FOR PAGANS OR PREACHERS?
Christmas, or “Christ’s Mass,” was adopted in the fourth century by Roman Emperor Constantine to encourage a common religious festival for Christians and Pagans.
Growing up in Caldwell, Idaho, John Free said his parents and grandparents taught him that Christmas was “something for Catholics and the denominations that did not embrace the idea that the silence of the Scriptures was to be respected as much as the precise words of the Scripture.” But Free said the Sunny Hills Church of Christ in Fullerton, Calif., where he serves as an elder, views Christmas as a time to celebrate Jesus’ birth and tell his story. “So Christmas carols are sung in our worship service on the Sunday closest to Christmas, and the sermons typically focus on that part of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke,” he said. “There is usually a disclaimer that we really don’t know when Jesus was born, but that is about as far as we go to reassure our more conservative members.”
Glover Shipp, a former longtime missionary who is an elder for the Edmond Church of Christ in Oklahoma, said he has mixed feelings about how to approach Christmas. “To celebrate Christmas without Christ, making Santa the chief person in it, doesn’t make sense,” Shipp said. “However, it may not make sense to bow to the mixture of Pagan and Catholic traditions about Christmas.”
HEY, IS THAT AN EASTER DRESS?
Amy Smith, office assistant for the Nashua Church of Christ in New Hampshire, recalls that her family didn’t celebrate Christmas or Easter as religious holidays. Her mother would make her a new dress around Easter, she said. “But I wouldn’t wear it for the first time on Easter Sunday, so as not to confuse my friends that I might be celebrating Easter,” said Smith, who likes that her congregation embraces both holidays as opportunities.
Lora Isenberg, communications director for the Rochester Church of Christ in Rochester Hills, Mich., said she, too, experienced the “don’t talk about Jesus” approach. “I’m grateful to be worshiping at a church now that takes a different approach and uses this holiday to celebrate Jesus’ birth and, in turn, reach out to the community,” Isenberg said.
As a boy, Tom Riley, minister for the Canyon Church of Christ in Anthem, Ariz., sold enough Christmas cards to earn a tool belt one year and a BB gun the next. “For some of my most devout Christian customers, I knew to show them the secular cards,” Riley said. “Santa and Frosty hit the spot.” These days, Riley’s congregation goes Christmas caroling, and he said he has “developed a voracious appetite for study of the birth of Jesus around Christmas. People want to celebrate what God did,” he said. “So I’ve tried many ways to use Christmas as a time of beautiful, simple, low-pressure outreach.”
Christmas decorations adorn the North Central Church of Christ in Indianapolis, where minister David Mangum said he develops messages themed around Jesus’ birth. Similarly, the church focuses on moms on Mother’s Day and Christ’s resurrection on Easter, taking advantage of the calendar to reach the culture, Mangum said. “I have long considered that it is not ‘unscriptural’ to read Luke 2 in December,” he said. Suggesting that it is “just makes us look more quirky, not more faithful.”
-Scott Wright
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