GRACE AMBASSADORS
MINISTRY UPDATE

The Christian War on Christmas

Christians did not celebrate Christmas for more than three centuries.

Those centuries lined up with the time of the Reformation until post-Civil War America (16th-19th centuries).

What was the celebration before? The Roman Catholic mass.

What was the celebration afterward? An ecumenical and consumerist blend of cultural fables, feasting, and gifts like only America could invent.

What was the Christian reason for not celebrating?

In the three centuries where the Bible was more published, propagated, and studied than any other time before, their argument was that it was unbiblical.

Robert Skinner in the 17th century wrote a popular tract describing how Jesus was not born in December based on scripture.

Samuel Chidley, quoting the newly printed Authorized Bible, lobbied Parliament to prohibit its public observance because “the Apostle of the Gentiles, who had the minde of Christ, saith, Henceforth know we no man after the flesh, yea though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more, 2 Cor. 5 16. For if the day of Christs death were better than the day of his birth, how much more then his resurrection.”

In the late 19th century, Charles Spurgeon said, “We find no Scriptural warrant whatever for observing any day as the birthday of the Savior”.

Things would quickly change. The Bible would become a standard for living only by fundamentalists; Christianity would be mocked by the rise of cultural scientism and profligacy; doctrine would be shunned as too divisive; and Christmas would prosper.

The Christian war on Christmas is a history not many people know. It’s a history that is worth knowing by Bible believers.

Better informed is better armed.

For the glory of the risen Christ,

Justin “loins girt” Johnson