Posted on by Psalm 122

Christmas: Jewish story, Christian holiday

Christmas technically it isn’t a Jewish holiday, but it is a Jewish story. In particular, it is a Second Temple Period Jewish story with all the elements of that time: righteous people, angels, a miraculous birth, prophecy, shepherds, a star, and Gentiles paying their homage to the new-born king of the Jews. Virtually all characters in this birth story are Torah observant Jews. These events take place when the land of Israel was under the brutal occupation of Rome, a time when the people of Israel were longing for redemption.

While this story is Jewish at its core, many traditions and customs have developed around the holiday making it harder today to see the Jewish elements of the story. Christmas celebrations have become a blend of a holiday celebrating God’s gift of the messiah and a collection of winter customs from mostly European countries, some with origins in pagan traditions. At times these two elements overlap and other times they stand in contradiction to each other.

December 25? No one knows the date of Jesus’ birth. It is not mentioned in the New Testament (most likely because Jews did not commemorate birthdays), and only 300 years later did the celebration on 25 December became widespread in the Western (Roman) Church. It was calculated that Jesus died on 14 of Nissan (March 25). Since it was commonly believed by the ancients that great people died on the day of their birth or conception, it was concluded that the Messiah was born nine months later in December. (Eastern Christians determined conception to be April 6 and birth nine months later on January 6.) Later the theory developed that the early Christians chose December 25 in order to counteract a popular pagan holiday, but serious scholarship now dismisses this notion.

A Birthday? Christians aren’t simply celebrating the birthday of Jesus but rather that God in the person of his son Jesus of Nazareth came to be present among us, to die and rise from the dead as an atonement to free us from sin and death, and to give us everlasting life.

Other holidays associated with Christmas

  • December 31, “Sylvester”: A secular holiday with little religious significance for Christians. In the Roman Catholic tradition it is a saint’s day for a little known pope, Sylvester. Some churches have a service on this evening to ask for God’s favor in the upcoming year.
  • January 1, The Circumcision of Jesus: a holiday no longer marked by the Roman Catholic church but still commemorated by Anglicans, Lutherans and the Eastern Christians. Some have renamed this holiday the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus.
  • January 6, Epiphany: This holy day commemorates the arrival of three foreign magi in Bethlehem to pay homage to the holy child, and thus celebrates the revelation of God’s Messiah to the Gentiles.
  • February 2, The Presentation of Jesus in Temple.

How Is Christmas Celebrated? The holiday has become fairly secularized, and many customs that are such a part of the Christmas tradition originated only in the 19th century. However, one of the most popular, Santa Claus, has roots in fourth century Christian history. Santa Claus, or more correctly, St. Nicholas, was a bishop of Lycia (now Turkey) famous for his generosity and gift-giving to the poor. The portrayal of him as a fat, jolly man in the red suit (with reindeer) was invented just over a hundred years ago.

As a Christian holiday, most Christians attend religious services on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. The most prominent part of the holiday, after church services, is giving gifts to friends, family and charity – remembering that the Messiah (Christos in Greek) is the greatest gift ever given – the glory of Israel and the light to the nations.

For more on this topic

Banner image: The Adoration of the Shepherds (L’adoration des bergers) by James Tissot

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