Christmas and Easter
A guest article

Let's get something straight: The Christmas tree is NOT a religious symbol. Neither is Santa or Rudolph or sleighbells or presents or the Easter bunny or Easter eggs.

They never were.

I find it amazing that I am reduced to arguing this case, and defending our right to display the Christmas tree. Until a few years ago, I would have joined the ACLU in banning the thing forever. It's a sad commentary on the state to which we've been reduced, that we find ourselves hanging onto the tree as the last vestige of Christmas in the USA.

Does it really matter what time of year Jesus was actually born so long as we continue to recognize his birth and celebrate the incarnation of God?

Having had some chance to study the mythology of the Nordic cultures, I think that the Christmas Tree is a perfect symbol to use to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.

In Norse mythology, the universe was envisioned as a giant tree call Ygdrasil, the World Tree. Even though Ygdrasil was an Ash tree, a Christmas tree may represent the universe, the ornaments symbolizing the heavenly bodies and planets; the lights: the stars; the figures: the thrones, principalities, powers, seraphim, cherubim and other heavenly hosts. Symbolized in the Christmas tree are all of the heavens and her hosts gathered to celebrate the incarnation. The star at the top announcing His birth.

All you can see is a holdover from a pagan culture . . . I see the cosmos in miniature, all of creation--simplified, proclaiming the birth of the Savior.

Let me explain.

We all know what the two main Christian holidays are supposed to be about. On Dec. 25, we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. On Easter, we celebration His resurrection and victory over sin and death.

Never mind that Jesus probably wasn't born on Dec. 25 of any year. The true date doesn't matter; We have chosen to honor and revere God and Jesus on these two, so very, very special occasions, and we have established these dates as the days to honor them.

Most of us also know that the choices of the dates are tangled up in the history of pagan cultures. Thousands of years before Christ, pagans celebrated the winter solstice and vernal equinox as special days. It's probably no accident that the early church fathers chose days for Christmas and Easter to coincide with the pagan holidays. Rightly or wrongly, they sought to trump the pagan holidays with Christian ones occurring on or near the same dates. I expect this was to prevent those less devout from celebrating both Christian and pagan holidays, as many still do to this day (witness Mardi Gras).

Over more recent years, secular society has sought to distract us from the celebration of these Christian holy days, by tacking on bric-a-brac carried over from the pagan holidays. Thus most folks who celebrate Christmas take little time to ponder the miracle of Jesus' birth. They are concentrating on Christmas trees and festive lights, Santa Claus and presents, and most of all, commerce. Not to mention the ubiquitous Christmas parties, complete with copious amounts of egg-nog.

Oh, I know, the name, Santa Claus, is a bastardization of St. Nicholas, who is supposed to have had a special place in his heart for children. But how many people today -- especially how many kids -- see Santa as anything but the present-bringing, jolly old elf who drives a sleigh?

As for the other holy day, it's not much of a secret that even the name, Easter, is borrowed from the pagan goddess, Astarte, the goddess of fertility. Hence those most obvious symbols of fertility, the rabbit and the egg.

Until recent years, I saw the trend to emphasize Santa and the Easter bunny as an insidious, but hardly subtle, way to distract the public from the true meaning of Christmas and Easter. I think it's significant that the world seems so threatened by these two holidays, in particular. I mean, name me a Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu holiday that has been so warped and transformed by non-religious traditions tacked onto it? Why is it only Christian holidays that get such a treatment?

So for years, I've been urging people to set aside the Christmas tree and Santa, the Easter bunny and eggs, and concentrate on what the holidays really honor. Jesus is the reason for the season. I saw, I think correctly, the commercialization of Christmas, in particular, as a way to secularize the holiday and distract the average citizen from thinking about its true meaning.

So what are we to make of this new trend, to ban Santa and the Christmas tree from the public arena, as well? What in the world does this new trend signify? Is it a new level of attack on Christianity, or is it Political Correctness taken to a new, and seemingly suicidal, level?

Christmas, it would seem, has become a self-eating watermelon. Having mostly succeeded in taking Christ out of Christmas, of inundating the public consciousness with larger-than-life images of Santa and reindeer and glowing noses, now the secularists want to ban those images as well!

Has the world gone insane?  Perhaps yes.

I find myself torn. On the one hand, I find myself fighting to defend Santa and the tree, as the last vestiges of any public celebration at all. On the other, I should be glad to see them go. They are, after all, not really symbols of Jesus, but rather of those pagan celebrations who preceded Him.

I feel much like Alice, having fallen through the rabbit hole. Or, perhaps more like I'm in Orwell's 1984, where Doublespeak rules.

Maybe we should give up and let the secularists have their way. Maybe we should let them rid the public square of Santa and the tree. Perhaps then we can get back to what the holidays _REALLY_ mean.

Note to secularists: That's where we draw the line. You can have the tree, but you don't get Jesus. Civilizations have tried for 2000 years to suppress His message. The latest was the atheism of Communist Russia, to whom so many of you still owe allegiance -- either through your sympathies or your direct declarations.

It won't work. This is where we draw the line. This is where we fight. The message of Jesus' birth, death, and resurrection cannot be suppressed.

What I find more interesting in the date in December to celebrate the birth of Our Savior is that for almost 2000 years The LORD has not seen fit to "correct" our misdating of the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth.

If you check out the Holy Scriptures, and the climate of the land in which HE was born it is almost a closed and shut case that December was NOT the time of HIS birth, but was more likely to have been born in one of the fall month's such as September or late in the month of August. I think it is more likely to be in September.

This checks out with history also of what we know about John the Baptist and when he was born and preached in Jerusalem because very few people deny that John the Baptist was a figment of men's imaginations and the history books tell us of the upheaval going on in Judea at that time.

Count backwards nine month's to HIS conception and were do you land? In December, and this could (probably should) be taken by us as a BIG CLUE as to when The LORD has determined that LIFE begins.

Not as our current scientists tell us, at birth, BUT at the moment of conception, which is a date known to no man or woman, but only by GOD.

I agree with the your opinion on commercial trappings that have come to mean more today than the reason we celebrate. Just this last Easter season the Catholic church in our neighborhood put up three empty crosses on their front lawn. Some one tacked a note on the middle one to say,  It wasn't the cross that was empty, it was the TOMB being empty that is the miracle.

They got the message and the next day the middle cross was draped with the traditional white scarf with a sign saying "HE IS RISEN".