your response!
Also, I’m not an authority on the topic either 😂
Oh interesting 🤔 i'll be the first to admit I could be completely wrong on when it originated XDD.
Do you have a modern example of ppl now who celebrate it in an evil way? I'm curious bc I've never rly heard of anything outside of boxing day or kwanzaa.
Also thats a pretty decent point about Jesus celebrating the holidays, but I've heard it explained this way: The new covenant wasn't actually ushered in until he died on the cross. All of those holidays were observed by him BEFORE he died on the cross. And then after, he says outright to Peter that the old covenant ritual laws are done away with, and has him eat meat no Jew would ever eat. So that's my explanation for that XD. Plus, Jesus didn't fully observe old covenant ritual things (i.e. he was breaking the Sabbath all the time with his disciples), so it could inferred that he didn't care about the OT ritual stuff, but still observed it for whatever purpose.....
Okay, there’s a lot to unpack here!!
- first off, not only did Jesus observe all of these holidays, but so did all of his disciples, including Paul. Here in 1 Cor 5:8 Paul is talking about Passover (one of the feasts in Leviticus 23): Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
- second, Jesus never broke the Sabbath instead he was busting the traditions that the Pharisees had created. It never says that you can’t eat wheat that you hand harvested bc you were starving on the Sabbath: that was a tradition that the Pharisees had set up. Jesus absolutely obeyed the Torah.
- third, Peter himself interpreted the vision of the sheet with all the animals. right after he has the vision he says to [I don’t remember exactly who] that God had told him to accept everyone. Acts 10:28: Then he said to them, “You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of another nation. But God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean.
So just some random points I had! I hope you don’t feel like I’m shutting you down! I really appreciate your comments and I love talking about this!!! 😁
yeah, those are some good points. Tbh, i'm not super well versed, and probably not well enough to counter those....I would just say that we're not living under the OT ritual law anymore at all....if we were, there's no reason for Christ to come and die on the cross.
also sry for my late reply XD
Haha, no worries 😂
I totally get that!
And seriously, I’m pretty bad at replying lol, all my Substack notifs pile up 😰
(also you don't have to respond at all if that spoils your later post, I just realized it might lol)
To your second comment about spoiling, I’ll be covering that all next post so I’ll save that for later 😂
First, im about to launch a podcast called the Junk Drawer and the first episode is going to be on this, you should subscribe (yes, that’s a plug) and/or let me know if you want me to message you when its released and give it a listen!
Also, watch saving Christmas, Darren Doanes movie. It’s great!
I can’t wait!!!!!
Personally, I've always celebrated Christmas and will continue to do so. I celebrate the birth of Christ on Christmas day. For me, Jesus is the reason for the season. However, whether or not you celebrate Christmas doesn't make you Christian or non-Christian. I'm not going to call you a heathen if you don't agree with me.
I would agree with you…if you want to celebrate Christmas, go for it! 😁
This is historically wrong: https://youtu.be/5zcaQlBbk6s?si=54VFn7TzYvDZSN3_
Thank you for sharing! I think it’s pretty hard to end the “Christmas is pagan” (or not) argument, so I would say my main point for not celebrating Christmas is that none of the disciples or early church celebrated it.
I really appreciate your response! Thank you for reading my post!!
Why does it matter if the disciples or the early church celebrated it or not? Is there something wrong with worshiping Christ and his coming to earth for our salvation? In Luke chapter 2 we see that the angles sang songs of praise and worship because of the birth and coming and coming of Christ:
[10] And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. [11] For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. [12] And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” [13] And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, [14] “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:10-14 ESV).
As for your claim that the argument for Christmas being a pagan holiday is difficult to dismiss, I completely disagree. There is NO credible evidence or argument that suggests that Christmas has pagan roots. Every argument is rooted in deeply flawed understanding of the historical facts surrounding the topic. I shared with you a simple video that addresses each point that you have brought up in your essay, but if you have further concerns we can discuss them. However, at the end of the day there is nothing wrong with worshiping God and giving thanks for the gift of salvation that was given to us.
Where is the Christmas tree in the Bible? Stockings? Evergreen foliage inside the house? Easter bunny? Easter eggs? Rabbits don’t lay eggs, btw. It’s not about Jesus- it’s a pagan fertility festival. It’s worth looking into why we celebrate pagan holy-days instead of God’s holy days in Leviticus 23. The entire book of Acts shows the entire early church still celebrating them all (including sabbath) which is all after Jesus’ ascension. But modern Christians are so uninformed about the Old Testament that we don’t even notice what Luke is saying. Let’s do Bible things in Bible ways and not be deceived into the ways of the world. We are called to be set apart. In the world but not of it.
Then we can agree to disagree ☺️
No 🫶
Would love to see what research you compile for Halloween! TY
Yes!! That is something I plan to cover 😄 I think I will cover Easter first just bc it is arriving before Halloween, but after I cover the more time-relevant holidays I will get to it!
Thank you so much for reading my post! It means so much!
Thank you so much for taking the time to share this, Eowyn! You made some rly interesting points.
Of course!! And thank you for reading!!