Without the revelries, pomp and merriment which accompanied Christmas, the Constantinian version of Christianity would have died out’.
Christmas is around the corner, triggering a variety of longings, expectations and memories. For some, however, December can be the most forlorn month of the year. Many adults dread the approach of Christmas, even after experiencing its joys as children. Christmas somehow makes them feel inadequate, unwanted and worthless. It is on Dec 25 when they are particularly gripped by the sentiment that the voyage of life has moved on, leaving them forsaken on an island of inescapable helplessness.
This darker side of Christmas can be attributed to a complex interplay of societal expectations, financial pressures, strained relationships, and cultural factors. While psychologists often attribute “Christmas blues” to Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), this commentary explores the deeper spiritual reasons why Christmas may provoke a range of negative emotions and reactions.
Origins of Christmas
It is a known, incontrovertible fact that early Christians did not celebrate Christmas. It was entirely missing from the early Christian calendar. In referencing the birth of Christ, one of the early church fathers, Origen of Alexandria (c. 185 — c. 253 AD), had famously remarked that sinners alone, and not saints, celebrated birthdays.
Birthdays were often associated with pagan customs and practices, especially in biblical Egypt and Babylon. For instance, the only birthday mentioned in the Old Testament was Pharaoh’s birthday (Genesis 40:20), and it was not portrayed in a particularly positive light. This association may have arguably led to a cultural aversion to birthday celebrations among the continuum of believers from the Old to the New Covenant.
The celebration of Christ’s birthday was palpably nonexistent when the gospels and epistles were written down — despite the fact that all first century Christians would have known the remarkable day when Christ was born. That date has now been imprinted into the collective mindset as one denoting tragedy, terror and infamy. Satan is a master of diabolical counterfeiting and he may have guided unrepentant men to pick a fictitious date, replete with pagan traditions, to serve as Christ’s birthday anniversary.
The first Christians were also predominantly composed of ancient Jewish converts. According to their worldview, one’s deeds and legacy, particularly at the time of death, were considered more significant than the day of birth. Ecclesiastes 7:1 reflects this perspective: “A good name is better than fine perfume, and the day of death better than the day of birth.” The gospels reiterate this necessity of “ending well” via the Parable of the Two Sons (Matthew 21:28-32) and in numerous verses. Decisions made at the pivotal crossroads of eternity carry far greater weight than the circumstances of one’s birth or the meandering paths taken through the maze of life. (Hebrews 12:1–2; Revelation 2:10).
So, how did Christmas come about? Many of us would be familiar with the popular account. It only became a formal celebration from 336 AD onwards, after Emperor Constantine decreed that Christianity was thereafter the official religion of the Roman Empire. December 25 was originally the day dedicated to the festival Dies Natalis Solis Invicti — the celebration of the rebirth of the sun god Sol Invictus or the “Unconquered Sun”. It was repurposed into a politically-convenient holiday to prop up the new state religion.
Organized churchianity was born in the process. Man-made hierarchies began to displace the promptings of the Holy Spirit and scriptural guardrails. Scripture itself became the sole monopoly of a new priestly class and was denied to the masses. Organized religion and its copious traditions would thereafter determine state-sanctioned dogmas and simultaneously eviscerate simple faith. Is it any wonder then that the so-called universal or catholic church would soon drag the Western world into the Dark Ages; one marked by intense superstition and non-biblical savagery?
Was the celebration of Christmas a symptom of this spiritual downfall? It is my contention that without the revelries, pomp and merriment which accompanied Christmas, the Constantinian version of Christianity would have died out. It was therefore imperative for the organized church to promote the newly-established tradition of Christmas while denying salvational scriptures to the masses. Only Satan himself could have contrived a plot of such diabolical subtlety!
The word “Christmas” comes from the old term “Christ’s Mass” (Crīstesmæsse in Olde English) and the word was first recorded in England in 1038. It was a season of wild revelry, debauchery and even violent deaths. It may be the reason why football (or soccer as it is known in the United States) retains an inordinate share of religiously-fanatical and violent fans among all sporting events. The norm was established in medieval Christmases! It was a mockery of what Christmas was supposed to mean.
If you are wondering why the modern church, with sparse exceptions, had universally capitulated to the demonic Covid-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates, look no further than the spiritual fornication which began with Constantine’s so-called reforms. Two or three years after the global scam was irrefutably exposed, one would still be hard pressed to find a pastor or evangelist who has publicly and visibly condemned this shameful attempt at mass murder. (If you know of any such individual, name them in the comments box and include an appropriate link.)
Rather coincidentally, Covid-19 was unleashed into the world exactly five Christmas seasons ago!
The Counterfeit Trees
How does one explain the spiritual regression that arguably began with the Christmases of yore? A theologian may proffer many causative reasons but I tend to use the metaphor of the scriptural tree. Christ, whose birth is ostensibly celebrated on Dec 25, had declared that a “good tree bears good fruit” while its bad counterpart will likewise produce ungodly fruit (Matthew 7:17-23). Furthermore, the Kingdom of Heaven was likened to the grain of a mustard seed.
It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. (Matthew 13:31-32).
This is not the kind of tree favoured by a mighty empire and a subservient church. Godliness has always had humble origins and the story of Christ’s birth in a manger — the real Christmas — is a testament to this timeless principle.
The Protestant Reformation was supposed to remove unscriptural practices within organized Christendom but its leaders were either powerless or unwilling to extirpate a millennium of pagan traditions associated with Dec 25. Such was the popularity of Christmas. A new set of trees associated with these traditions had come to irrevocably symbolise Christmas.
The evergreen carol “O Tannenbaum” was originally a sad Germanic folk song centered on the theme of a faithless lover. It was only superficially Christianized in the 18th century — in keeping with the precedent laid down by Constantine. Today, most of us know the song by its English variant called “O’ Christmas Tree”. But study the lyrics and you will realize that it was the fir tree that was celebrated instead of Christ. The Old Testament had expressly forbidden any sort of worship associated with trees.
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