CHRISTMAS: WHY & WHY NOT?

Between November and New Year each year I am often asked about Christmas. Why do we, as a Synagogue of Two-Testament Judaism, not join in the Christmas observances of the Christian world? On this last day of Hanukkah, I am going to take advantage of the fact that blogging allows me to, as Arsenio Hall used to say, "share a few thoughts" with you all. I hope you find them useful.

DECEMBER OBSERVANCE

Whether you consult modern sources like Wikipedia, or ancient sources like Ante-Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, you will find neither they, nor the New Testament itself give a specific date or time of year for the birth of Messiah. Since a census moved Yeshua's family from Nazareth to Bethlehem for His birth, it is unlikely it would have been during the winter months. Travel into the mountains of Judea during that cold and rainy time of year would be immensely more difficult and health-threatening than during the warm and less rainy seasons. The rainy season in the middle east is no trivial thing, and neither is the tendency of the temperatures to plummet, especially at night. The elderly, the infirm, and pregnant women would have been seriously endangered by long travel in winter. Yeshua The Messiah made reference to the inherent difficulties of this season when speaking of a tribulation to come, saying, "Pray it be not in winter." (Mk. 13:18) You cannot get any deeper into winter than the winter solstice in late December.

The holiday now celebrated on December 25th originated as a pagan feast to mark how the "unconquered sun" began on the winter solstice to ascend again into longer days rather than the shorter ones of early winter. If memory serves, this longstanding winter feast becoming a date for marking Yeshua's birth does not surface in the historical record until the 3rd century c.e. Customs like "The Yule Log" and "Yuletide" carols are interesting as direct leftovers of specific non-Biblical feasts. Scandinavia marked the winter solstice with a feast called "Yul" - and in those regions, Yule and Christmas are synonymous. Christmas has many such customs intermingled from many cultures across the centuries. Neither the date nor these customs have any direct Biblical mandate installing them.

THE MESSIANIC JEWISH MANDATE

As Messianic Jews, we have a direct Biblical mandate for recovery of a nearly-lost identity (Jer. 31:35-37, Matt. 5:19, Acts 21:18-25). As hopefully-healthy zealots, we omit no opportunity with our lives and modes of living to make concrete and observable the mandate of Jeremiah 31:35-36 and Acts 21:18-24: that Jewish coming to faith in Messiah does not destroy one's Judaism and replace it with a new, non-Jewish religion called by the Greek name, "Christianity." We do not simply join in to a cultural tide because something established by two millennia of non-Jewish practice is now a cultural habit in the West for anyone even mildly identifying with Two Testament faith until now. Scripture is entirely clear and specific about the necessity for Jewish believers not to "abandon circumcision of sons, the Torah, or the customs of our ancestors." (Acts 21:21), nor act in such a way as to transmit that message. Indeed, the entire council of the Apostles decided they had a responsibility to be publicly, pro-actively demonstrative about the ongoing commitment of Jewish Messianics to those three zones of observance. Rav Saul (Paul) and others made an open display of participation with the Torah and Jewish custom to make known by action that faith in Yeshua as Messiah does not in any measure entail abandonment of the Jewish national, religious, or cultural identity. Even so do we, modern Messianics.

However - all that has to do with us as Jewish believers.

BIBLICAL SPECIFICS FOR NON-JEWISH BELIEVERS

The next verse of Scripture in Acts says this about non-Jewish believers in the Messiah. Acts 21:25: "As touching the non-Jews who believe, we have written and concluded that they observe no such thing, save only that they keep themselves from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from strangled, and from fornication."

The "no such thing" to which the above Scripture refers is Acts 21:18-24 mandate of adherence to the observances and practices incumbent on on Israel, and still incumbent upon Jewish believers in Messiah: circumcision of our sons, and the Torah laws themselves, and Jewish traditional customs insofar as they do not breach Scripture in letter or spirit.

If non-Jewish believers want to create a holiday called Yippie-Yahoo on any day of the year and celebrate Yeshua's birth on that day, there really is no direct Biblical prohibition to it. The non-Jewish believers in God and Yeshua have no specific national identity as Israel does: believers exist in every nation. Those nations and their identities exist as a direct expression of the will of Heaven (Eph. 3:14-15), and their cultures have endemic dignity. If they want to reinvent certain practices (as the Greeks did with Messiah's Passover, converting it among themselves into the more-than-once-per-year event now known as "Holy Communion"), the Apostle Paul's writings to them as they were developing this new, non-Jewish celebration give us great insight: he did not chide them for doing something new: he simply gave them some moral guidelines along the same "Noachide" model reference that ends the Acts 21:25 clarification of what non-Jewish practices are mandatory in the absence of a Jewish national incumbency.

CLOSING: EITHER, OR, AND

In sum - yes, we our shul as a Two-Testament Jewish community does not observe the winter-solstice based, post-Biblically created, non-Jewish event called "Christmas." We celebrate the coming of Messiah during Pesach (Passover), along with remembrance of his redemptive death and resurrection. 

And yes, we do honor the right of our non-Jewish brothers and sisters in faith to observe their Two Testament faith however they sincerely feel led. (Rom. 14:5) We hold them dear, we are in positive and genuine fellowship with them, and we are happy to visit with them in their observances, invite them to join us in ours, and we and rejoice in their love for the One G-d and the One Messiah, without judging them or seeing their observances as in any way lesser before G-d or humankind. We are "One in Messiah" - not identical, but in unity and peace.

So - Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and a very Happy New Year to all.

29 December 2008 © Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen