I am not on a mission to disprove completely the influence of pagan culture in the shaping of Christmas. But I have been thinking about how certain ideas (even ideas about Christmas) pass into the general psyche and go unverified or unchallenged.

In the Bleak Midwinter

Historical evidence and practical reasoning supports a late December date for the birth of Christ. The early Church (and even the Biblical record itself) placed light emphasis on the specifics of Jesus’ birth. It chose to focus more on his final days and death. Easter is the Great Day for the Church, far outshining Christmas in importance. However, references to Jesus’ birth ‘in the bleak midwinter’ begin to appear in the mid-4th Century; the date of December 25th is cited regularly from that period on.

Andrew McGowan explains where this dating for Jesus’ birth comes from: “Strange as it may seem, the key to dating Jesus’ birth may lie in the dating of Jesus’ death at Passover.”* Biblical and extra-Biblical witness is precise in the dating of Jesus’ death during the celebration of the Jewish Passover. As early as 200 C.E. a scholar named Tertullian had calculated Jesus’ crucifixion (reported by the Gospel of John as the 14th of Nisan**) as corresponding to March 25th in the Roman calendar.

Crucifixion and Conception

From these early times, the date of Jesus’ death by crucifixion also came to be recognized as the date of his conception (an event recorded in Luke 1:26-38 and known as the Annunciation).*** Ancient religious belief (particularly in the Jewish tradition) strived to hold all of salvation together. Thus, in the case of the Savior Jesus, the beginning of salvation (conception) and climax of salvation (Christ’s death) were coterminous; celebrated on March 25th.

It doesn’t take a math genius to figure out that March 25th is nine months before the traditional date for Christmas (December 25th). Thus, there is a reasonable explanation for a mid-winter date for Christmas that derives not from pagan ritual, but traditional Christian belief holding together the Annunciation and the Passion.****

Celebrating Christmas

At the end of the day, I don’t think it really matters whether the celebration of Jesus’ birth on Christmas corresponds precisely with his actual date of birth. It is not a theological hill to die on. However, it is worth considering (particularly in response to self-assured critics who claim that Christmas is merely a spin-off of pagan ceremonies) that a December 25th date for Christmas has ancient sources and teaches deep theological truth about salvation.

Regardless of the provenance of the Christmas date or the influences on certain Christmas practices, the Church ought to celebrate the birth of Christ. His birth marks the coming of God’s Messiah–the one who addresses ‘the hopes and fears of all the years,’ the one who will ‘give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.’ May you and yours celebrate that One this Christmas.

* This quote and other ideas in this post come from a helpful article in the Biblical Archaeology Review
** See John 19:14, 31, and 42
*** Today many Christian churches still celebrate the March 25th as the Feast of Annunciation
****A particularly powerful example of the equation of Annunciation and Passion comes from poet and pastor John Donne and his poem ‘The Annunciation and Passion’ which he wrote in 1608 when the March 25th Annunciation Date coincided with Good Friday.

They’d been out there, I assumed, picking at loose mortar, spraying it with the hose, jamming in foreign objects. I had my discipline speech ready. I was contemplating the right punishment to mete out. But it wasn’t the kids’ fault. It turns out house sparrows have been pecking at our mortar as a source of dietary grit. Which means, of course, I’ve been thinking about grit.

It’s hard to believe that these otherwise lovely creatures have been wreaking havoc on the exterior walls of my house. They aren’t searching for bugs. They aren’t nest-building. They are finding and swallowing small bits of stone to help digest their food. It turns out that many animals lacking teeth–most notably birds–use this grit to aid digestion. Here’s more from Wikipedia: “A bird swallows small bits of gravel that act as ‘teeth’ in the gizzard, breaking down hard food such as seeds and thus helping digestion.”

So, honestly, I’ve mostly been thinking about how to prevent these sparrows from destroying my house. I’ve set up an ‘alternative’ grit source (i.e. sand in a bucket, which thus far has seemed un-appetizing to said sparrows). I’ve blanketed their preferred feeding zone with a large blue tarp in order to dissuade them from attacking our house (and perhaps persuade them to try the neighbor’s instead). And I’ve told my wife to invest in some rubber snakes or one of those big plastic owl things to scare the birds off.

I’ve also been thinking about grit’s value to these birds and corollaries to our spiritual lives. Many Christians struggle when it comes to ‘digesting’ the Bible. It can be a difficult book, far removed from us in time and place; filled with ideas that don’t make sense. We, like sparrows, need daily grit in our spiritual lives to help us digest God’s Word.

God provides that grit for His people, so that His Word will be useful and nourishing. The Holy Spirit acts as the True Grit for the Christian. As Jesus says of the Spirit, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.” (John 16:13)

Friends–those who can speak wisdom and truth with boldness–offer another source of dietary grit to the Christian. In making sense of life and in making sense from God’s Word, the support and encouragement of others is essential. The apostle Paul fulfilled this role for many of the earliest churches. As he wrote to new Christians in the city of Corinth, “I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it.” (1 Corinthians 3:2) His teaching and friendship made God’s truth useful in the lives of the Corinthians.

My hope for all of us, seeking to digest the teaching of Scripture and seeking to make sense of the hard truths of God is that we find gritty friends to love us and that we know the True Grit of the Holy Spirit.

Radical Transparency

I’ll be the first to admit that the economic theory behind Bridgewater’s model (and even the article’s explanations of it for that matter) is above my pay grade. What intrigued me, however, was the business ethos that founder Ray Dalio has instilled at Bridgewater. He calls it a culture of “radical transparency.” Dalio justifies his insistence on this transparency: “I believe that the biggest problem that humanity faces is an ego sensitivity to finding out whether one is right or wrong and identifying what one’s strengths and weaknesses are.”

Therefore, within Bridgewater’s corporate culture employees’ ideas are constantly and ruthlessly poked and prodded, challenged and confronted (usually, says the New Yorker piece, in the form of older and more senior managers bullying younger associates). The probing, says Dalio, reduces inefficiencies and prevents bad decisions from being made. The purpose is to weed out ego barriers and emotional reactions so that the business will function more like a machine.

Lovers, Not Thinkers

What happens, of course, in this ruthlessly analytical environment is people get hurt. A quarter of Bridgewater hires are gone within two years. Others adapt, make their peace, and learn to live within the culture. Some thrive in it. While no one can argue with the success Bridgewater’s ethos brings to hedge fund annual returns, its effect on human flourishing is questionable. Dalio’s approach demonstrates the failure of an exclusively naturalistic (even mechanistic) view of systems—especially human systems. A business, a family, and a church are not merely machines aimed at efficient outputs, stripped of emotional baggage.

Dalio’s principled approach fails to rightly assess people as not only ‘thinkers’ but also (and even primarily) ‘feelers’ or, as Jamie Smith argues, ‘lovers’: “Human persons are not primarily or for the most part thinkers…Instead, human persons are—fundamentally and primordially—lovers.” This means that in life we as much ‘feel’ our way through life (relying on our gut) as we ‘think’ our way through it. Interestingly enough, certain assessments attribute Bridgewater’s success more to Dalio’s gut-feeling ability to gauge macro-economic trends than to the power of the mechanistic model. As one former employee puts it: “Bridgewater really is Ray. The key decisions they have made—where they have really made their money—is Ray. Most of what really matters is Ray.”

Real Transparency

Equipped with a more soundly Biblical understanding of persons as lovers (not just thinkers), we’re poised to re-evaluate the ideal of transparency on which Dalio puts so much emphasis. Transparency becomes more terrifying because what’s exposed is not just that our minds are wrong and our thinking misdirected, but that our hearts are wrong and our love misdirected. The fix for that problem isn’t better analysis or better substantiated argumentation. The fix is a new heart.

That is why, in the end, it’s only the Church that can cultivate a culture of real, radical transparency, built upon real, radical grace. This is transparency that doesn’t depend on one’s own investment ideas and theories being proved right through vigorous testing, but that depends on Christ’s having been proved right through the ultimate testing of the cross.

‘The Finale’

A deluge of near Biblical proportions postponed July 4th fireworks in Richmond this year. As a consolation to our children who had been prepping for pyrotechnics all weekend, we allowed them to watch fireworks on television.* As soon as the fireworks began my six year-old son began saying, “I think this is the finale.”

Obviously, he was excited about the firework finale. I couldn’t blame the kid. And I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the display would continue for at least 15 minutes. (Plus, it was pretty funny to hear his self-assured ‘finale’ refrain every twenty seconds.)

Part of the magic of good fireworks is that they exceed expectations. The scale, the sound, the beauty, the feel— it goes beyond what we think it ever could. Even adults are tricked into thinking the finale has arrived before it really has.

God’s Finale

All this thinking about finales got me thinking about God’s finale. The finale (or to use the theological word, consummation) of God’s work of salvation will be beyond our wildest expectations. Like a fireworks finale to a six-year-old, it will be an astonishing audio-visual spectacular. And there will be signs and preludes to the finale that many will mistake for the end. We will be caught saying ‘This is the finale’ before the true end. And when the true end comes, we will be floored by its magnitude and majesty.

The last book of the Bible—Revelation—offers a few glimpses of God’s glorious finale:

A multitude will cry out in thunderous and booming voice, like the conclusion of a fireworks show or like the roaring waters of Niagara falls. It will be deafening. Visceral.

“Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.’” (Revelation 19:6)

The sight of it will be brilliant, shining light into darkness, the brightness of noon in the middle of the night.

“And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there.” (Revelation 21:23-25)

A Good Finale

Finally, like an effective fireworks finale, the consummation of salvation history will be good! It will be stirring and reassuring and comforting. People walking away from a good fireworks display are joyful. They’ve been awakened, stirred, moved by the power.

For those with faith, God’s salvation finale will be overwhelmingly good. In that moment faith will be translated into a palpable sensation of God’s goodness and presence. And then, all present, united in wide-eyed astonishment, will agree in one voice: “This is the finale.”

*Admittedly, televised fireworks lose something in translation—namely the booms that explode in your ears and reverberate in your chest.

I’ve been thinking about water wings. My wife and I have come to realize that while undoubtedly helpful to a point, water wings eventually become a ‘prop’ that prevents our children from swimming on their own. Parents inevitably reach the point when they must pull the water wings from a child’s arms (with some difficulty, I should add) so that she may swim (or sink).

Figurative Water Wings

Many people wear figurative water wings. For instance, we wear relational water wings. We paddle ourselves around our relationships supported and emboldened by the confidence our water wings provide. At first, it is good that we tread carefully with other people. After all, it’s our hearts at stake. But if we never shed the water wings, we’ll never mount the courage to plunge into the deep end of a relationship. And we’ll never learn how to swim on our own in relational deep water. When conflict and crisis come (those first hints of drowning), we panic because we’ve never learned to swim.

Spiritual Water Wings

We also wear spiritual water wings. These are habits that help us initially, but end up keeping us from faith. Certain spiritual practices (often learned from others) support us and offer confidence as we first exercise faith. But if we never learn to leave these practices and put our faith solely in Jesus (the object of our faith and the source of our confidence), we will never ‘swim’.**

Our spiritual water wings are exposed when we say: ‘I’ve never done that before.’ Or when we trust our structures and strategies more than we trust in God. The time may be coming (perhaps its already come) when you should pull off the spiritual water wings that have served you and plunge into the full life of faith in Jesus: plunge into service to others far outside your comfort zone; plunge into telling another person about God’s love for you even when you don’t know the words to say; plunge into a messy relationship where you will breathe grace, even though you are gasping for it yourself.

*Inflatable armbands
**Peter’s faith (and subsequent lack of faith) in Matthew 14:22-33 offers a visible illustration of this idea.