SELaplana >> Religion, Society >> Reasons Why I Don’t Celebrate Christmas

Out of the thousands of subscribers of this blog, 6 of you were wondering why I don’t celebrate Christmas. Maybe you read my comments posted on this blog.

I know that you knew that Christmas is not a political celebration but a religious one. So, those who are Catholics and Protestants celebrate it. But Muslims and members of other religion, on the other hand, do not celebrate Christmas.

But you might be wondering why a Christian like me do not celebrate Christmas when in fact Christmas is the celebration of the birthday of Christ.

To let you know, I don’t want to talk about religion. I was blogging on this before but the result is not good or advantageous. But since you asked this to me, so I am forced to answer: why I don’t celebrate Christmas?

Christmas is just the invention of the Roman Catholic Church

When I was still a Catholic, December 16 to December 25 were few of my busiest days of the year. To let you know, I grew up serving the San Agustin Parish (Diocese of Surigao del Sur) as Sacristan. When I was 9 years old I became an Altar Boy (that was when Rev. Valentine Kind was our Parish Priest), and was promoted to Sacristan Mayor at the age of 14 (Rev. Peter O’niell was our Parish Priest at that time).

I found the celebration good and enjoyable. But I realized that the celebration is the teaching neither of Christ nor the Apostle but just an invention of the Roman Catholic Church. If you’ll dig up the Bible, you will never find any teaching that tells everyone to celebrate the birthday of Christ. What was taught by Christ is the commemoration of His death (not His birthday).

December 25 is not Christ’s Birthday

If you are reading the Bible, have you read verses that tell us the birthday (date) of Christ? Because what I found when in the Bible is just clues when Christ was born not the exact date. For example…

• The birth of Christ was happened when Christ’s parents went to Bethlehem to register themselves as told by a decree of Caesar Augustus.
• During the birth of Christ, shepherds were living out in the fields …  keeping watch over their flocks by night.

And we already know that December 25 is the time of winter where Christ was born. Now, dig up your encyclopedias and history books about these clues I mentioned above  if these are the signs of winter season.

December 25, Originally Pagan Feast

Let’s consider this wikipedia entry:

A winter festival was traditionally the most popular festival of the year in many cultures. Reasons included less agricultural work needing to be done during the winter, as well as people expecting longer days and shorter nights after the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere.[8] In part, the Christmas celebration was created by the early Church in order to entice pagan Romans to convert to Christianity without losing their own winter celebrations.[9][8] Certain prominent gods and goddesses of other religions in the region had their birthdays celebrated on December 25, including Ishtar, Sol Invictus and Mithras. Various traditions are considered to have been syncretised from winter festivals including the following: ….

… Alleged representation of Christ in the form of the sun-god Helios or Sol Invictus riding in his chariot. Third century mosaic of the Vatican grottoes under St. Peter’s Basilica, on the ceiling of the tomb of the Julii.
Alleged representation of Christ in the form of the sun-god Helios or Sol Invictus riding in his chariot. Third century mosaic of the Vatican grottoes under St. Peter’s Basilica, on the ceiling of the tomb of the Julii.

The Romans held a festival on December 25 called Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, “the birthday of the unconquered sun.” The use of the title Sol Invictus allowed several solar deities to be worshipped collectively, including Elah-Gabal, a Syrian sun god; Sol, the god of Emperor Aurelian (AD 270-274); and Mithras, a soldiers’ god of Persian origin.[13] Emperor Elagabalus (218-222) introduced the festival, and it reached the height of its popularity under Aurelian, who promoted it as an empire-wide holiday.[14]

December 25 was also considered to be the date of the winter solstice, which the Romans called bruma.[10] It was therefore the day the Sun proved itself to be “unconquered” despite the shortening of daylight hours. (When Julius Caesar introduced the Julian Calendar in 45 BC, December 25 was approximately the date of the solstice. In modern times, the solstice falls on December 21 or 22.) The Sol Invictus festival has a “strong claim on the responsibility” for the date of Christmas, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia.[1] Several early Christian writers connected the rebirth of the sun to the birth of Jesus[15] “O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which that Sun was born . . . Christ should be born”, Cyprian wrote.[1]

Another record states that Christmas is just an invention of an heretic:

An Armenian writer of the eleventh century states that the Christmas festival, invented in Rome by a heretic, Artemon, was first celebrated in Constantinople in 373. (The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. 3, p. 47)

Celebrated with pagan rituals

It was recorded in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge that says:

The pagan festival with its riot and merry-making was so popular that Christians were glad of an excuse to continue its celebration with little change in spirit or in manner. Christian preachers of the West and the Nearer East protested against the unseemly frivolity with which Christ’s birthday was celebrated, while Christians of Mesopotamia accused their worship for adopting as Christian this pagan festival. Yet the festival rapidly gained acceptance and became at last s firmly established that even the Protestant revolution of the sixteenth century was not able to dislodge it. (vol. 3, p. 48)

In other words, some rituals or ways of celebrating Christmas is derived from pagan festivals.

Better not to celebrate it?

So with these reasons, I am quite firm not to celebrate Christmas. I rather celebrate our (with my fiancee) relationship’s 4th anniversary than celebrating a celebration that is taught by neither Christ nor the Apostle and is originally a pagan feasts and full of pagan rituals.

Remember, I am a Christian not  pagan.

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Tags: Celebration, Christ, Christian, Christmas, Holidays, Pagan, Religion, Rituals
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