Question:
Dear Greg,
According to Jeremiah 10 we should not celebrate Christmas
(or any Christian event) with trees and shiny decorations.
The tree, decorations and even presents for that matter should be out,
not so?
If
you don’t celebrate the gift of Christ on Christmas, it has just as little
value as, for instance, Halloween. What
is your opinion of this?
Gerrit
Answer: Dear Gerrit,
Jeremiah
10 does not condemn the Christmas tree as it is used today to celebrate the
birth of Christ. Why?
1.
The context condemns idol worship. The
workman in the passage concerns
2.
Idols are made in the likeness of a human.
The idol described in Jeremiah 10
3.
There was no such thing as a Christmas tree when Jeremiah wrote. The earliest Christmas tree
appeared between 1500 and 2000 years
after the time of Jeremiah. The
Christmas tree as we know it dates back only a few hundred years.
One of the cardinal rules of understanding the Bible is to realize that a
passage must have a meaning to the original audience and readers before it can
also have a meaning to a later audience. Christmas
trees did not exist when Jeremiah wrote. It
is impossible to try to make Jeremiah 10 a diatribe against Christmas trees.
If
the question goes beyond Jeremiah 10 to a Christmas tree in general, and
someone’s conscience, then, of course, it is possible to celebrate Christ’s
birth without a Christmas tree. One does not need lights, decorations, gifts, celebrations,
concerts, family gatherings, dinners, etc. to celebrate the birth of Christ.
These things are of and by themselves not wrong, and they can be a
wonderful occasion for joy, which is the emotion Christians have in recalling
the birth of our Lord and Savior. But
the real reason for the season is Jesus
In
Christ,
Greg Albrecht