Grace Presbyterian Church, Montclair, New Jersey

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Pastor's Pulse

by Paul Leggett, Pastor

Rediscovering the Holidays

November 2008

“Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” – II Corinthians 9:15

This is my favorite time of year. I love autumn and the initial start of winter leading up to Christmas. This period of time includes three of my favorite holidays, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Ever since childhood I remember looking forward to these days and seasons. When I was in seminary, I realized that Halloween was also Reformation Day, adding to the impact of the holiday. A critical point we should note about these three holidays is that they all had pagan roots. By that I mean that they were tied into the cycle of nature, which has been celebrated since the beginning of history.

October 31 was the last day of the year in the old Celtic calendar. This was known as Samain and was celebrated in England and Ireland with the belief that the dead and supernatural beings came out of the ground and walked the earth. With the coming of Christianity the ancient new year’s day was changed to All Saints’ Day. This was a celebration of all the saints throughout history from Biblical times to the present. The night before, then, was All Saints’ Eve, or in old English, All Hallows’ Eve or Halloween. When the church adopted this celebration, it emphasized the fact that whatever spirits there were, the “principalities and powers” mentioned in the New Testament, were under the authority of Jesus Christ and their power had been broken (Matthew 28:18; Ephesians 1:20-22; Colossians 2:15; I John 3:8). This led to the modern practice of children dressing up in costumes and going out asking for candy. This increasingly secular practice was based on the Christian belief that there was no fear in the night. In effect, the defeat of the “powers and principalities” was being celebrated.

Thanksgiving has its roots in harvest festivals celebrated throughout the world. In America this practice developed, as we all know, from the Pilgrims thanking God for the harvest. To whom was thanks being offered? The answer fundamentally was to the Lord God of creation, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (the football tradition of Thanksgiving apparently goes back to Native American games played during the harvest celebration). Christmas has its roots in the northern hemisphere in the celebration of the winter solstice. This was December 25 on the old Roman calendar. In Rome it focused on the birth of Mithras, the god of the sun, also known as the “invincible sun”. Eight days later when it became noticeable to the naked eye that the days were getting slightly longer, there was the celebration of the return of the sun-god and the assurance that there could now be a new year, hence New Year’s Day. The early church took the counter-culture approach of worshiping the “sun of righteousness” (Malachi 4:2) on December 25, focusing on the birth of Jesus rather than the birth of Mithras.

Yet what we have seen in recent years is that the pagan roots of all three of these holidays have resurfaced. Halloween, which is now more popular than ever, has taken on a darker focus, reemphasizing the occult character of its origin. Thanksgiving is celebrated with little or no focus on the One to whom we are to give thanks. Christmas also seems more of a celebration of the solstice with its indulgence and excessive focus on material gifts and endless partying. Our Puritan forebears saw these problems over three hundred years ago and simply ignored Halloween and Christmas, retaining only some celebration of Thanksgiving. However, ignoring a problem is never a solution.

We, as Christians, today need to rediscover the Christian celebration of all three of these holidays. This is especially true with regard to Christmas. Here we have the advantage of the season of Advent which begins this month. The celebration of Advent is completely counter-cultural in our present society (see Pastor Brandi’s column this month on the “Advent conspiracy”). Early Christians saw these holidays as an opportunity not only to share the gospel but to live it out in a way that communicated its truth to the world around them. We have that same challenge and opportunity today.