Christmas and Paganism, Oh my!

Dear Apologist, how do I respond to people who say Christmas trees are banned by the Bible?


This claim comes from a peculiar reading of Jeremiah 10.  It says:

 “Thus says the Lord: Learn not the way of the nations, for the customs of the peoples are vanity. A tree from the forest is cut down and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman. They decorate it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move. Their idols are like scarecrows, and they cannot speak. They have to be carried, for they cannot walk. They are the work of the craftsman and of the hands of the goldsmith; their clothing is violet and purple; they are all the work of skilled men.”

Some people observe that this warning contains a mention of decorating a tree and conclude it is inherently idolatrous to decorate a tree.  However, these people are failing to understand what this passage is describing and what idols were in the ancient world.

This passage of Jeremiah isn’t really describing the decoration of trees.  Rather, it is talking about the carving of wooden idols.  In pagan cultures an idol would be made by forming wood or metal into the representation of a deity.  Then the figurine would be treated as an avatar of the deity, and it would be decorated and offered worship.

This is described in more detail in Isaiah 44:14-15:

“He cut down cedars, or perhaps took a cypress or oak. He let it grow among the trees of the forest, or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow. It is used as fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it.” 

In the case of Christmas trees, we don’t carve the trees down into the shapes of a pagan gods, nor do we worship them or offer sacrifices to them.  So the Jeremiah 10 passage has nothing to say about Christmas trees.

That is, unless you start worshiping yours.  In which case… stop that.



Dear Apologist, how do I respond to people who say Christmas is borrowed from a pagan holiday?

The two holidays typically used for this claim are the Roman feasts of Saturnalia and Sol Invictus.

Saturnalia was a festival which stretched from December 17th to the 23rd on the Roman calendar and held in honor of the god Saturn.  Sol Invictus was a deity in the Roman cult of sun-worship.  A holiday of same name was held on December 25, near the winter solstice.

[It should be noted that we don’t have any records of the holiday being held prior to the mid-300’s AD.  This leads to questions about whether the celebration of Christmas actually preceded the institution of the Sol Invictus holiday.]  

In any event, the proximity of these holidays to Christmas on the calendar leads some to assert that when we’re celebrating Christmas, we’re unwittingly celebrating these pagan feasts.

The absurdity of this claim is simple to point out.  Imagine the US Congress instituted June 10th as a new national holiday, Entrepreneurs’ Day.  It is a day in which we celebrate economic risk-takers and innovators.

Now imagine someone comes along and points out that June 10th is also Portugal’s independence day.  And therefore, while you may think you’re celebrating the work of entrepreneurs on that date, you’re really celebrating the independence of Portugal! 

Well, any sane person would observe that the coincidence of those two holidays proves no such thing.  With only 365 days in a year, any date you choose for a new holiday will already be taken by something else.

Now, others make the more modest claim that Christmas was placed on December 25th to create a Christian alternative to the aforementioned holidays and it isn’t the true birthday of Jesus.

Again, this raises the question of which came first.  But this wouldn’t matter even if it was true.  December 25th is the liturgical feast celebrating the birth of Jesus.  The Church doesn’t actually say it’s His real birthday.  So the appropriate response to the lesser claim is to shrug one’s shoulders and say, “OK.”