What were some of the earliest Christmas traditions like? How did the disciples and the earliest church celebrate Christmas - the birth of the Messiah? Are there some lessons we can learn to enhance our holiday season this year?
If your desire is to be more like the "New" Testament church, then this message is for you.
After all, if it was good enough for them it must be good enough for us, right?
So, it may shock you to discover that Jews in the first century did not celebrate birthdays at all.
That's right. None, Nada, Zip.
Birthdays were a gentile excuse for a party.
The only time birthdays are mentioned in Scripture is in association with death, such as when John the Baptist was beheaded.
Never is a birthday given as a reason for a celebration in Scripture.
As a Jew, Yahshua (Jesus) never had a birthday party. Miriam, his Torah faithful Jewish mother, would never allow such an occasion in her home. The disciples, as Jewish followers of Yahahua, would never entertain the thought of having a birthday celebration.
The early church - up to the time of Constantine - never had celebrations of Jesus' birth.
Only with Constantine - who was a sun worshipper - did the 4th century Roman church begin to accommodate the pagans in this way. In order to satisfy those who worshipped Mithra on December 25th (and to bring them under the his control), Pontifex Maximus renamed the pagan celebration and incorporated it into church practice as Christ - mass.
What do you have if you take a pig, wash him, put cologne on him, and dress him in a new suit?
What you have is simply a dressed up pig. Nothing more.
Therefore, if we follow the traditions of the most faithful and earliest church, then there would be no celebration of Christmas.
However, today we find ourselves just like the Roman church of old. In order to satisfy those in our midst who love the pagan traditions more than the Scriptural ones, we have Christmas.
If you only knew what Christmas tree balls were meant to simulate!
Oh, that there were men and women of G-d again who had a hunger and thirst for the things of G-d. The Puritans were that way. They outlawed Christmas because they recognized it for what it was.
But, the lure of the world is strong. The Puritans are gone. Their ways ridiculed.
The odd turn of events is that we are now led to believe the Jewish Messiah came to do away with the Hebrew Torah (Law) and replace Yahweh's (G-d's) festivals with pagan ones.
Maybe this year you will begin to see that the pagan traditions we've inherited - no matter how much we've dressed them up - are cheap substitutes for the truly wonderful and eternally significant prophetic shadow pictures that Yahweh gave us in Scripture.
Sadly the Roman tradition of Christmas has taken control of the modern church- Protestant as well as Catholic. This season there will again be protests and even legal battles to keep "Christ" in Christmas.
But, the truth is, He was never there in the first place.
The only question left to ask is not whether we will follow a tradition about Christmas, but whose traditions will we follow?
Will it be those traditions of the modern gentile church,
or those of the first century disciples?
