Christmas

December 25th, 2004 | 1 min read

My brother points out that today we celebrate the “Christian appropriation of paganism.” He labels it syncretism, but that’s a tad misleading. Christianity did not just adapt the pagan practices, but baptized them. The celebrations we now understand as Christmas gained new meanings with the introduction of the Christian tradition, a tradition so powerful (true?) that pagan elements of the traditions seem to have been broadly forgotten, only to be revived in our post-Christian age. Even the Christmas icon, Santa Claus, cannot be separated from the Christian Saint Nicholas. Call it syncretism, if you will, but don’t expect to make Christians ashamed or fearful that the celebration is somehow less meaningful or less Christian as a result. Rather, it simply points to the overwhelming power of the Christian story…

Matthew Lee Anderson

Matthew Lee Anderson is an Associate Professor of Ethics and Theology in Baylor University's Honors College. He has a D.Phil. in Christian Ethics from Oxford University, and is a Perpetual Member of Biola University's Torrey Honors College. In 2005, he founded Mere Orthodoxy.

Topics:

Christian Life

Christmas

Related Articles

The Doom of Choice

Jeanne Guyon: Learning to Pray in the Digital Age from an Imprisoned Mystic

Two Truths for Dark Days

The Ministry of Salt

Deconversion and the Cross

Descent

Epiphany: How an Enchanted World Drew Outsiders to God

Deconstruction, Reconstruction and Replacement: Building Near the “Yawning Abyss”

Vocational Singleness is a Gospel Cornerstone

Christmas “Time” is Here

My AI Spiritual Director

Dante Was Right: Suffering and Our Journey Toward God

Pursue Obscurity

Kites

Can I Get a Witness?: A Response to Tim Keller

Mocking Death

The Great Unmooring

The Discipleship of Work

The Cross in Our Calling: A Reflection on Mary’s Magnificat

What Can Contemporary Christians Learn from the Desert Fathers and Mothers?

Our Spiritual Malaise

Threnody for a Good Man

Speech Without Accountability: Reckoning with Anonymous Christian Trolls

Waiting Tables as Soul Craft

The Contradiction of Healing Prayer