this is the world into which God sent His Son. He could have looked at the human family and said, “I am staying out of this one.” But He didn’t. He chose to show up, to be here. This is the key. The tension of Christmas IS the wonder of Christmas.
We have been told by historians that the December 25 Christmas was the Church’s way of covering over and stamping out the celebrations of Saturnalia. However I can find no early sources that say that is what the church was doing. Nor do I find this widely attested pattern on part of the early church. I do see a pattern in modern scholarship. This pattern insists, “The early Christians were just stealing ideas and holidays from pagan culture and incorporating them into the Jesus myth”.
