You’re my representative. I live in Bellevue in the Post Ridge apartment complex. So I hope that you will take what I say to heart.
I find myself extremely embarrassed by your recent actions concerning the holiday of Christmas. Can you be that uninformed as to the origins of Christmas?
I enjoin you, as a Bible-believing Baptist, to produce any Scriptural requirement for the celebration of Jesus’ birth. Where in the Bible is there any mention of such a ceremony celebrated by the first-century church? It isn’t there. They didn’t do it. It is nowhere on the lists of feasts of church fathers, for centuries.
It was only in the fourth century that Christian officials began celebrating the birth of Christ as a religious holiday. (Only then did they have any kind of political authority to do such a thing.) They chose to co-opt the birthday of Mithra, a celebration long observed in the Roman world. It occurred on December 25th. This date also allowed them to redirect the emotions of the Saturnalia festival into the birth festival of Christ. Because of this, many of the traditions of these other holidays attached themselves to Christmas.
Before then, the birth of Jesus was commonly held to be January 6th, the date also believed to be that of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist. There were many heated debates about moving it, but finally a compromise was reached. You may have heard of it: the Twelve Days of Christmas. Count them. The 25th to the 5th are twelve days, culminating in Epiphany.
This isn’t something I expect you to be familiar with. Your Metro page identifies you as a Baptist, and like my native Church of Christ, you don’t follow the traditional church calendar. This is because your recent religious ancestors, as mine, viewed any such thing as an innovation of the Roman Catholic Church, as it most certainly was. Luckily, today, we both know that there’s nothing wrong with being a Catholic, or even celebrating the birth of Christ however we see fit. But should we lash out in ignorance at our enemies, either religiously or politically?
Ask yourself: what in the world does a decorated tree have to do with Christ’s birth? Did they even have pine trees in Palestine? This is a holdover from a pagan ceremony, Mr. Crafton, where a phallic idol was raised, decorated, and worshipped. The evergreen tree became an obvious symbol of fertility, and thus became a great phallic substitute. That’s what you have in your home right now, Mr. Crafton: a pagan phallic symbol promising the incredible bounteous gifts of crop fertility soon to be enjoyed once again now that the winter solstice is passed and the days are growing longer. It was knowledge like this that led the early Pilgrims to ban the celebration of Christmas. They felt the revelry (inherited from the Saturnalia) interfered with any true religious devotion, and since they could not determine the date of Jesus’ birth from the Bible, they banned and fined any public celebration.
Might I direct your attention to a final passage of Scripture?
“Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
If standing up in the middle of a town council meeting and proclaiming a defense of the completely-not-under-attack holiday of Christmas isn’t what Jesus is talking about here, then the Bible doesn’t mean anything. You may yet reap the reward of further political gain in your posturing, but the Father who sees in secret won’t feel the need to further your reward in the afterlife.
Merry Christmas,
Joseph Nobles
Bellevue AL
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