Christ had nothing to with Christmas and its a pagan holiday?!? Nimrod related.

[ViaCrucis]

Maybe every day is Christmas day in heaven

And Easter.

The Eighth Day of creation is forever. Because what Christ has done is forever.

Glory and honor to Him, now and always.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[fireof god98]

praise the lord

 

[Eph4:26]

No problem, I appreciate criticism and questions.

. . . The Gospel is Christ, the Messiah, and everything and all things about Him and what He has done both for and with us.

It is indeed true that the Christ coming into this world is good news.
The news would be incomplete if it did not include the resurrection.

Ro 1:4 -
who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord,

Ro 6:5 -
For if we have become united with {Him} in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be {in the likeness} of His resurrection,

Ro 1:15 -
So, for my part, I (Paul) am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.

Grace is undeserved love;

Since Christ gave us, and commands us to celebrate Eucharist in all of the Gospels, it is part of the Gospel. Those who despise the Eucharist (the celebration of which is called the Mass), remove the Mass from Christmas; and since the Gospel is an all or nothing thing, they have removed the Gospel from Christmas, in effect taking Christ out too.

I'm not going to discourage you from what you believe.

 

[Eph4:26]

Kinda went into that study with your mind already made up, didn't you? . . .

Jipsah, the condition of my mind had 37 years of RCC indoctrination to unwind. After I stopped preforming rituals. I started studying the Bible.

 

[Eph4:26]

. . . Thus we need not fear the 25th of December . . .

I've been involved in discussions about Christmas for five years now. You are the first person to attempt to make a Biblical argument that Christmas is ok because if you don't do it, you are acting out of fear.

With respects of extrapilating something in Scripture that isn't there, let's examine:

. . .
Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (1 Corinthians 5:7-8)

Are you really suggesting that Paul was talking about celebrating Christmas?

 

[Eph4:26]

Yikes. Regardless of what one thinks about Christmas, that is pretzel logic.

Paul---we are the temple of God, therefore separate yourselves from what is unclean

MC/RC---we are the temple of God, therefore all things are clean and we don't need to separate ourselves. (this directly contradicts Paul's argument)

Standing Up, we disagree about Christmas. I'm ok with that.

We are in agreement about this.

 

[MoreCoffee]

...
Are you really suggesting that Paul was talking about celebrating Christmas?

No, I am not suggesting that saint Paul was writing about celebrating Christmas specifically. He was writing about celebrating the feast of Christ's passion as exemplified by the passover festival which celebrated the liberation of Israel from bondage in Egypt. Christ is our passover, the feast we celebrate is Christ's feast, not the old feast of Israel but the new feast in Christ. Thus, we celebrate Easter (as it is commonly called in English) because it is the feast commemorating Christ's passion and resurrection.

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (1 Corinthians 5:6-8)

The feast of Christmas is a feast to celebrate the good news of Christ's advent. His first advent brought the hope of salvation. His second advent will being the completion of salvation and the elevation of humankind as partakers of the divine nature.

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature. For this very reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these things are yours and abound, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these things is blind and shortsighted and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be the more zealous to confirm your call and election, for if you do this you will never fall; so there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:3-11)

 

[Eph4:26]

I hear what you are saying. IMHO, your message gets lost in the noise of 'seasons greetings'.

 

[MoreCoffee]

I hear what you are saying. IMHO, your message gets lost in the noise of 'seasons greetings'.

Not in Church

But if fear of "seasons greetings" drives you away from Christmas ....

 

[Eph4:26]

The 37 years of Catholic Church I attended obfuscated the message.
The fear you are describing is the fear of falling back into my sinful life when I use to party at Christmas time.

 

[Root of Jesse]

I remember being jealous as a kid for the attention the world gave to the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus on days that were supposed to belong to Jesus Christ. I had always felt like this was a great injustice but others didn't seem to share my feelings. Why should Jesus have his special moments observed on pagan holy days, and have his glory stolen by these other figures? This is harlotry and if I'm bitter about it, I just know God can't be happy about it.

First of all, every day belongs to Christ.

Secondly, the Easter Bunny has, literally, nothing to do with Easter, and Santa Claus, literally, has nothing to do with Christmas, though the figure of St. Nicholas was a generous bishop who distributed his personal fortune to the poor.

Also, there are some pretty big circles that believe that Christmas did fall on Dec 25, and that the Resurrection of Christ fell exactly when the Bible says it did. There is no such thing as a pagan holy day. But that Christianity accepted pagan peoples and took their celebrations and gave them Christian meaning is very evident. We do just what Christ did. He took the act of baptism, and by his very presence, made the act sacred. You do know that there were many different kinds of baptism in Christ's day, don't you? Pagan baptisms...

Regarding keeping religious practice in the Christmas season, I wonder, do you Protestants have Jesus in your manger scenes before the day designated for His birthday?

 

[Root of Jesse]

How many of us have a christmas tree? Is that Godly? We celebrate the birth of Christ amid doing and having ungodly things. The argument is not invalid. To me, Christmas is supposed to be a holy day but IT IS oddly connected to a very unholy celebration. Skate around it all you want to. I won't.



Holy things belong to God. Unholy things belong to unholy people. Render to Caesar that which is his. Christmas is supposed to be a holy day but it was positioned so that it would touch something very unholy.

In what way is having a plant inside your home ungodly?

Regarding the date of Christmas, I can show you a presentation that shows that Christmas did, indeed, fall on Dec 25. From Biblical facts in evidence.

 

[Root of Jesse]

I personally think it was Autumn but like your's it's a guess.
I'm not dismayed. I can vision you singing in that fashion.
Is the accuracy of the date important or the fact that Christendom actually gets on the same calendar once a year? For me it's a day of accord.
I always grit my teeth when I hear people say it's Christ's actual birthday. It's a 1 in 365.25 chance at best.

Randy, Google Bethlehem Star for an hour presentation. It's on Youtube. Yes, it takes some leaps, and makes some assumptions, but it also takes Bible facts and some astronomy software to show that Dec 25 is a good possibility.

But you're right, it's not important what day he was born. It matters THAT he was born.

 

[Root of Jesse]

The Internet. I'm not even trying to be funny. You can find lots on mystery Babylon and it's connection to Christianity

"They can't put anything that's not true on the Internet."

"Where'd you see that?"

"On the Internet."

 

[Root of Jesse]

There is no Biblical precedent for remembrance of the day of Christ's birth as a day of special religious celebration. This is not to say that we shouldn't remember Christ's birth and its significance, but for religious commemorations or celebrations, there is no Biblical command. The early church did not celebrate Christ's birth, but such celebration only came into the church with the "Christianization" of pagan rites as Roman Catholicism was made the state religion by Constantine in the fourth century A.D.

Since the Word of God does not support the tradition of Christmas, a Christian's conscience ought not and must not be bound to a tradition that is an evolution of pagan practices.

The Wise men sure thought it important to worship the King...

 

[Root of Jesse]

Why didn't early church fathers such as Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen feel a need to celebrate the birthday of Christ?

If the Canon of Scripture was completed sometime in the early 2nd Century, why did it take over 200 years before the Mass for Christ was first placed on a calendar along side the pagan holiday the saturnalia?

What was significant about the mid-three hundreds that the Roman Church felt it was necessary to take the pagan festivals and amalgamate Christ into it?

Every Mass celebrated was "for Christ".

See my response above. When the Church converted the Goths and Vandals, they incoporated their celebrations and gave them Christian meaning. In otherwords, taking the unholy and making it holy.

 

[Root of Jesse]

Originally Posted by Eph4:26


I'm not following you. Are you saying that the type of Christianity practiced today IS the same as it was in the mid-fourth century

Yes. Catholicism.

 

[Root of Jesse]

"When you recall that the birth narrative of Matthew and Luke are non-historical, made up as they are of pious legends and Midrashic-type invention (whose highly symbolic and spiritually meaningful character must nevertheless be stressed), and that the parables come from ancient “sayings sources,” it becomes even more apparent that what we are dealing with in the Gospels are literary editions of allegorical and mythical themes that have a history of their own but contain little history themselves. All the legends about a virgin birth, a star in the east, three wise men bearing gifts, the evil power that tries to take a special child’s life, and angelic messengers have, as we have seen, been enacted many times before in the myths of Egypt and other places too numerous to mention."

"The truth, I have discovered, is that this inner experience of the presence and power of God as the Christ within our own consciousness is the best proof of the authenticity of true Christianity. As a scholar friend of mine puts it, "I don't need an external, allegedly historical figure to experience God. But I do need the story of Jesus, the mythos, to bring home to me in power the meaning of the struggle and destiny of my own soul. I don't need the crumbs of assumed but largely incomprehensible 'events' in the past, but rather the feast of a living parable that illuminates my spiritual journey today. It's the allegorical or metaphorical interpretation of the Gospel story that makes God relevant and real to me."

The Pagan Christ, Tom Harpur
p.142

If you find part of the Gospel, therefore part of the New Testament as "made up", then why accept any of it?

 

[Root of Jesse]

The season of Advent (the four weeks preceding Christmas), Christmas day, and the season of Christmas (12 days following Christmas) all have religious significance drawn from scripture.

Advent is the liturgical season that precedes and prepares for Christmas. It is a season of hope and of longing, of joyful expectation and of peaceful preparation.

Advent usually refers to "the coming of Christ into the world"; it may also refer to the "Second Coming" of Christ (the "Advent of our Lord").


Each of the four Sundays of Advent has its own special readings and characteristics:

1. First Sunday of Advent - The readings look forward to the "End Times" and the coming of the "Day of the Lord" or the "Messianic Age"; the Gospel is an excerpt from the Apocalyptic Discourse of Jesus in one of the Synoptic Gospels.
2. Second Sunday of Advent - The Gospel readings focus on the preaching and ministry of John the Baptist as the forerunner of Jesus, the one who came to "Prepare the Way of the Lord."
3. Third Sunday of Advent - The Gospel readings continue to focus on John the Baptist, while the first and second readings convey the joy that Christians feel with the increasing closeness of the incarnation and the world's salvation.
4. Fourth Sunday of Advent - The Gospels tell of the events that immediately preceded the birth of Jesus, including the dreams and visions of Joseph and Mary of Nazareth.

Christmas is the annual feast commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, a little over 2000 years ago. For Christians, it is not just a single day (Dec. 25), but an extended liturgical season of joy and celebration.


Christmas itself is the only day on the liturgical calendar which has four different sets of biblical readings for the four different Masses that can be celebrated at various times: Vigil Mass (Christmas Eve), Mass at Midnight, Mass at Dawn, and Mass during the Day.

• The Gospel readings for the first three Masses contain excerpts from the biblical accounts of the birth of Jesus (from Matthew and Luke), while the Gospel reading for the Mass of Christmas Day is the Prologue of John's Gospel (John 1:1-18).
• The first readings are various selections from the book of the prophet Isaiah, while the Responsorial Psalms, the Second Readings, and the Gospel Acclamations are chosen thematically.
• The readings for the other major feasts of the Christmas Season include the biblical accounts of the various events being commemorated.
• For example, the Gospel reading for the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord is always Matthew 2:1-12, the biblical account of the visit of the Magi from the East. Similarly, the Gospel readings for the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which concludes the Christmas season, are the accounts of the Baptism of Jesus as found in Matthew 3, Mark 1, and Luke 3, for Years A, B, and C, respectively.
• The first and second readings for all feast days are chosen thematically from a variety of Old Testament books and New Testament letters.
• For most weekdays during the Christmas season, the first reading is taken from the First Letter of John.

Amen! For Christians it's an extended season, with a four week period of preparation for the Lord, and twelve days after, including the feast of the Holy Mother of God, and the Feast of Three Kings.

 

[Root of Jesse]

Spot on. Just look at RC and EO and their varying doctrinal opinions. Thankfully they have tradition to sort it out. But no, that doesn't help them either.

Anyway, back to the thread topic---try to respond to the discussion, rather than talk about the person, as if there's any point to be made.

Which ones would those be?