Putting Satan Back in Christmas

Good afternoon, everybody. Happy Youth Day to all of you, and great thank you to our youth over there. That was beautiful. Thank you. I never thought I'd be giving a sermon about Christmas, but here we are. Mind you, I never thought I'd be giving sermons at all. So I wanted to just start off by saying the conclusion.

Christmas is pagan. We should not celebrate it. My goal today is kind of to walk through some of that, but I just wanted to make sure I got that out of the way.

You know, we've entered now fully into the world's holiday period, and God's holidays, holy days, have concluded, and we are thrust immediately into the world's holidays. It starts off with Halloween, follows very quickly by Christmas, and this is where we are now. And if you look around, you know, you don't need to do much, but just look around at the things outside. And our communities in the world around us are celebrating what they consider one of the most emotionally charged and festive times of the year. It's a season filled with Christmas parties, sparkling lights, elaborate decorations, sentimental traditions, and even flying reindeer in some cases. And again, the world around us, they consider this to be the most wonderful time of the year. But for those of us in the church, you know, we generally try and just hunker down in this period. You know, we just try and get through it, mostly, because everywhere we go, whether it be school, whether it's work, whether you're in the grocery store, a social conversation or a social interaction, one thing is guaranteed this time of year. One thing is guaranteed, that every single one of us in this room will be encountered with Merry Christmas. What are you guys doing for Christmas? Have you got your Christmas tree up yet? Do you decorate your house? And if you've got kids, some of the interactions, people will turn to your kids. What's Santa getting you for Christmas? So if there's one thing that's guaranteed during this period is we are all going to encounter this. Fact. Now, speaking for myself over here, I generally try and avoid these. My general approach and my general response to these is to politely brush them off.

Depending on the relationship that I have with people, I may take a slightly more direct approach, but that's my general approach, is to avoid it or to redirect it and just to politely avoid. And maybe the same is true for you. But is this the right approach? Is hunkering down and hoping just to fly under the radar? Is that the right approach? Or is there a better way? A more productive way?

You know, as we know, we are called to be light. And what if this season isn't something to survive but an opportunity in which we can shine that light? You know, we oftentimes, we see this time, this season, as a dark time spiritually.

And it is. You know, in terms of truth and doctrine and origins, it is a dark time.

But isn't darkness precisely the best environment in which light does its best work? Isn't the dark the best environment for a light to shine as a striking contrast around it? So instead of hunkering down, hoping no one asks us those questions, because that happens as well, so please don't say Merry Christmas to me, or please don't ask me what I'm doing, instead of just hunkering down, what if this season was an opportunity for us to be that light? To shine that light. And I'm not saying that we need to do this by standing on street corners and with our Bibles and, you know, Christmas is pagan flyers so everyone can see it, but by being honest and objective and ready as the opportunity presents itself to us naturally to respond. You know, we're told by Scripture in 1 Peter that we should always be ready to give a defense. We should always be ready to give an answer. And when you look at the context there, what we're told is that we should be ready not just to give a response which is Christmas is pagan, but we should be ready to give a thoughtful response, a useful response, a response that we've thought about that is productive. And of course we're to do it with gentleness and respect. And so this brings to the main point of this message, is to help us prepare a clear, reasonable, thoughtful, and productive response to what we believe in a season that's blinded and spiritually dark and as a way for us to shine God's great light and ultimately, and this is what it all comes down to, ultimately so that God's glorious light can be shone through us. And so what we're going to do today is we're going to... the sermon is going to be two sections. The first section is going to be a look at the history of Christmas, the origins of Christmas. And the second thing is going to be, well, so what? Why does this even matter? Okay, so let's dive into it. So section number one, the history of Christmas. So Christmas is pagan. Christmas is pagan. We know that. But when someone asks, why is it pagan? How deep can we go down that rabbit trail? How well can we answer that question? And I fully appreciate the fact that when someone asks, hey, why don't you celebrate Christmas? It's very tempting to immediately jump to that. Well, it's because it's pagan. But that's really productive. You know, generally speaking, that incites a form of attack on people. You know, most people around us, Christmas is a very important part of their culture, their family, their traditions, the season. And so what we don't want to do is we don't want to immediately jump into an attack, because generally speaking, the way the human mind works is when someone is attacked, there is generally two ways that people respond. And we all know this. Flight or fight. Most people opt for the flight response. They just build up a wall and they just shut a conversation down. But every now and again, people like to argue. And that's not an appropriate scenario to be in. So instead of going straight for the jugular with, well, Christmas is pagan, what if we were able to engage? What if we were able to discuss? What if we were able to objectively explain why we believed and what we believed? Beliefs such as the origins of Christmas, how it developed, why it developed, the significance or the symbolism behind the symbols that we see all over the place.

Santa Claus, the Christmas tree, the lights, even the date. And to do so in a non-emotional, intellectual way. That approach has the potential to be far more productive. That approach has the ability to turn a discussion into truly that, a discussion, and to incite curiosity and dialogue. Now, two quick disclaimers. First, we need to use wisdom in this. We must know when to directly engage versus when to politely brush it off. And there is a time for both. There is absolutely a time for both. So we do need to exercise some wisdom in that. Not everyone is interested in the origins of Christmas or Santa Claus. And that's fine.

Disclaimer number two is not everyone cares. How many times have we been in discussions with people where they're like, yeah, I get it, it's pagan, but I don't care. I'm gonna keep it anyway. And so we should have our expectations managed in a way where we understand that people knowingly understand that Christmas is pagan and they want to celebrate it anyway.

They're not gonna, we're not gonna have a conversation with most people and they're gonna run home and tear down their Christmas tree and rip the lights off of their house. Just setting expectations there. So we need to have those those two things in mind. But for the purpose of having an engaging, productive, curiosity-filled dialogue, we need to have at least a basic understanding of what we believe and why we believe it. So let's jump into the history of Christmas. Now what I want to do is I want to start right at the beginning with the actual birth of Jesus Christ.

And we're gonna first look at the ultimate source of truth, which is His Word, the Bible. The Bible does actually tell us a fair bit about His birth. It tells us where He was born, Jesus Christ. It tells us who was King. It tells us how He was conceived. And there are a number of other little nuggets of truth or objective fact that are left with us in the Bible. But the one thing that we do not have, the one thing we do not have is a date.

The Bible does not give us a date on which Jesus Christ was born. It just doesn't. Now while it's important to understand... so there is no specific date. Now we'll say this, that while it doesn't give us a date, it does give us some indications. You can kind of figure out more or less what season He was born in.

And so what we want to do is we want to look through that. Look at a few of these clues. In Luke 2 verse 8, and we should have all the Scriptures back here to help with this. So in Luke 2 verse 8, we are told that now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over the flock by night. So the first clue that we get here is that shepherds were living outside. They weren't hanging out outside.

They weren't just outside for a split second. They were living outside. Now again, mainstream Christianity teaches us that Christ was born on December 25th. December in that region in Bethlehem was winter. It was winter. It was highly unlikely at that time that the shepherds would be outside at all tending sheep, much less living outside. Now some would argue that, okay, well this is easy to explain because in that part of the world winter was actually pretty mild.

Right? It's not like, you know, in Montreal, Canada, or you know in Norway where you can't be outside in the winter because you'd freeze to death. But that's just biblically not accurate. If you look at Ezra 10 verse 9, Ezra 10 verse 9 says the following. So all the men of Judah and Benjamin gathered at Jerusalem within three days. It was the ninth month, and that's an important month, on the ninth month, on the twentieth of the month.

And all the people sat in the open square of the house of God trembling because of this matter and because of the heavy rain. So here they are. They're gathered outside and they're trembling. Now yes, they're 100% trembling as well because of the magnitude of the situation. They're before God. So they're trembling in fear, but they're also trembling because of the heavy rain. Verse 13 tells us, but there are many people. It is the season for heavy rain, and we are not able to stand outside. So this is the ninth month, and what it already teaches us is that winter is cold and wet, and you can't even stand outside. Just one interesting fact.

The ninth month here is the Hebrew month of Kislev. When you look at how, when you translate the Hebrew month of Kislev, you land precisely in the late November, late December period. So this places the ninth month precisely where people say Jesus Christ would have been born, and these would have been miserable conditions. Jeremiah 36 verse 22 adds to this. Now the king was sitting in the winter house in the ninth month.

See here again we have a reference to the ninth month with a burning fire on the earth before him. So again, we can tell here that the Bible gives us these little nuggets here and there to teach us that that period of time is actually really cold, really wet, miserable to be outside, so much so that people were trembling and the king was sitting in front of a fire. So while not conclusive, what we can say here is that it's highly unlikely that the shepherds would have been living outside in the ninth month, in the November-December period. The second thing that we need to look at we learn about in Luke 2 verse 1-7, and that is that there was a census in Rome at the time. And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be registered. Verse 3, so all went to be registered. Everyone in his own city, Joseph, also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. So the whole reason why Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem in the first place is because of the census. Now why is this important? Because this further points to a mild season. Rome would have not asked enormous amount, or requested enormous amount of travel for the whole world, or the whole empire, to travel back to their lands in a season that was known to be cold and wet. It would have much, much more likely been in a mild season. So that's the weather. The third thing that we can look at is the priest rotations. Now this to me is probably the most convincing argument. In 1 Chronicles 24, we are told that King David, with the priests, he organized the sons of Aaron, so the priestly line, into 24 divisions.

So essentially what he did is he created a schedule. He said, all right, there's 24 of you. What I'm going to do is I'm going to create 24 divisions. And basically what he said is each household was going to be anchored into a specific division. So it was a household like the campus would be a household, or McDonald would be a household, or Hoosa, or Damore, or Sweat. These would all be households of the priests. And each year, each household would be assigned a weak rotation, and then after the 24 would expire, they would just restart the rotation. And 1 Chronicles 24 actually goes to extreme depth to explain, you know, which priest was going to start in which month, and so on and so forth. So we have this schedule laid out for us in the book of 1 Chronicles. The one caveat to that would be on the Holy Days, the festive seasons, all priests would serve together. So when you take out the 24 rotations, when you take the 24 rotations, multiply it by 2, you get to 48, and then you have the remainder of that was served for the festival periods where all priests would be. Luke 1, verse 5 to 9, tells us the following. There was, in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias. Zacharias, he was of the division or the household of Abijah. So, of course, Zacharias was John the Baptist's dad. So Gabriel appears to Zacharias while he is serving in the temple. So he is performing one of his duties, one of his rotational priest duties at the time. And shortly after that, Elizabeth conceives John. We then know from the scripture, Luke 1 tells us this, chapter 26, that six months later, Gabriel appears to Mary and tells Mary, you are now going to conceive a child. And, of course, Mary conceives Jesus. So, what this all means, if you take into account the 24 priestly rotations, if you convert the Hebrew calendar to the Gregorian calendar, which is the one we use today, if you then walk through the timing, so you take Zacharias service, right, then you get to, you know, John's, that's how you get to John's conception.

You add six months for Jesus's conception and then nine months for both. If you do all those things, you basically land with two scenarios. Again, there would have been two priestly rotations. So, the question is, well, which rotation would Zacharias have been part of?

So, you've got to look at both. If Gabriel appeared during Zacharias's first service of the year, first service, Jesus's birth would fall in the autumn, in the autumn. If Gabriel appeared during his second service, Jesus's birth would have been in the late winter or early spring.

Now, when you combine all of this together, you take into consideration the census, you're taking into consideration the weather, you're taking into consideration the rotation.

What we don't have, it's much more likely that it was his first service, his first service. So, what we don't have an exact day, we don't have any of those specifics, if we put this all together, they point strongly to the conclusion that Christ's birth was most likely in the fall.

Malda season, which would have made travel much better and a few other things, and not in the middle of winter. So, you can start just by looking at the Bible, and you can actually get to some pretty interesting evidence of a season in which Christ was born. So, how did Christmas come to be?

How did Christmas come to be? You know, in the early church, and I'm talking about first century church over here, all the way up into almost the third century, Christ's birth was never celebrated.

There is just no evidence of the early church or of early Christians celebrating his birth at all.

They definitely celebrated or memorialized his death, do this in remembrance of me, and we do that today with the Passover and the symbols of the bread and the wine.

But this is what the church would have done. This is what Christians, early Christians, would have done, because this is what the instruction was. So, we have no record of an annual festival celebrating his birth. But more important than that, maybe, is that early Christians, there are writings and there is evidence that suggests that early Christians looked at birthdays with a general disdain. They saw birthdays as something that pagans celebrated. And so, that's very, very interesting. This was the case for about 300 years after the death of Jesus Christ. From his death all the way to the third century, they just didn't celebrate his birth. So, what changed? What changed in the third century?

That would then bring about what we see today. And to answer that question, we need to look at what was happening in third century Rome. What was happening in those days that would have been the catalyst for change in these ways? Now, the first thing we look at is the December time frame in Rome was a highly festive period. It was highly festive. It would have been unavoidable if you traveled from anywhere in the world to Rome in December. It would have been in your face. It would have been like a carnival, Mardi Gras, party-type atmosphere. And it was all centered around three main festivals. And we're going to look at those three main festivals. The first festival was a festival called Saturnalia. Saturnalia. And in the early Roman calendar, Saturnalia was a celebration that was done in, again, in the midwinter. And it was in honor of the god Saturn. And it occurred during December 23rd to, sorry, December 17th all the way to December 23rd. Some of the main themes or the main tenets of Saturnalia were feasting, heavy drinking, wine would have flowed freely. It would have been gift-giving. People would exchange gifts, mostly candles, figurines, toys, sweets, those kinds of things. There would have been candles and lights everywhere. You would have seen candles in windows, in homes, on the streets.

Candles and lights would be everywhere. And they were used symbolizing the return of light after darkness. We'll talk more about that. The next thing that you would have seen all over the place is greenery and decorations. People would cut down greenery. They would adorn themselves in it. They would decorate the streets with it. They would decorate their homes with it.

And this would represent, you know, representing life after death and the rebirth of nature. Again, if you look at this, this is all around the season. It's all around the death of the sun, getting to the coldest part of the winter, and then the sun returning. Of particular importance to the Romans at that time was Holley. We see this all over the place. Holley was considered as a sacred plant, sacred to the god Saturn. And people would decorate their homes as a way to appease Saturn, with Holley specifically, as a way to try and incite good fortune and to impress Saturn.

And the last thing that you would see a lot during this time was a moral loosening, particularly sexually. You know, you would have drinking and relaxed rules, and when you have drinking and relaxed rules, in those times it was known as the season of license. You can do whatever you want.

Because it's the feast of Saturnalia, do whatever you want. And so when you combine drinking with that and relaxed rules, sexual morals would loosen as well. And so you have a culture that in Rome in the third century that was already very comfortable with things like prostitution and casual immorality. Now all of a sudden you're given a license to be more so.

This gave rise to an incredibly festive and debaucherous type atmosphere. So this was Saturnalia. The second thing that they were celebrating in those times was the celebration of the birthday of Sol Invictus. So Sol Invictus was the official sun god of the Roman Empire, and he represented victory, strength, and the light that never fades. And essentially what Sol Invictus means is the unconquered sun. The unconquered sun. Emperor Aurelian ruled in Rome AD 270, so roughly in the late third century, and he ruled a couple of different things. Number one, the first thing he did was he established Sol Invictus as the chief god of the Roman Empire.

Remember they had many gods in those days, but now all of a sudden Sol Invictus was made the god, chief god, god number one. The second thing that he did is he established December 25th as Sol Invictus's birthday. So this is the first time we see this date really come to prominence. December 25th is the birthday of the unconquered sun. Now why December 25th?

So on the Roman calendar this date falls just outside the winter solstice. Again, where the days of the shortest, that's roughly December 21st to December 23rd, and from this point forward it begins to grow long again, and the sun's strength is now seen as being reborn. Again, the sun is returning, reborn. And so what they did, the empire marked this day to celebrate that return of light and to honor the sun. In plain English, this is sun worship. It's nothing but the worship of the sun on December 25th. That's what this is.

And this additional ritual only intensified the existing practices and customs that were already occurring as a result of satanalia. So there was more feasting, and there was more revelry, and there was more debauchery, and there was more indulgence, and it just became more and more heightened. But the one thing that really took on a more significant role in this period was lights. Candles and lights. Why? Because that's the closest thing that they had to the sun. The sun is all about light. And so the way that they were honor the sun god and celebrate the sun god was by erecting symbols of lights and candles everywhere to celebrate the unconquered sun.

The third thing that you had in those days was called the Calens of January.

And the Calens of January was essentially January 1st that marked the new year. It was closely associated with the god Janus. Janus was said to have two faces, one looking backwards and one looking forward. And so it was his birthday on January 1st, and he was essentially the gatekeeper between the old year and the new year. And what people did in those days is they celebrated his birthday on January 21st. They offered sacrifices. They gave each other gifts and it just again intensified the celebratory atmosphere of the time. So when you take this together, you have Saturnalia, you have Sol Invictus, and we have the Calens of January.

When you take these together, what you have is you have one long winter festival from December 17 all the way to January 1st. And what this was was this was, of course, the highlight there was December 25th, which was the birthday of their chief guard. But essentially what you have is you just have this long period of time in the midwinter, in the darkest days of midwinter, where it was a huge party, huge carnival, with feasting and again, loosen morals and gift-giving, etc. And this was the environment that an early Christian would have had to endure.

Now, of course, true Christians at that time would have never participated in these practices.

These were blatantly pagan, blatantly. And so this is one of the reasons why Christians were prosecuted and ostracized, was because they would refuse to partake in these things.

They would, in some cases, even speak out against them. And so this is why Christians were persecuted, but they would have never celebrated these things. So this is the environment that you had in December, going into the 4th century. As you move into the 4th century, everything begins to shift. Everything begins to shift. The first thing that happens is Christianity continues to grow. Christianity grew rapidly and quickly. And more and more people are turning from paganism and embracing Christianity. And this actually creates a tension inside of the Roman world. Some key developments of that period. Number one, you had the Edict of Milan, and this was issued by Constantine.

And this was huge for Christianity, because essentially what he did is he, for the first time, he granted religious toleration to Christianity. In other words, he legalized Christianity. It had been considered an illegal cult prior to that. And Constantine was actually very favorable of Christianity. So not only did he legalize it, but the other thing that he did is he showed favor to it. He favored it. The next thing you have there, just a little bit over a decade later, is you have the Council of Nicaea. And this is only important because at the time, this is where they affirm Christ's divinity. And essentially, that's what led to them proclaiming that Christ and the Godhead was a Trinity. So that happened in AD of 325.

So by the mid-4th century, you now have a Roman church, an established Roman church, that is legal, that is growing, but is also becoming much more influential. Christians are no longer seen as a cult. They're no longer seen as some backward religion. Instead, you now have Christians for the first time that hold public office. They're government officials. They have civic authority.

They grew in social standing and social influence. And at the same time, you still have large parts of the Roman Empire that were thoroughly pagan. And so what you have is, you now have a scenario where the Roman church decided that they were going to begin a slow, intentional process of reshaping the religious calendar.

The first evidence that we have that December 25th was Christmas actually comes from a document called the Chronograph of 354. Essentially, back in those days, they didn't have yearbooks or almanacs. And so what you would have is you would have someone, if you were a wealthy person, you would have someone draw up one of these chronographs.

And the chronograph would include dates and times and seasons and festivals, and who was the emperor of this and who was holding this civic authority or responsibility. And in that document, that is the oldest document that we have, surviving document, in that document there was a section from AD 336, 336, and it read on the eighth day before the Calens of January. So on the eighth day before January 1st, Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea. And that date, of course, is December 25th.

So by AD 336, that's the earliest evidence that we have that people were celebrating Christmas at that time. Now why did they decide just to take that date and stick Christ's birthday on it?

Why not come up with a new date? Why not do calculations and things of that nature and try and come up with a new date? There's a number of different theories about this. I won't bore you with all of them, but the most predominant or the most accepted theory is what they call the substitution theory. And essentially what this says is the church didn't create a brand new festival.

Instead, what they did is they basically just took the meaning and the date of Christ, and they just slapped it on top of an already sacred date. And that date was December 25th. And the reason they did that, or the reason they would have done that, was because December 25th in the Roman world would have already carried enormous, enormous significance for everyone. It was celebrated as the birthday of the sun, the unconquered sun. It symbolized light and rebirth. It held a central place in the Roman festival calendar, and it was loved. December 25th was loved by the Romans. In other words, you already have this cultural groundwork that was in place. And at the same time, Christians were already associating Jesus Christ with this same kind of imagery. You know, you have scriptures like Malachi 4, where it talks about the sun, S-U-N, capitalized, of righteousness, will return with healing in his wings. Isaiah 9, a light has shone in the darkness. John 8, Jesus himself, calls himself the light of the world. So by the time you get to the third and fourth centuries, these themes were already deeply woven into Christian preaching. So the overlap was natural.

The symbolism was already very, very familiar for people. And so what they did, they simply replaced or substituted the birthday of the unconquered sun, S-U-N, with the birthday of the conquering sun, S-O-N. See, the church knew full well that the people of the empire again loved this festival, loved this festival. The feasting, the lights, the greenery, the celebrations, these were all just held up and adored by the people. So these customs were not simply religious. They were deeply woven into the family life, the traditions, and the social identity of people from Rome in those days. And the church knew. They knew if they simply just tried to abolish these things, there would have been an uprising. They couldn't just point at December 25th and say, oh, that's a pagan day. People would would uprise against them. There'd be resistance and division and backlash, even among new Christian converts. And so instead, by substituting the meaning of the day, they knew that they could slowly absorb paganism in. They could redirect people away from paganism. They could preserve all the lovely, beautiful traditions that the people loved, and they could hopefully bring unity across a Christianizing empire. So this is why people believe that this is the most logical approach, or the most logical reason. By the time that we reach the fourth century, Christians now were celebrating en masse December 25th as the birthday as Christ. Christians and pagans are now celebrating side by side. So now you start having pagans that start celebrating Christmas as well. And if they're not celebrating Christmas, they're celebrating the birthday of Saul and Victus. And many customs remained, even though their meanings differed.

But that balance changes significantly in 380. And there was what is called the Edict of Thessalonica that the emperor at the time declared Nicene Christianity the official religion. And that's super important for us, because the Nicene Christianity comes all the way from, remember the Council of Nicaea in 325, where they said the godhead, the nature of Christ, is a Trinity.

So what they did over here is they declared that version of Christianity as the official religion of Rome, of the entire empire. And what they also did on top of that is they said all other forms of Christianity are heresy. And that would have included the true church. So now here, for the first time in the fourth century, you have a form of Christianity, a pagan form of Christianity, that is now seen as the official religion. And you have the true church now considered as heresy. And this also, the last thing that they did during that time, is they eventually they outlawed and they banned pagan cults and sacrifices as well. So this is a very important date. It's a very important edict. So within a single generation, you now have pagan customs and pagan worship that collapses. But you also have at the same time this rise of Christianity and Christian meaning and significance and holidays now fill the calendar as a vacuum.

But the pagan customs, the greenery, the lights, the feasting, the revelry, the gift-giving, the decorations, they never changed. They never changed. They kept that in place.

All that they did is they slapped the name of Christ on it, and that's how they moved forward.

The empire simply carried its old winter traditions forward just now with Christian names, Christian meaning, Christian symbolism, and other things. So this is what Rome would have looked like by the beginning of the fifth century, again 400 years after Christ's death.

Over the next four centuries, Christianity continues to spread. It spreads quickly from here. It goes everywhere, and everywhere it goes, everywhere Christianity would go, I'm going to call it pagan Christianity, it would encounter the exact same themes, particularly in the northern hemisphere. It would encounter these very, very powerful Midwestern festivals with different names, different gods, but at the end of the day, the central themes of these holidays or these festivals, everywhere you went in the northern hemisphere would be the same. Carnival-like celebrations focused on the winter solstice, the return of the sun, the worship of the cycle of rebirth, fertility, and death, and it would always be accompanied by feasting, drinking, and evergreens. And these festivals formed the emotional and spiritual centerpiece of all of these regions. And as Christianity came into these regions, the same pattern repeated again and again. Instead of speaking out against these practices, instead of abolishing these practices, the Roman Church adopted them.

They adopted the practices, they slapped the name of Jesus Christ on it, they gave it Christian meanings and Christian names, and they just repurposed them over and over again. Every time they expanded into a new region, new layers of pagan customs and pagan symbols and pagan traditions and pagan customs would just get swallowed up and adopted by the Roman Church.

You know, by the time we get into Egypt in the second century, it came up against the popular festival honoring the god Aion. Aion is believed to be the god of eternal time, of cycle of ages and life and rebirth again. All the same stuff. The difference was that it was said that his birthday was January 6th. And so what the church did is they said, okay, well, instead of abolishing all these festivals and sort of getting rid of it, we're just going to absorb the date and we'll give it some other kind of significance. And so they figured out that they were going to make January 6th the day in which Christ was manifest to the world. And they put special emphasis on his baptism. And so what they called that day is something we know it as today, which is epiphany. So what you essentially have is you have December 25th, which is the day of Christmas, and then you have January 6th, which is now epiphany. They've slapped Christian names and Christian meanings on these things. And guess how many days you have precisely between December 25th and January 6th? 12th. This is the origin of the 12 days of Christmas.

Soon after that, Christianity would continue its march into Northern Europe and into the Scandinavian and the Celtic regions. This is where it would absorb some of the most powerful symbols and customs that we see everywhere today. From the Celtic region, they got the mistletoe. This is one of their most sacred plants. It symbolized fertility, vitality, and sexual potency. They would use it in rituals and potions. They saw it as an aphrodisiac, and it carried a reputation for having love or erotic power. So, all based in sexual deviance. We know it today as a sweet holiday moment. Find the person you love under a mistletoe, give them a kiss. But its roots are far more devious than that. Far more devious. The next thing that as Christianity moves north into the Germanic and the Scandinavian world, it collides then with one of the most powerful winter festivals that existed. And that was known as Yule or Yule Tide. And again, Yule Tide was a massive midwinter celebration. It also went on for about 12 nights, give or take, and it was observed across the entire northern world and many of the same customs. Sun worship, feasting, and indulgence.

It's really hard to overstate the significance and the impact that this traditional, this festival has on modern day Christmas. It has enormous significance. During Yule, people would honor the god Odin. And Odin was known as their chief god. He was also known as the Yule father or the all father. He was worshipped as the creator. He was portrayed as a cloaked bearded man with a white beard. And he was the master of sorcery and prophecy and he did shape-shifting and all sorts of other things. And here we have a god and a religion that was deeply, deeply steeped in mythology.

Deeply steeped. One thing that would happen during Yule tide was what they called Odin's ride.

And Odin's ride was down on the darkest day of the year, so you know around the December 25th period as well. And it was believed during that ride that Odin would ride through the midnight sky leading a wild hunt. And in this procession there would be demons and elves and wolves and all sorts of crazy things in tow. And he did so riding his horse named Slepner. Slepner was an eight-legged horse and children would leave food for Slepner. What they would do is they would leave their boots, they would take their boots and they would put food, you know, either grass or apples or fruits or things like that, and they would leave their boots by the fireplace, by the hearth. And Slepner or Odin in response, after they ate the food, would leave candy or treats for the kids.

I think it's easy to see, clear to see, how this translates into modern-day Christmas.

Your father, flying across the sky, became Father Christmas. Instead of riding his eight-legged horse, he was now, he's now, he's pulled by a sleigh with a reindeer. For those of you keeping count, Rudolph was added later as the ninth. That was an American thing. And Christmas stockings.

Christmas stockings. This is how Christmas stockings came about. This is also where the custom of leaving cookies for Santa came about. And there are many other Christmas traditions that came out of Yule as well. We have the evergreen trees. They were decorated with small carvings of their little gods, and with food, and with nuts, and berries. And this is all done to try and entice benevolent tree spirits to bring blessings and good luck. And this is the root of of our modern-day Christmas tree. The other thing that Yule had was elves or spirits. They were known as Norse elves. And these little spirits symbolized fertility and light. And these were later softened into Santa's elves. You have other things that came out of Yule as well. You had the boar, you had the log, etc. Those are more customs in Europe. But just like they did in Rome, the Roman Church encountered all of these customs, all of these traditions, all of these symbols, and rituals, and instead of abolishing them or ostracizing them, they absorbed them.

They just slapped on new names and new meanings, and they called them Christian.

It's easy to see the incredible, significant influence that these customs had or have on modern-day Christmas. And for most of its early history, I'll go back here for a second. So for more than a thousand years, Christmas didn't really expand, or Christianity didn't expand too far. It started moving pretty slowly. But about a thousand years after Yule was absorbed, Christmas then slowly started to spread through Europe. But it was nothing like the holiday that we see today. Christmas was, for the most part, still considered to be rowdy and disorderly, a festival of drunkenness and morals. It wasn't a family tradition or a family custom at all. But again, it more resembled more of a Mardi Gras than anything else. But that changed in the 1800s. In the 1800s, it changed quickly as it started making its way into Britain.

And there was a novel written by Charles Dickens in 1843, and the novel was entitled A Christmas Carol.

This writing, this publication revolutionized how people celebrated Christmas.

Christmas was recast through this novel as being a season of warmth, a season of charity, a season of compassion and empathy, a season or a festival of children.

You know, prior to that, Christian was very biased towards the wealthy because you would have these big feasts. And so what you would have is you would have the wealthy that would have these enormous feasts, and there'd be wine, and there'd be ham, or there'd be all this different food.

But at the same time, the poor was going hungry. And so there was a lot of tension at that time.

But what Dickens does with his novel is he bridges that gap. And now he places more emphasis on the charity part and the giving and inclusion. And so it's from that point forward that people see Christmas as a time of giving to the poor, to the downtrodden, to focus on children, to focus on family. You know, the book was an absolute phenomenon. It spread rapidly through the British Empire and the whole English-speaking world at the time, and essentially gave Christmas this new emotional family-centered framework. Many people refer to Dickens as the man who reinvented Christmas. A second defining moment came from the British royal family itself.

You know, you had Queen Victoria, who was British, married Prince Albert. Prince Albert was a German prince. And Prince Albert brought with him, when he moved into Buckingham Palace, he brought with him all these Germanic festivals, the ones we spoke about in Scandinavia and Yule. He brings all these things with him. And he brought Father Christmas, he brought the elves, he brought ham, and the Christmas tree. You know, at that time, Christmas trees were not something that people did at all. They were generally something you had outside, and maybe you decorated one, maybe you didn't. But in 1848, the London News published that exact illustration. And that illustration showed the whole royal family gathered warmly and festively around a beautifully decorated Christmas tree. And you can see the delight in the kids. And this went viral, quickly, spread across the English-speaking world. It instantly captured public imagination. It changed people's interpretation of the tree. It became now a family-centric celebration, featuring children.

It was warm, it was domestic, it was intimate, very different from the public revelry of before.

And so from that moment forward, people started bringing their Christmas trees in to their homes. And of course, that spread very quickly across Britain and the rest of the United States. The Victorian age gave rise to many, many other traditions that we have today. Of course, you have Christmas cards, carols, department stores for the first time, started commercializing Christmas, etc., etc. That was all due to the Victorian era. By the time we had, at that point, all we had had was the cover of 2,000 years of pagan practices now from different cultures and different regions, different religions, different people, all kind of mingled and woven into what we now call Christmas. After that, very quickly, the commercialization happened in America.

This was in the 1900s, and the United States economic machine just kicked into high gear.

And the United States do many things very well. One thing they do very, very well is commercialization.

And they just adopted this practice, and they figured out a way that you can make enormous amounts of money by commercializing things. And they made it a very significant gift-giving culture. They focused it intently on children, and it just became an absolute economic machine into what it is today. So, in summary, when you look back, honestly, at the historical evidence, a striking picture emerges. The only connection to Christ, or to Christmas, that Christ has is the name. Nothing else. Not the date. Not the symbols. Not the behaviors.

Not the practices. Nothing. Nothing. All of these, without fail, have their roots in ancient pagan practices. Not the worship of Jesus Christ. So what? So why does this matter?

I think you probably know people. I know people. I've had conversations with people where the conversation goes like this. Christmas is pagan. Yeah, I know it's pagan, but so what? I mean, I do it for my kids, and you know, it's a great family tradition, and my heart is in the right place. I do it for Jesus. I do it for Jesus. God knows my heart. Isn't that what matters?

It's a fair question, but we need to ask a much, much more important question.

How does God see this? How does God see this? Does he care? Does he care how we worship him?

Even if we mean well. You know, I'm going to look at Exodus 32 here in a second, and Exodus 32 is a captivating piece of scripture. The Israelites had just had a front-row seat to the awesome power of God. To the awesome power of God. Think about it. They just witnessed the ten plagues. They had just witnessed God systematically demonstrate that he was the one and only true God of the universe. Those ten plagues were designed to tear down and to judge all the symbols and all the little g-gods that Egypt had for centuries-long worshiped and held high. And God just destroys them. And the Israelites had a front-row seat to that.

They had just witnessed the parting of the Red Sea.

An incredible show of might that symbolized, if there was an event that symbolized deliverance and being saved, that would have been that Red Sea open.

And here we are, just three months after that, give or take. The children of Israel are in the desert. We know the story. Moses went up to Mount Sinai. He went up there for about 40 days.

And the children of Israel are now getting restless, getting antsy. And so we're going to break into that story now, verse 1. Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron and they said, Come, make us gods that shall go before us. For as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. And Aaron said to them, Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives and your sons and your daughters and bring them to me. And he received the gold from their hand and he fashioned it with an engraving tool and made a molded carve.

This was not by accident. This was not by accident. Aaron didn't make a carve because he thought it was a cute, cuddly farm animal. In Egypt, the bull and the cow were linked to some powerful gods.

And across the land, both Egypt and Canaan, the bull or the carved image spoke of strength, fertility, royal power and divine presence. So when he shaped the carve, again, he wasn't just making some cute, you know, cuddly farm animal. Essentially what they were doing was crafting a well-known religious pagan symbol. The kind of image that they would have seen all over Egypt.

They would have seen calves and cows and bulls as idols all over Egypt.

Again, this is one of the plagues. Livestock was one of the plagues because this was a common little gee god in Egypt at the time. Then they said, this is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt. So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, tomorrow is a feast to the Lord. Then they rose early the next day, offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings, and the people sat down to eat and to drink and rose up to play. To play. That word means to laugh, to mock, to joke, to feast, to make sport.

Notice what they did here. Do you notice what they did? They took pagan symbols, they took pagan customs, and they slapped God's name on top of it. Look at what Aaron says. He doesn't say, tomorrow we're going to have a feast to Baal. He says, tomorrow we're going to have a feast to Yahweh, the Lord. And he says, this is your god, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. In other words, this is your savior. This is the god that saved you. And they did all of this while they had a big, reverent, debaucherous party. Drinking and playing and laughing and dancing and joking. Do you notice the parallel between this and Christmas? They take pagan symbols and pagan customs and pagan rituals. They slap the name of Jesus Christ on it, and they say, this is your savior. This is who has delivered you. And they do so while they have a big party. This is the exact, exact same pattern. People have been doing this for thousands of years. They did it in the desert. They did it in Rome. They did it in Scandinavia. They did it in Europe. And now they do this today in the Western world and other parts of the planet. It is nothing but rebranded worship. It is exactly the same. But what's most important about this is how God responds. Verse 7, and the Lord says to Moses, Go, get down for your people who you have brought out from the land of Egypt, I think that's hilarious, have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I've commanded them. They have made themselves a molded car and worshipped it and sacrificed to it and said, this is your God, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt. What an insult! What an absolute insult!

Now therefore, let me alone that my wrath may burn hearts against them, and I may consume them, and I will make you a great nation. Maybe their intentions were good.

Maybe their heart was in the right place, but God wanted to destroy them.

He wanted to wipe them off of the map.

And we know Moses pleads with him. So God, please, you know, any reasons with him. And God relents.

Verse 19, and so it was, as soon as he came near the camp that he saw the car and the dancing.

So Moses comes down from Mount Sinai and he sees this party going on.

And his anger becomes hot. And he cast the tablets out of his hand and broke them at the foot of the mountain.

He took the car which they had made, and he burned it with fire. He grounded to powder.

He scattered it on water, and he made the children drink it.

And there's all sorts of symbolism into why he did this. Essentially, he's showing that this thing that you created is nothing. It can get burnt. It can be scattered, and it's going to make you bitter.

And Moses said to Aaron, what did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them? So great a sin. And he said to him, verse 27, Moses said to them, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, let every man put his sword on his side, and go in and out from the entrance to entrance through the camp, and let every man kill his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor. So the sons of Levite did, according to the word of Moses, and about three thousand men of the people fell that day.

This was a slaughter. A slaughter. Verse 34, now therefore go, this is the concluding part of the chapter, go, lead the people to the place which I've spoken to you, and behold my angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit for punishment, I will visit for punishment upon them for their sins. So the Lord plagued the people because of what they did with the carve which Aaron had made. Whoa! That seems extreme. They were well-intended. Their hearts were in the right place. They were doing all these things in the name of God.

So why was this such a grievous sin to God? Is it because he is just a stickler for ceremony?

Is it because maybe he's petty or insecure or has a fragile ego that he insists, you must worship me in this way and nothing else? Is that why he does it? Or could it be something else? Could it be something deeper? You know, there is actually something so much more profound in play over here. This isn't just about a ritual or a wrong ritual. It's about what worship does to us. Psalm 135 says this, the angels of the nations are silver, sorry, the idols of the nations are silver and gold. They work with men's hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak.

Eyes they have, but they do not see. They have ears, but they do not hear. Nor is there any breath in their mouths. Those who make them are like them. So is everyone who trusts in them. Idols are blind, deaf, dumb, and lifeless. And God tells us that those who make them and those who trust them become like them. Here's the principle. If we take nothing away from today, here's the principle.

What we worship is what we become. What we worship is what we become. Now worship can take many forms, right? It doesn't just mean physically getting down on your knees and bowing down to something.

Worship can be the things that we love, the things we desire, the things we pursue, the things we seek after, the things that we focus on, the things that we serve. If we worship pleasure or materialism or power, that's what the kind of people will become. Indulgent, materialistic, and prideful. Our hearts slowly take on the shape of that which we worship.

That's why God takes this so seriously. Because worship isn't just about what He gets from us, it's about what happens to us. When we consider the customs, the symbols, and the rituals of Christmas, none of them, none of them, not one, teach us anything about Christ. No matter how sincere people may be, they don't teach us about His love, His sacrifice, His plan, His way, nothing.

When we truly think about them, these symbols, what do they teach us? Indulgence, materialism, fantasy, greed, and deceit. People literally lie to their kids about a fat bearded man that flies through the sky. If we use these symbols as our worship, this is what we become.

Regardless of how well-intended we may be.

Conversely, what is true worship teaches? God gives us symbols. He gives us rituals. He gives us customs which we are commanded to observe. They have beautiful, rich, deep, profound symbolism.

But without fail, every single one of them point us directly to Him. Every single one of them, from the biggest ones, the Sabbath, the Holy Days, His Word, water, all the way down to the minute details, the small ones, the candles in the tabernacle, the materials that the tabernacle was fashioned out of, every single one of these things point to Him. They teach us about His way, about His plan, about His character, about His sacrifice, about His love.

This is why. This is why He insists. This is why He demands that we worship Him in this way.

Because it points to Him. And because ultimately what we worship is what we become.

This is His whole plan for mankind. This is what He desires. He wants us, He wants everyone to be like Him. 2 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 18 tells us this, that we all with unveiled face, again a reference to Moses, beholding as in the mirror the glory of God are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory just as by the Spirit of God.

God is the creator of the universe. He could tell us to worship Him however way He wants.

He's God. And He is worthy. He is so worthy of our worship. But He wants us to do it in the right way.

When we understand why He's so prescriptive about it, we quickly see that it is as much for our benefit as it is for Him or for His. He wants us to be like Him. But this doesn't just happen by accident. This is a process. It takes incredible intentionality. And so He has equipped us with everything that we need to be successful. Life, Savior, His Spirit, His Word. And laid on top of all of that is a method of worship. And again, His method gives us the customs and the rituals and the symbols. They're all there. And in most cases, they give us profound joy. But at the end of the day, they all exist for a single reason. And that is to teach us about Him so that we can become like Him. An image of Himself. Children of God. So while Christmas may be considered the most wonderful time of the year, with beautiful lights and trees and decorations and flying reindeer, those things don't teach us anything about God. They are all nothing but a satanic decoy designed to separate us, to pull us away from God.

And God hates it. He hates it. He makes this very clear. He gives us a method of worship, a framework of worship, one that is so rich in symbolism, that we can't just do it.

He gives us a method of worship, a framework of worship, one that is so rich in symbolism, and ultimately ends with us standing before Him in His image as His children.

What a beautiful purpose He has. Until then, as God's true church, we have a job to do.

In the dark world around us, particularly in this season, our job is to shine a light, to stand ready to give a defense, to stand ready to defend His truth, to stand ready to explain why we don't believe things that we believe, or we don't believe. Stand ready to defend His glorious light, and to do so with gentleness and respect. Not for our sake, but so that people might look upon us and glorify, ultimately, His great Name.