I have been reading with interest the many articles and blog entries on Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays that have appeared on LRC. My only contribution is this brief note on the observance of Christmas by Baptists.
It is strange that many Baptists would make such a big deal about people not saying “Merry Christmas” when their Baptist forefathers had no use for the holiday at all.
From The American Baptist Magazine of March, 1820, we read: “You need not be informed, that this day is observed, by a large body of professed Christians in commemoration of the nativity of Christ. As the denomination to which you and I belong, keep no day in commemoration of this great event, it is perhaps due to ourselves, and to others, that we should give our reasons why we do not. This indeed appears to me to be necessary; because many of our brethren have paid little or no attention to this subject, and other have serioiusly asked, ‘Why do you not keep sacred, the day on which the Saviour was born?'”
The author then gives five reasons. Here are his paragraph headings:
1. We do not know, and no one can tell us on what day Christ became incarnate.
2. We can find neigher precept nor example in the Scriptures for the observance of Christmas.
3. We do not keep the 25th of December as sacred to the commemoration of Christ’s nativity, because we reject the authority that enjoined it.
4. We do not observe this day, because the same authority which instituted it, would require us to observe other days.
5. The celebration of the nativity of Christ is attended with much more evil than good.
Fast forward to the famous English Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892). In a sermon delivered on December 24, 1871, called “Joy Born at Bethlehem,” he stated about Christmas:“We have no superstitious regard for times and seasons. Certainly we do not believe in the present ecclesiastical arrangement called Christmas. First, because we do not believe in the mass at all, but abhor it, whether it be sung in Latin or in English; and secondly, because we find no Scriptural warrant whatever for observing any day as the birthday of the Savior; and consequently, its observance is a superstition, because not of divine authority. Superstition has fixed most positively the day of our Savior’s birth, although there is no possibility of discovering when it occurred. Fabricus gives a catalogue of 136 different learned opinions upon the matter; and various divines invent weighty arguments of advocating a date in every month in the year. It was not till the middle of the third century that any part of the church celebrated the nativity of our Lord; and it was not till very long after the Western church had set the example, that the Eastern adopted it. Because the day is not known, therefore superstition has fixed it; while, since the day of the death of our Saviour might be determined with much certainty, therefore superstition shifts the date of its observance every years. Where is the method in the madness of the superstitious? Probably the fact is that the ‘holy’ days were arranged to fit in with the heathen festivals. We venture to assert, that if there be any day in the year, of which we may be pretty sure that it was not the day on which the Savior was born, it is the twenty-fifth of December. Nevertheless since, the current of men’s thoughts is led this way just now, and I see no evil in the current itself, I shall launch the bark of our discourse upon that stream, and make use of the fact, which I shall neither justify nor condemn, by endeavoring to lead your thoughts in the same direction. Since it is lawful, and even laudable, to meditate upon the incarnation of the Lord upon any day in the year, it cannot be in the power of other men’s superstitions to render such a meditation improper for to-day. Regarding not the day, let us, nevertheless, give God thanks for the gift of His dear Son.”
9:38 pm on December 19, 2005
