Unwrapping Christmas: Lies, Legends, and the Light of the World

so Hey, welcome to That's a Good Question, the podcast where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. We are a podcast of Resound Media, a place you can trust to find great resources for the Christian life and church leadership. You can always submit questions that we answer on this show to resoundmedia.cc/questions.

If you find this resource helpful or just jolly because it's Christmas time, please rate and review, share with some friends so that more people can encounter the life-changing truth of God's word. Also, if you know somebody who wants to hear answers to these questions, especially our Christmas questions,

be sure to share it with them so they can learn and grow as well. My name is John, I'm here with Mitch. Yeah, and if you forgot someone's Christmas present, maybe the best present you could give them is sharing this podcast with them.

That's right. There you go. Lots of Christmas cheer to share today. It is, this is going to be a festive episode. We're diving into lots of questions all based around Jesus's coming to earth

that we celebrate at Christmas time, this time of year. So let's jump into it. First question, ready, John? I'm ready. You got your Christmas. For those who can't see visually, I'm wearing a Santa hat.

Yeah, Santa hat. And we'll discuss whether that's heretical or not. Yeah, we will discuss if that's heretical or not, but just like Santa, I'm very jolly and very festive and I work very hard just one day a week. So I'm a pastor. Just kidding. All right, here's the first question. Were the shepherds and wise men actually at the manger at the same time? Good question. No, as it would have it, the shepherds receive the news on Christmas

Eve and go to join the story to see baby Jesus in the manger, see Mary and Joseph right then and there. But the Magi or the wise men come much later, up to two years later, actually. You follow the story going on in Luke, you look at Herod and when he receives the news and he goes and he actually, awful thing, slaughters baby boys up to two years old. Yeah. Once he finally does get the news, relating to the timeline that the wise men are there

and all that whole sequence of events. So unfortunately, our beautiful, adorable nativity scenes where they're all there at one time, unfortunately, it was never quite that picturesque. But all those characters do make their way eventually to see baby Jesus and Mary and Joseph. Yeah, I have the privilege of preaching on this passage on Epiphany Sunday, which is the Sunday after Christmas, and we get to celebrate the wise men coming and being the first people who hear the gospel who

aren't Jewish. Yeah, but yeah, they're there much later. Matthew 2 talks about now after the birth of Jesus and then talking about the wise men coming. So it's definitely after. All right, our next question. Does the virgin birth matter and why? Great question.

Because we make a big deal about this, right? We talk about it in the Apostles' Creed. It's part of, we talk about this, like it's a tier one thing, right? If you deny the virgin birth, then you're no longer a Christian.

Why is that so central to our faith? Yeah, and you're saying that because it's in the Apostles' Creed, you're saying that's what would make you not Christian if you're saying you denied it. Correct. So you're saying, yeah.

Yeah, and actually, interestingly, that's something that has been denied by some who would call themselves Christian theologians. Or for some, it wasn't denied, but it was said that it doesn't matter whether it was true or not. It's sort of a practical or functional denial of it. Actually sort of famously, Rob Bell, a pastor who used to be just up the road from us here

in West Michigan, wrote a book. And in the book, he posited that what if we learned one day that Jesus actually had a dad named Larry? Interesting name choice for a Middle Eastern carpenter. First century guy. Yeah.

Yeah. But let's just say that that happened. And what would that mean? And actually, the argument he made is so contrary to just even the way that you're framing the question is, you know, he said that that's a that we shouldn't view the Christian faith that way that we shouldn't view it as being so fragile that if we just pulled out one brick, I think is the analogy

used from the wall that it would all crumble apart. So so yeah, let's talk about the answer to that question. Yeah, yeah, it it very much does matter. So so number one, because the Bible says it, right? The Bible is very clear. It explains it in a number of ways.

It uses that word for virgin. When we look at, when we go back to Isaiah chapter seven, and we look at the prophecy of that, and we look at the Hebrew word, and then we look at the way that it was translated into Greek.

There are other words they could have used. People have said, well, that word could also be translated as young woman. Well, but that wasn't the common way that you use that word. There was a specific word for that, and so they used the one that would lead us to interpret it towards virgin and then

even when Greek Jews Long time ago translated the Old Testament into Greek from Hebrew. They used the Greek word then for virgin So there's a lot of ways that we know. Yeah, yeah a New Testament, right? So so there's a lot of reasons that we know that the Bible intends to say virgin Yeah

We also have even you know, the detail that the Holy Spirit gives to Joseph and to Mary about, you know, the conception through the Holy Spirit. Yeah. So I think, you know, I think there's no question that the Bible is trying to tell us that Mary was a virgin and it's going to have a virgin birth. So I think you've got a Bible problem if you're gonna deny the virgin birth. Yeah, that'd be a really strange aspect of the birth story of Jesus that the angel came to Joseph if Mary's not a virgin.

Sure. Right? Right. Yeah, like what's, what would be going on there? That'd be pretty hard. Right.

So you've got, yeah, so you've got a question about the inerrancy of Scripture there, if you want to deny that. But also then, let's talk theologically. What makes Jesus our Savior is that he is both God and man. And that's what happens to the virgin birth. He is born of a woman, but he is conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. Yeah.

So that God is his father, so that Mary is his mother. It's an amazing miracle that happens. We call it the incarnation when God becomes man. And without that, we don't have the appropriate person to pay for our sins. Yeah. Right?

So human beings sin against God, and so a human being has to pay for that sin. Only the God-man can do that. And so we need Jesus to be exactly who he is, and the virgin birth is how that comes about. Yeah, the virgin birth connects both of those things, his deity, him being fully God, and also being fully man. If we remove the virgin birth, he has to be either one or the other, and he can't, again, he can't atone for our sin, right?

And if you missed it last week, we talked all about different versions of the atonement theory. Go back and listen to that. That was a great episode. All right, was Jesus born on December 25th?

Or maybe the better question is, is it appropriate for us to celebrate Jesus's birthday and sing him happy birthday with a birthday cake and candles and I don't know, I had family members who did that growing up. Oh yeah, for sure, me too.

Yeah, and I think that's a great way to, for our kids, we, you know, just help them understand what's going on at Christmas. Yeah, it's Jesus' birthday. Yeah. Totally.

Cake and candles, great way to celebrate. It was weird though, because we had to pick someone to blow out the candles and it wasn't, you know, Jesus blowing out, so it kind of felt weird, but I could see that. Yeah.

Now, what we know from history is that most likely it was not on December 25th. We don't have any kind of certainty about what the date actually was when Jesus was born. So it's possible, but unlikely that it was actually December 25. So there's a few different reasons that Christmas has been celebrated on December 25.

Symbolically, some have come up with the idea that, you know, it's the shortest day of the year and, you know, the winter solstice, right? Yeah, it's the shortest day of the year and from there on forward, there is, you know, growing light instead of darkness. And so symbolically, it's got the beauty of Jesus as the light of the world. And so, from the moment of his birth, light is growing, increasing in the world. So I like that. It's nice.

But winter solstice is the time, and that's got a lot of history for human beings of all different kinds celebrating that time. The Romans called it Saturnalia. Other people, we have history of pagan celebrations of the winter solstice. So it was just kind of a time of the year when people of all different kinds of cultures

celebrated something. And so I think early Christians were able to just kind of say, well, we need a time to celebrate Jesus's birth. This time makes sense. And I think able to take a lot of symbolism and pull it together and make a beautiful opportunity

to make the season about Jesus, our Lord, instead of about idolatry. So is it still wrong to, is it wrong to have a birthday cake and candles and... No, absolutely not. Okay. No, I've heard people say that, that because the history of that date is the winter solstice,

is Saturnalia, is pagan worship, that it's actually wrong for Christians to celebrate Christmas on that day. And I disagree. I just, I understand that, yeah, there's some bad history there that is not Christian at all. But that doesn't mean that we can't take that time of the year and say the real thing that we should be celebrating, the real answer to the darkness in the world, to go back to the calendar and the timing and all that, the real answer to the

darkness of the world is the light of Jesus. So I think there's beautiful symbolism there. I think there's nothing wrong with Christians taking that date and using it that way. Yeah. I think when you look at history, any day you pick something bad happened on that day. And so, any day you pick there's gonna be something that

you're gonna look at and go, oh we probably shouldn't be celebrating on this day. Well, yeah, we got to pick a day to do that. Fun fact, did you know that for a period of time the Puritans actually banned celebration of Christmas? Yeah, they did, yep, I do. Pretty, pretty interesting. Yeah. I think you could dig into in history there, but one of the primary reasons was they felt like it was too Catholic. Yeah.

So banned celebrating Christmas. Yeah, it also got pretty crazy. Like the way that early America celebrated Christmas, it got like pretty. So the drunkenness and violence and stuff like that. People got a little wild in their festivities.

Time out, time out on Christmas. Yep. Seems like a good title for a Hallmark movie, Time Out on Christmas. All right, next question. Getting into your Santa hat,

should we tell our, should Christians tell their kids about Santa Claus? Yeah, maybe I shouldn't have worn a Santa hat for this episode here. How about this, do you tell your kids about Santa Claus? We tell our kids about Santa Claus.

We don't tell them that Santa Claus is real. We're pretty clear that Santa Claus is not real. Now, I'm not trying to shame parents on either side of this whole thing. I mean, you know, whatever. I'll be honest, we don't just because he's not real.

You know, I don't wanna, this is gonna sound mean to our parents who have chosen to tell their kids about Santa Claus. If you're under the age of, oh yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah, spoiler alert for young kids. If you got the young kids in there, maybe.

Yeah, yeah, our huge population of first graders who are listening to. Yeah, that's a good question. Right. No, I mean, it's one of those things. I just, I wouldn't want, I didn't want to go through that period of time when my kids go, wait a minute, you lied to me.

Yeah. I didn't want to have to explain that. So, if you're a parent and you've made a different decision, that's the, you know, whatever. I think there's reasons you can come up with to make that make sense. So I'm not against Santa Claus.

Saint Nick was a real person. A great dude who did some great things in church history. Yeah, dude, I mean, that guy was pretty hardcore. Saint Nicholas, the history on him, if you like history, that's definitely a guy to go back and research.

He did some pretty sweet stuff, but yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's some great history there. I love the symbolism. Jesus is God's greatest gift to us. And so the giving of gifts at Christmas time, you know, symbolically it goes back to the wise men

bringing gifts to Jesus. But so there's lots of, I think there's lots of rich tradition there that we can use to point to Jesus. I think that's a great thing. So yeah, we don't do it just because I don't want,

I don't want to have that conversation one day with my kids about, yeah, we told you that, but it wasn't true. Yeah. And I, especially one of the things that my wife and I have discussed and thought about

is just, I don't ever want my kids to one day be like, well, what else did you tell us that wasn't true? Such as Jesus himself. You know, I just don't want to, I just don't want to get there. That's what happened to me. My parents went like all out on Santa Claus.

Like they, I think my dad put ashes on his boots and would like walk on the roof. So it looked like you know Santa coming from the chimney and walking. I mean like the the apologetic that they went through to prove Santa Claus was real. It was so so intense. I remember when I found out I asked you know Santa Claus he's not real, the Easter bunny no not real, Tooth Fairy no, Jesus and my parents like oh wait no no no Jesus is real. Because like in my head, those are all kind of in the same, you know, almost the same category of these characters who are seemingly omnipresent or omniscient

and, you know, can go travel everywhere on one day and, you know, know whether you're naughty or nice, you know, that kind of stuff. Well, while we don't tell our kids he's real, we do laugh and joke about Santa Claus. We watch the movies, the Santa Claus,

the best Christmas movie, Tim Allen. Claus with an E. Yep, Claus with an E, the best explanation of what Santa Claus is. But I do want to say, by the way, that some of the things around the Santa Claus myth

are very anti-gospel. I actually remember one time doing a sermon on this topic. I'm actually, let me pull it up. I don't know the lyrics off the top of my head, but just listen to some of these lyrics from the, what is this, Santa Claus is coming to town?

Yeah, I was going to ask, what are some dangerous aspects of Santa Claus that maybe we should help our children understand? But yeah, so you're going right into that. Yeah, I usually teach about this a little bit at some point around Christmas time.

But the giving of gifts is supposed to be from grace, not from works. It's supposed to be a picture of the gospel, but unfortunately the Santa Claus thing goes the other direction. It's all about a naughtier, nice list, right?

So here's the lyrics from Santa Claus is Coming to Town. It says, you better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I'm telling you why, Santa Claus is coming to town. It's a little concerning, actually. Cried, pouted.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of shame, a lot of guilt going on there. You're on the naughty list. Yeah. And then he gets right to it. He's making a list and checking it twice.

Gonna find out who's naughty or nice. Okay, so the gift giving is not actually grace, it's works. If you were good, you get a gift. If you were naughty, you get coal, right? It's not grace, it's very works-based. And then to me, the last verse here is just plain creepy.

He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. And I think there's just irony in the last one. Sure. Because it's not actually telling you to be good for goodness sake.

It's telling you to be good for a presence sake. Yeah. So I think that's the – yeah, those are the dangers I think maybe is if your kids were to think that all of it is superstition, including the parts about God, about Jesus, about scripture that you tell them and then also just the gospel versus the grace versus works Yeah, part of it. Yeah, you can put a false view of Like how gifts are meant to be given

I also think that there's just a huge disparity if Santa Claus real is real and how he distributes presents between Wealthy and poor people a little bit scary I remember being a kid and you know looking at my rich friends going how come Santa Claus got them an Xbox and not me? I mean, what the heck like I was good like Well, I'm frozen concert right then your parents got to blame Santa you sure I understand It's super convenient for parents right like we have we have family to a certain extent though

I did have somebody say something to me recently and I I jokingly said well no I don't tell my kids about Santa Claus. I want all the credit There you go. I'm gonna spend the money right? Yeah, right. I want the credit. I'm not giving that to somebody else. Yeah. We have family who criticizes us because we also don't do Santa Claus.

They said, well, what do you do when your kids are naughty in December? You can hang that over their head saying, you better be good. I think I just saw one of Santa's elves. I'm like, man, I don't want to use Santa as a weapon to manipulate my kids into behaving better. Maybe that's convenient, but like,

that stops once they're like, what, in like second grade? Or I don't know what you mean. We don't mess around with Elf on the Shelf or Santa's Not Your Niceness. We just talk about the wrath of God. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, don't worry about coal, worry about hell. There you go. Let's move into our next question. Should Christians have Christmas trees? Yeah, so if you go back and study some of the history of the Christmas tree, again, whenever you go into the history of some of these long time cultural symbols, you're going to find different

lines of history, right? There's no like 100% approved story of where this exactly came from. We don't have this in Slo Mo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's some different traditions about where this really came from. But regardless of where you look, you're probably going to find pagan background to the idea of the Christmas tree. Some of it...

Could you explain what pagan means? I think we sometimes say that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great question. Yeah, so pagan basically meaning, you know, opposite of biblical religion. Sure.

Sort of worldly religious practices. Sure. Often arising from some kind of worship of something in creation. Yeah. Right? You know, a god of the sun, a god of the harvest,

a god, you know, those kinds of things. So when we say pagan religion, that's usually what we're referring to. So yeah, in pagan religion, it was just the evergreen is a powerful symbol, right? It's something that is just always green,

always has life, never loses. It doesn't go away in the winter. So there's always, I think, been some symbolism around the pine tree or spruce trees or whatever you use. Just because of that life sort of property to it. There's also, if you go into even going back into some Old Testament stuff, you think of

the Asherah poles. I don't know how many people know this, but in the Old Testament, the Asherah poles that Israel sometimes adopted from their neighbors, those were actually... What's the appropriate word I can use to describe this here? It was an image of male genitalia. Yeah.

And so it had to do with fertilization, had to do with the god of having fertile crops and all those kinds of things. Reproducing. Reproducing. Yep. Yep.

So, and that shape, that symbolism, often using trees or poles to picture it. And so you will hear that there's some history there that maybe the Christmas tree came from an ashtray pole. Yeah. Which is obviously bad. All right.

So what does that mean for us? Yeah. We use it or not. Yeah. I tend to think it's OK as long as it's not your intention. Yeah.

I think if you're worshipping an ashtray pole and putting up a Christmas tree in your home. Bad. Yeah, that's bad. You shouldn't do that. You definitely should not do that. That's, yeah, that's sin.

That's idolatry. It's not good stuff. I don't think, I think most people who put up Christmas trees don't have that background in there. And that's not a prominent background for us today.

You know, if we lived in like a culture where most people saw a Christmas tree and thought that, then I'd be like, well, you know, we should probably not do that because even if we don't believe that, we're maybe sending a confusing signal to our neighbors.

But, you know, in modern day, the United States, I just don't think people have those backgrounds in their mind. It's so closely associated with Christmas that when you see it, nobody thinks, very few people think, you know, this is pagan worship.

They think, oh, that person's just trying to celebrate. I had a seminary professor who was definitely against Christmas trees. Really? Yep. He was hardcore against Christmas trees for the Asherah connection.

But yeah, I just don't think that cultural history is near enough or prominent enough for us to really fear that. Well, like Martin Luther was one of the big proponents of Christmas trees. He's famous for being the guy who,

at least supposedly, was first to put lights on the Christmas tree. Yeah. He looked up in the night sky on Christmas Eve, saw the beauty of the stars, went home, put lights on his Christmas tree. Yeah. Which is wildly dangerous. My dad was a fireman and I've seen way too many videos of Christmas trees just like going up just like that. I mean, they catch on fire so quickly. So to think that they were putting candles in Christmas trees, or in pine trees.

Yeah. Just crazy. But yeah, a little easier nowadays. Next question. Should Christians celebrate Christmas with presents? Yeah, I think there's nothing wrong

with celebrating with presents. It's a great, I think you just explained to the kids the symbolism here, that God gave us the greatest gift in his son, Jesus Christ, who came, was born in a manger, lived the righteous life that we couldn't live, died the death for sin that we deserve to die,

rose again so we could put our faith in him and have eternal life. So just remind them of the symbolism. Also going back to the wise men, right? The wise men brought gifts to Jesus. Yeah. So likewise, we share gifts at Christmas time. But what about the viewpoint of saying, you know, that's very capitalist of you to say, John, giving gifts, falling into this commercial of maybe very Hallmark holiday kind of thing.

Yeah, I guess I could understand that, but it doesn't have to be that way, right? There's nothing, maybe in defensive capitalism, there's nothing wrong with market. The market is not an evil thing inherently. Unfortunately, we are sinful human beings

and we can be consumed with greed and use it for all the wrong things. But there's nothing inherently wrong with the exchange of goods. So it's a great thing, giving of gifts. Christmas, the idea of giving gifts, you know,

reflecting back to the greatest gift that we were given is such a great symbol, right? I think, if you're using Christmas as a way to, you know, celebrate materialism rather than the birth of Christ, you know, I think you can get, that can be confusing for kids, it can be confusing for a lot of people but sure you know yeah yeah in the gospel yeah you know that's that's the point yeah yeah there's always a way

to screw this up right yeah right maybe trying to help our kids realize that's not all about stuff yeah that can be I think a valuable thing for our culture really it's not all about consumerism kids it's not about just trying to get the coolest new toy or whatever it is you know trying to help them remember the symbolism. Yeah. Speaking of ways that we can threaten our children, sometimes when our kids are

acting naughty, my wife will say, what if there were no presence under, under the tree, you know, would you still be happy? And to say, you know, their, their answer is, you know, yes, because Jesus is our greatest gift, but sometimes she says that and they go, that's funny. Well, will there be no presents? Well, actually, so I've seen videos of, maybe you've seen some parenting advice videos.

I think that is such a terrible practice. Somebody who, they demonstrated that when December rolls around every year, they wrap up a bunch of empty boxes and put them under the Christmas tree. And then when their kids are naughty, they take one and they throw it in the fireplace. That's crazy. Oh man.

That's going to be traumatizing for kids. I can only imagine what that would do to a kid. It's like those videos where the Grinch comes out. I see that and I'm just like, who thought this was a good idea? You know? Like scaring two year olds.

Like yeah, I don't know. Grinch is a scary character. I'm sorry if you've done that and I've offended you, but don't do that. That's wild. Yeah. All right.

Last question, was Jesus born in a barn? Maybe. There's a few options looking at the texts that they could point us to. I mean, just thinking about ancient Israel and just the terrain and the geography,

I think there's a lot of likelihood for a cave that that's probably more like where they would have kept animals and where just, you know, just look at the geography of Bethlehem and that kind of thing. I think cave makes a lot of sense. I've heard other people say, you know, look at the etymology of that word and in context and stuff that maybe that's actually more like just a guest room off of a house, a place where maybe animals were kept as well as guests, things like that.

Yeah, the word for inn is probably better translated guest room, right? But in a lot of Jewish homes, there was a place for the animals to come inside, which kind of sounds crazy that you'd keep animals in your house. I mean, that's your livelihood, right? So you're going to treat them as well as you can. And so the, you know, one theory aside from a cave is that, you know,

Jesus was born in that part of the house where the animals were kept. Right. And that's why there he was placed in a manger, you know, in a trough really. Yeah. Yep. Feeding trough.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, we, uh, in the last year or so, we've become a little bit of hobby farmers. We've got some goats. Yeah. So, uh, don't tell my kids, but I'm excited on Christmas. I plan to take them, no, no, no goats in my house.

I thought that's where you were going. Oh man, that's not where I was going. No, I'm, oh my goodness. Well, Eden, they are, they're letting stuff go all the time. So no, I was gonna bring the kids out to our goat shed and use that as a little bit of a illustrative tool there.

So this is probably what it looked like, smelled like. Not a real great smelling place or goat shed. No, no. I think that's a beautiful picture of the, you know, like the Westminster Confession talks about what, you know, the humiliation of Jesus that he was brought so low. You know, he left heaven, the most glorious place, and put on human flesh. He was born in a stinky room or cave with animals and

itchy hay. Yeah, I even think, yeah, there's a song I like that talks about Jesus that he stumbled as he learned to walk upon the ground he made. Just a crazy, the beauty of the incarnation also, I think we have to balance it with understanding that Jesus really, this thing becoming a human was a tremendously humiliating and humbling thing for him.

Right. Made low. Yeah, it's amazing. Incarnation is an amazing miracle that we should be awestruck by when we consider that God would become a man, take on flesh, all out of love for us in order to save us from our sin.

Amen. Well, we hope that you all enjoy celebrating Christmas time with family or friends, or most importantly, with your brothers and sisters in Christ. Go to a Christmas Eve service, go to a Christmas Day service, worship the Savior

for who he is and what he has done. We hope you have an awesome week and an awesome holiday. Merry Christmas, everybody. You can like, follow, subscribe, resoundmedia.cc, Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. Have a great week.

Yeah. Bye!