Christmas: “To Celebrate or Not to Celebrate”

The point: Wrestle with the Christmas season and come to some definitive position, both with respect to attitudes and actions, glorifying God in the real world.

Martin lists common experiences of the Christmas season (crowded stores, cards, kids off school) to highlight its inescapable reality for Christians.

We have come again to that time of the year called the Christmas or the Yuletide season, and whether we like it or not, we are forced to reckon with that indisputable reality. The crowded stores, the gaily lighted and ornately decorated public places, the dozens of cards stuffed into our mailboxes, the kids off from school botching up our plans for how to get our work done at home, these are all grim and hard-nosed facts that we cannot avoid. The Christmas season is upon us. Now, since a Christian is called upon to glorify God in the real world, he must be called upon to glorify God in the rea...

0:23 - 1:36 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The current celebration of Christmas is essentially, don't you leave out my essentially, essentially pagan, humanistic, and ungodly in all its ramifications.

He quotes a historical account detailing December 25th's pagan origins in the 'birthday of the unconquered sun' and Constantine's declaration, illustrating the pseudo-Christian roots of the date.

The setting apart of December 25th as a day of special commemoration of Christ's birthday, is rooted in a pseudo, that is, false, partial, shallow, Christian and pagan tradition. Now all of the reading I've been able to do on this, there seems to be pretty much unanimous conviction by historians that a statement such as the one I am about to read is in all main points, its main points, accurate. The December 25th date comes from a pagan observance of the birthday, of the unconquered sun. A fortnight, that is, two weeks of festivities, was highlighted by feasts, parades, special music, gift-giv...

9:31 - 10:35 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The current celebration of Christmas is essentially, don't you leave out my essentially, essentially pagan, humanistic, and ungodly in all its ramifications.

Martin quotes a 'Christmas prayer' from a New York Life Insurance Company ad to exemplify the humanistic, God-less nature of Christmas at its 'highest level'.

Now at the highest level, it's humanistic. That is, when people talk about goodwill, peace, harmony, the better life, when they think of Christmas in its most elevated ways, it's purely humanistic. That is, it begins with man and ends with man. For instance, the annual Christmas prayer written by someone who either works for, or under New York Life Insurance Company, and this appears as a full-page ad in Time Magazine every year, a prayer of this nature.

13:18 - 13:47 Read in full sermon

The point: Faithfully and forcefully resist everything that is humanistic, pagan, and ungodly in the current celebration of Christmas.

He describes office parties with inappropriate behavior and Santa Claus promoting covetousness to illustrate the 'orgiastic' and 'ungodly' ramifications of current Christmas celebrations.

Man's betterment is the beginning, middle, and end, and it'll come by man's own steam. Now that's the kind of humanism that pervades Christmas at the highest level. Then you descend to the office parties, the pinching of secretaries, kissing under mistletoe, half drunk,

14:53 - 15:10 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: He identifies and critiques two simplistic responses: complete abstention and condemnation of others, and 'capturing Christmas for Christ' while condemning those who don't. Both…

Martin uses the analogy of women's ability to simplify complex theological problems to explain what a 'simplistic answer' is, clarifying that it's not a chauvinistic comment but an observation of a different mental constitution.

I've often wished for the mind of a woman when wrestling with profound theological problems.

17:28 - 17:33 Read in full sermon

The point: Wrestle to your own position on Christmas celebration based on biblical principles, and allow your brother and sister the same liberty to come to their own position.

He uses the example of buttons on a man's coat and a hypothetical pagan origin (to ward off demons) to argue that the origin of a thing doesn't necessarily make it intrinsically evil, challenging the 'origin bit' argument against Christmas.

about meats. In 1 Corinthians 8, the parallel passage, he talks about the partaking of meat that has been offered to an idol. You talk about something that had a pagan origin. What was more pagan than meat that had been offered up in the worship of an idol? And yet Paul says there are certain Christians, regardless of the origin of that meat, can eat to the glory of God. So when you come with this whole origin bit, and that's why I've never had much sympathy with these tracts that say, if you only knew what the origin of Christmas was, you'd have not. My friend, may I ask you a simple question...

22:14 - 23:16 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The third principle, from Romans 14:3, 13, stresses that believers must not judge those whose persuasions and activities differ, recognizing that each stands or falls to his own…

Martin describes Christian families celebrating Christmas by expressing parental love with necessary gifts, gathering to thank God for His goodness, and remembering Christ, illustrating how the day can be regarded 'unto the Lord'.

Where I've seen Christ honoring Christmas days. Where a father would gather his family together in just the sheer joy of being able to express parental love, not with trinkets and junk, but with necessary items for the child's well-being. And that includes some things to play with. And they've stored up those things.

40:06 - 40:28 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The third principle, from Romans 14:3, 13, stresses that believers must not judge those whose persuasions and activities differ, recognizing that each stands or falls to his own…

He shares that for years his own home had no Christmas tree, and this was a 'mystery' to some in the congregation, illustrating the diversity of convictions and the importance of not judging.

Yes, my brother, you may. I cannot. But I believe you regard that day as unto the Lord. Now, I know this has been a mystery to a lot of people.

41:09 - 41:17 Read in full sermon

The point: As parents, heads of family, and single men and women, you must wrestle through the biblical principles in the presence of God under the Lordship of Christ to form your own convictions.

He uses the metaphor of 'nibbling on the sawdust of office parties and spiked eggnog' to describe the empty pleasures sought by the unconverted, contrasting it with the true meaning found in Christ.

And then I feel I must say just a word in closing exhortation. First of all, to some of the unconverted amongst us, some of you may be sitting here saying, what a killjoy, what a modern Scrooge. I mean, the world's a mess, everything in the Middle East about to blow up, fuel shortage, energy crisis, and here we've got a few days to forget everything and have a good old rip-snorting time. And you tell us that God nowhere lays it upon us.

47:44 - 48:20 Read in full sermon