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The Celebration of Christmas: Difference between revisions
→William Branham and Christmas
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==What William Branham said about Christmas== | ==What William Branham said about Christmas== | ||
Unfortunately, like with so many things, William Branham | Unfortunately, like with so many things, William Branham managed to communicate confusion on this issue. While celebrating Christmas with his family and giving presents to the kids, he also sometimes railed against it over the pulpit. | ||
:''And today, that memorial of His birthday, what do they do? They get some tree, cut it down, '''make a Christmas tree''', for the kiddies. But they think... That's all right; '''I'm not kicking against that'''. But the thing of it is, they put more on the Christmas tree than they do for Christ.<ref>THE.DEITY.OF.JESUS.CHRIST_ JEFF.IN 49-1225</ref> | :''And today, that memorial of His birthday, what do they do? They get some tree, cut it down, '''make a Christmas tree''', for the kiddies. But they think... That's all right; '''I'm not kicking against that'''. But the thing of it is, they put more on the Christmas tree than they do for Christ.<ref>THE.DEITY.OF.JESUS.CHRIST_ JEFF.IN 49-1225</ref> | ||
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:''And now, you say, "Well, the rest of them's all Santa Claus and going on like they do; why, we just might as well do it." No, sir! No, '''this is not a pagan celebration to us''', this is a sacred hour. If there had been no Christmas, there would been no resurrection. If there been no Christmas: there'd been no love, there'd been no peace, there'd been no hereafter for the believer; if there'd been no Christmas.<ref>GOD'S.GIFTS.ALWAYS.FIND.THEIR.PLACES_ JEFF.IN V-6 N-13 SUNDAY_ 63-1222</ref> | :''And now, you say, "Well, the rest of them's all Santa Claus and going on like they do; why, we just might as well do it." No, sir! No, '''this is not a pagan celebration to us''', this is a sacred hour. If there had been no Christmas, there would been no resurrection. If there been no Christmas: there'd been no love, there'd been no peace, there'd been no hereafter for the believer; if there'd been no Christmas.<ref>GOD'S.GIFTS.ALWAYS.FIND.THEIR.PLACES_ JEFF.IN V-6 N-13 SUNDAY_ 63-1222</ref> | ||
==Was this another example of William Branham adopting the doctrine of the Jehovah's Witnesses?== | |||
There are several examples of William Branham adopting [[Michael the Archangel|doctrinal positions that were similar to those of the Watchtower Society (the Jehovah's Witnesses)]]. | |||
“… those who celebrate Christmas do not honor God or Christ, but honor pagan celebrations and pagan gods.” This declaration in an Awake! magazine of December 8, 1988 (page 19) sums up the Watchtower Society’s teaching on the holiday — a teaching that the Society’s magazines reemphasize each December lest some of the flock forget and erroneously conclude ‘tis the season to be jolly. | |||
Criticism of Christmas in those articles focuses first of all on the date. Religious and secular sources are quoted to establish the well-known fact that the actual date of the Savior’s birth is unknown. The articles then attack selection of December 25th as an arbitrary date to celebrate the event, because pagans were already holding winter festivals on that date. The implication is that the Church did not try to supplant the pagan festival with a Christian one, but rather that the Church merely attached a new name to the old holiday so that believers could join in. | |||
JW articles go on to trace the Christmas tree to pagan worship; they focus on greed and commercialism that surfaces during the Christmas shopping season; they point out that the holiday is celebrated in oriental lands where the general population makes no pretense of being believers in Christ. | |||
From all of this they argue that Christmas is a pagan holiday inappropriate for Christians to share in. Interestingly, however, The Watchtower did not always express this viewpoint. The organization’s founders and early leaders celebrated Christmas and encouraged others to do the same: | |||
:''“Christmas Day,” in celebration of our dear Redeemer’s birth, has for long centuries been celebrated on December 25th; and although it is now well known that this date is in error, and that it more properly corresponds with the date of the annunciation to Mary, nine months before our Lord was born, and that he was born about October 1st,—nevertheless, since the Lord has given no instructions whatever upon this subject, and since it is proper to do good deeds and think good thoughts upon any day, it cannot be improper, in harmony with general usage, for us to remember in a social way our dear Redeemer’s birth at this time.<ref>Zion’s Watch Tower, December 15, 1898, page 370</ref> | |||
:''It matters not particularly that December 25 is not the anniversary of our Lord’s birth, according to the Scriptural account; that really he was born about September 25, nine months later. One day, as well as another, will serve us to commemorate our Savior’s birth in the flesh, as a gift of God’s love to a condemned and dying world.<ref>Zion’s Watch Tower, December 15, 1908, page 379</ref> | |||
The early Watchtower leaders who felt this way were just as familiar as today’s leaders with the resemblance between pagan customs and certain Christmas traditions. They welcomed opportunities to share with others in honoring Christ, while today’s leaders seem more eager to keep followers separated from non-JW relatives and neighbors. (Some form of isolation from outsiders is a common thread found in many mind-control cults. With some groups this separation is accomplished by physically withdrawing into a commune, while in other cults members continue living in the outside world but withdraw from social contact with non-members.) | |||
Participation in Christmas celebrations is not optional for Jehovah’s Witnesses. The ban is enforced by elders who make up judicial committees that sit in judgment of any who celebrate the holiday, even in some small way. This has been a firmly held position of the Watchtower Society since 1928.<ref>David A. Reed, Answering Jehovah’s Witnesses: Subject by Subject, electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1997).</ref> | |||
=Christmas and Paganism= | |||
BAH! HUMBUG! These two words are instantly associated with Charles Dickens’s immortal fictional antihero, Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge was the prototype of the Grinch who stole Christmas, the paradigm of all men cynical. | |||
We all recognize that Ebenezer Scrooge was a mean person—stingy, insensitive, selfish, and unkind. What we often miss in our understanding of his character is that he was preeminently profane. “Bah! Humbug!” was his Victorian use of profanity. | |||
Not that any modern editor would feel the need to delete Scrooge’s expletives. His language is not the standard currency of cursing. But it was profane in that Scrooge demeaned what was holy. He trampled on the sanctity of Christmas. He despised the sacred. He was cynical toward the sublime. | |||
Christmas is a holiday, indeed the world’s most joyous holiday. It is called a “holiday” because the day is holy. It is a day when businesses close, when families gather, when churches are filled, and when soldiers put down their guns for a 24-hour truce. It is a day that differs from every other day. | |||
Every generation has its abundance of Scrooges. The church is full of them - a kind of legalist. We hear endless complaints of commercialism. We are constantly told to put Christ back into Christmas. We hear that the tradition of Santa Claus is a sacrilege. We listen to those acquainted with history murmur that Christmas isn’t biblical. The Church invented Christmas to compete with the ancient Roman festival honoring the bull-god Mithras, the nay-sayers complain. Christmas? A mere capitulation to paganism. | |||
And so we rain on Jesus’ parade and assume an olympian detachment from the joyous holiday. All this carping is but a modern dose of Scroogeism, our own sanctimonious profanation of the holy. | |||
Sure, Christmas is a time of commerce. The department stores are decorated to the hilt, the ad pages of the newspapers swell in size, and we tick off the number of shopping days left until Christmas. But why all the commerce? The high degree of commerce at Christmas is driven by one thing: the buying of gifts for others. To present our friends and families with gifts is not an ugly, ignoble vice. It incarnates the amorphous “spirit of Christmas.” The tradition rests ultimately on the supreme gift God has given the world. God so loved the world, the Bible says, that He gave His only begotten Son. The giving of gifts is a marvelous response to the receiving of such a gift. For one day a year at least, we taste the sweetness inherent in the truth that it is more blessed to give than to receive. | |||
What about putting Christ back into Christmas? It is simply not necessary. Christ has never left Christmas. “Jingle Bells” will never replace “Silent Night.” Our holiday once known as Thanksgiving is rapidly becoming known simply as “Turkey Day.” But Christmas is still called Christmas. It is not called “Gift Day.” Christ is still in Christmas, and for one brief season the secular world broadcasts the message of Christ over every radio station and television channel in the land. Never does the church get as much free air time as during the Christmas season. | |||
Not only music but the visual arts are present in abundance, bearing testimony to the historic significance of the birth of Jesus. Christmas displays, creches, Christmas cards, yard displays all remind the world of the sacred Incarnation. | |||
Doesn’t Santa Claus paganize or at least trivialize Christmas? He’s a myth, and his very mythology casts a shadow over the sober historical reality of Jesus. Not at all. Myths are not necessarily bad or harmful. Every society creates myths. They are a peculiar art form invented usually to convey a message that is deemed important by the people. When a myth is passed off as real history, that is fraud. But when it serves a different purpose it can be healthy and virtuous. Kris Kringle is a mythical hero, not a villain. He is pure fiction—but a fiction used to illustrate a glorious truth. | |||
What about the historical origins of Christmas as a substitute for a pagan festival? I can only say, good for the early Christians who had the wisdom to flee from Mithras and direct their zeal to the celebration of the birth of Christ. Who associates Christmas today with Mithras? No one calls it “Mithrasmas.” | |||
We celebrate Christmas because we cannot eradicate from our consciousness our profound awareness of the difference between the sacred and the profane. Man, in the generic sense, has an incurable propensity for marking sacred space and sacred time. When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, the ground that was previously common suddenly became uncommon. It was now holy ground—sacred space. When Jacob awoke from his midnight vision of the presence of God, he anointed with oil the rock upon which he had rested his head. It was sacred space. | |||
When God touches earth, the place is holy. When God appears in history, the time is holy. There was never a more holy place than the city of Bethlehem, where the Word became flesh. There was never a more holy time than Christmas morning when Emmanuel was born. Christmas is a holiday. It is the holiest of holy days. We must heed the warning of Jacob Marley: “Don’t be a Scrooge” at Christmas.<ref>R. C. Sproul, “Right Now Counts Forever: Marley’s Message to Scrooge,” ed. R. C. Sproul Jr., Tabletalk Magazine, December 1993: Marley’s Message to Scrooge (Lake Mary, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 1993), 5–6.</ref> | |||
=External References= | =External References= | ||