Is Jesus the Reason for the Season?:
Many conservative evangelical Christians at this time of year want to “put Christ back in Christmas” and insist that “Jesus is the Reason for the Season.” With these slogans, they hope to remind people that Christmas is a Christian holiday and that without Christ, there would be no Christmas in the first place. Such Christians are offended that so many people enjoy the holidays without any reference to Jesus or Christianity and want it to stop. Unfortunately, they don’t have much of a case.

Pre-Christian Reasons for the Season:
If Jesus is the Reason for the Season, why are so many aspects of the season pre-Christian and pagan? Christians took over the Decemer 25th Roman holiday of Natalis Solis Invicti, festival of the birth of the invincible sun, as well as Saturnalia. Christians took over German mid-winter festival celebrations which used evergreen trees and holly as symbols of eternal life. Where is Christ in all of this? How is Jesus the reason for the season of mid-winter festivals that pre-date Christianity?

Pagan Christmas Trees:
The most central and recognizable symbol of Christmas today is the Christmas tree — and it has nothing to do with Christianity, Christ, or Jesus. It’s a purely pagan symbol taken from ancient German mid-winter festivals. Even if people hang religious ornaments on the tree, the hanging of ornaments is originally pagan, not Christian. The practice of cutting down trees and taking them home to decorate them with gold and silver is even condemned by God in the book of Jeremiah.

For those who believe:

Jeremiah 10 (King James Version):
1 Hear ye the word which the LORD speaketh unto you, O house of Israel:

2 Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.

3 For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.

4 They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.

5 They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.

Jesus is not the Reason for the Season:
What is most mistaken, and even offensive, about the slogan “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” is that Christians are attempting to claim ownership of and priority over the entire holiday season, not just Christmas. There is, however, no reason to imagine that there would be no mid-winter holidays in the absence of Christ or Christianity.

Modern Christmas celebrations have little or nothing to do with Jesus, the Feast of the Nativity, or the Incarnation. Consider some popular Christmas traditions: erecting and decorating a tree, hanging wreaths, sending cards, drinking eggnog, giving presents, hanging mistletoe...where is Christ in all of this?

Thus we also have slogans about “putting Christ back into Christmas,” but it’s difficult to see how Christ was ever central to Christmas. When Christians celebrated it at all, it was about the nativity of Jesus, not the salvation from Christ. Today, even Jesus has receded into the background.

Our modern Christmas is a large number of ancient pagan practices, a few pieces of Christian traditions, and a large number of modern creations which are almost entirely secular in nature, no matter where they got their inspiration from. I see little room and little need for any “Christ” in all of this - but more importantly, I see little place where a “Christ” could be put back into the mix.

This is why Jesus is not the reason for the season for non-Christians. Whether non-Christians celebrate some form of Christmas or something else entirely, the reason for the season is whatever meaning they invest in their holiday — and that is up to them, not to Christians.

To put it simply, Christians who insist that Jesus is the reason for the season and that Christ needs to be “put back” into Christmas are seeking to assert their cultural superiority over everyone else. It’s yet one more example of attempts to reassert Christian privilege in an America that has moved on to religious pluralism.

Labels: atheism, religion