Responding to “Should Christians Celebrate Christmas?” by Charles Halff – Part 1

I recently read an article by Charles Halff entitled “Should Christians Celebrate Christmas?” In it, the author argues that Christmas is an unbiblical, pagan celebration that Christians should not participate in. While there is much here that we as Christians need to thoughtfully and prayerfully consider and Mr. Halff should be commended for raising the issues, there are also a number of points with which I must disagree. I will attempt to address each of these over the next several posts.

Mr. Halff’s first argument against celebrating Christmas is that it is not a biblical doctrine: “If our blessed Lord had wanted us to celebrate His birthday, He would have told us when to celebrate it and how to celebrate it.” In support of this assertion he notes that there are only two birthdays mentioned in Scripture, both of which are associated with murder. He concludes that God did this purposely to show that He "has no pleasure in birthday celebrations or anniversaries."

It should be noted that there is a third possible mention of birthdays in Job 1:4. If this is in fact a birthday, then it clearly is not associated with murder, which would completely derail this argument. But since it is open to dispute, I will give Mr. Halff the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Nevertheless, to say that Pharaoh's birthday in Genesis 40:20-22 is associated with murder is itself a bit of a stretch. The fact is, the text does not say explicitly why Pharaoh had his baker killed. The best explanation is that there had been an assassination attempt since both the baker and the cupbearer were imprisoned together and these would have been the two chiefly responsible for Pharaoh's meals. If someone had tried to poison Pharaoh, these two would be among the first to be suspected. It may be that both were incarcerated while an investigation took place. Then, as foretold by the two men's dreams, the baker was implicated in the plot and the cupbearer exonerated. Admittedly this is speculation, but it is the explanation that best fits all the facts. Romans 13:4 had not been written yet, of course, but it was true even then and indicates that it was well within Pharaoh's God-given responsibility to execute a criminal.

Even if we assume for the sake of argument that my explanation of Pharaoh's birthday is wrong and Mr. Halff's is correct, Mr. Halff's conclusion is still on shaky ground. It cannot be assumed that because something is presented in a negative light in a narrative passage that God is prohibiting it. There are at least hundreds, if not thousands, of very clear, explicit prohibitions throughout Scripture. God could very easily have said, "Thou shalt not celebrate birthdays", but He did not. The celebrating of birthdays is not the point in Genesis 40 nor in the accounts of Herod's birthday recorded in Matthew 14 and Mark 6.

To illustrate, if I were to employ this line of reasoning with other narrative passages I might conclude that it is wrong for a Christian to be a bank teller because the only time that money changing is mentioned in the Bible is when Jesus throws them out of the temple. Similarly, the only time that bathing is ever mentioned in the Bible it leads directly to David's and Bathsheba's adultery, so certainly no true believer should ever take a bath! It is a logical fallacy to draw a conclusion the original author did not intend based on a detail from the story. (For more on this, I recommend the books Attacking Faulty Reasoning by T. Edward Damer or Exegetical Fallacies by D. A. Carson.)

In summing up his point, Halff says that the Bible “tells us everything we need to know for our spiritual lives … We don’t have to go outside the Bible for anything.” and he references 2 Timothy 3:16. This is a terrible misapplication of this verse. You cannot conclude from a positive assertion (all Scripture is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness) that the negative inverse (all that is not Scripture is not profitable, etc.) is valid.

Furthermore, while I concur that all Scripture is profitable, that does not mean that Scripture is complete or comprehensive about every subject, especially when it comes to innovations that appeared long after the Bible was written. For example, the Bible says nothing about television. Certainly there are many principles in the Bible which should inform our decisions about how best to use television (Psalm 101:3), but we are not surprised that the Bible does not mention television directly -- how could it? Similarly, as Halff rightly points out later in his article, the celebration of Christmas was not instituted until the fourth century, so it is no mystery that the Bible doesn't mention it. To make the absence theologically significant is very poor reasoning. (The relatively late origin of Christmas is an important issue in its own right and will be dealt with in my next post.)

To be continued...