Bah Humbug: How Christians Should Think About the Christmas Holiday

Book excerpt: When it comes to the Christmas Holiday, Christians fall on one of two sides: either they abandon it altogether as pagan and idolatrous, or they celebrate it all together as the most wonderful time of the year. Some have nothing to do with Christmas at all, and others invite Christmas into sermons, Sunday worship, family gatherings and the like. People who believe Christmas is idolatrous quote church history and expound the Regulative Principle of worship. Those who want to celebrate Christmas want to reclaim Christmas as eminently Christian since “Jesus is the Reason for the Season.” What is the biblical view? Is it one or the other, or is there a view more accommodating to both sides? What if both of those extreme views are wrong, and there is another option that is less thought about but more biblically based? Can Christians partake in Christmas…or not? This is not a scan or facsimile, has been updated in modern English for easy reading and has an active table of contents for electronic versions.