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Why Christians May — and Should — Celebrate Advent, Christmas, and Easter.

Sanctifying Time as the People of the Triune God

 

• Jacobus de Bruyn 

Christians do not celebrate the liturgical year because we long for ritual, or because we are chained to “man-made traditions,” or because we are unaware of so-called “pagan connections.”  No - we celebrate Advent, Christmas, Easter, and the rhythm of the Christian liturgical year because this is what redeemed humanity does.  This is the life of a people who have been claimed, gathered, and sanctified by the Triune God.

We sanctify time and we confess in our patterns of living what the Father has done, what the Son has accomplished, and what the Spirit is doing right now in the Church.  We mark days and seasons because God has acted in history, and made it possible for a redeemed humanity to respond by giving history back to Him.

From Genesis to Revelation, God's people demonstrate one consistent instinct - when God acts, His people remember by celebrating His actions.  When God saves, His people commemorate.  When God reveals, His people confess.

And they do so - not only with words - but with calendars.

1. Sanctifying Time: A Biblical Vocation

From the very beginning, God sets time apart for Himself (Gen 2:3).  Israel’s entire life was shaped by sacred time:  Sabbaths, new moons, Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles.   And - importantly - Israel added festivals in response to God’s saving acts, for example:

• Purim (Esth 9:27–28), instituted long after Moses

• Hanukkah (1 Macc 4), instituted centuries later, and celebrated by Christ Himself (John 10:22–23)

If it were sinful to establish commemorations beyond the Mosaic Law, Christ would not have stepped into the Temple on the Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah).  He would have condemned it.  But He didn’t.

Why?  Because sanctifying time is what the people of God do.

In the Old Testament Israel remembered the mighty acts of Yahweh.  The Church remembers the saving acts of the Father, in the Son, through the Holy Spirit.  Thus, when Christians keep Advent, Christmas, Easter - we are not adding foreign elements to the faith. We are standing within the very rhythm God Himself established:

God acts - His people remember, proclaim, and rejoice.  It is not optional piety.  It is covenantal faithfulness.

2. The Early Church and the Shape of Christian Time

From the end of the first century, Christians gathered every Sunday - the Lord’s Day - as a weekly celebration of the Resurrection (Rev 1:10; Acts 20:7).  By the second century, they kept an annual Pascha (Easter).  By the third, the full rhythm of Christ’s life - Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost - was shaping the Church’s worship.

All the Church Fathers, and in particular:  Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus, Origen, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Leo the Great - did not argue for the liturgical calendar - they assumed it.

For them, the liturgical year was not an optional add-on.  It was Christianity lived out in time.  The life of Christ structuring the life of His Body.  They believed time is not empty chronological space – no, time is grace - time is gift - time is where salvation touches creation.

3. Christmas and Easter Are Not Pagan: The Real History

The popular claim that Christmas and Easter are pagan “borrowings” collapses under even the slightest historical examination.  Let us speak plain truth.

 

A. Christmas (December 25)

There is no evidence of a pagan feast on December 25 prior to Christian usage.  The first pagan mention (“Birthday of Invictus”) appears in the Chronograph of 336 - the same document that records Christians already celebrating the birth of Christ on that date.

 

So, which came first?  - The Christian feast.

Early Christians derived the date from:

• the belief that Christ was conceived on March 25 (the ancient date for the spring equinox),

• nine months later → December 25

Why?  Because they reasoned theologically, not mythologically.  They confessed Christ as the true Sun of Righteousness (Mal 4:2).

As St. Augustine declared:  “We celebrate this day not for the sun, but for Him who made the sun.”

B. Easter

The claim that Easter is pagan is historically illiterate.  First, Easter’s date is derived from the Jewish Passover:

• the earliest Christians kept Pascha in direct continuity with the Apostles,

• the content of Easter — the death and Resurrection of Christ — has nothing whatsoever to do with paganism.

Pagans had spring symbols - but nature does not belong to pagans.  Creation belongs to God.

Which brings us to an important point:

Let us take the rainbow as an example.  The rainbow has been misused by paganism throughout history and modern ideologies such as the New Age and transgender movements, but God did not borrow the rainbow from pagans - He create it (Gen 9:13).  It is His covenant sign.  Pagans may misuse God’s symbols, but their misuse does not invalidate God’s original intention with creation.

The same is true for every symbol Christians redeem - we do not borrow - we re-claim.

4. St. Boniface and the Christmas Tree: A Christian Re-Claiming of Creation

This brings us to the tradition of the Christmas Tree.  It was St. Boniface, confronted by pagan tree-worship among the Germanic tribes in the 8th century, who reclaimed the imagery of trees to proclaim God’s salvation work.  The pagan oak - the “Tree of Thor” was believed to embody divine power.  Boniface cut it down in front of the Germanic tribes and when the pagan god failed to strike him dead, the people turned to Christ.

According to the account, a small evergreen stood beside the fallen oak.  Boniface pointed to it and declared:  “This little tree shall be your holy tree tonight.  It is the wood of peace - it is the sign of never-ending life.”

This was not syncretism.  It was evangelisation - the conversion of creation for Christ.  Boniface also connected the small evergreen tree with the shoot from the stock of Jesse (Isaia 11). 

Christians did not adopt the pagan tree.  Christians felled the pagan tree and replaced it with the evergreen of eternal life.  This is the Christian instinct - we do not fear creation. We reclaim it for Christ.

5. The History, Meaning, and Symbolism of Easter Eggs

The same goes for Easter eggs.  Some modern critics mistakenly claim Easter eggs are “pagan,” but historically this holds no weight.  Rather it is a case of the Church did what she has always done - She takes the everyday things of creation - bread, wine, fire, oil, water, and yes, even the simple egg - and lets Christ’s light shine through them.  Easter eggs also have a far older and richer story than many people realise.  Very early in history Christians used the egg as a small but striking parable of the Resurrection.

 

From the earliest centuries, Christians in both the East and the West adopted the egg as a natural symbol of the empty tomb.  The sealed shell became a simple image of Christ’s body enclosed in death, while the breaking open of the egg announced the bursting-forth of new life.  Early Eastern Christians often dyed eggs red, not for decoration, but to recall the Blood of Christ poured out in the Passion.  The egg’s symbolism quickly deepened.  The Fathers of the Church, like Augustine, spoke of the Resurrection not only as Christ rising, but creation beginning again.  The egg therefore pointed to rebirth, the new Adam, and the renewal of all things in Christ.  

 

Medieval Europe embraced the custom joyfully.  During the first millennium, many Christian communities followed strict Lenten fasting rules - eggs were not eaten during Lent.  As a result, households collected eggs throughout the 40 days of Lent.  When the Easter Vigil finally arrived, these stored eggs became a joy-filled sign of the return of feasting.  To decorate or bless them became a way of proclaiming: “Christ is risen — and all creation shares in His victory!”

 

Even in a modern world that often misunderstands its own symbols, the Easter egg still whispers the ancient truth - life breaks out of death – light breaks into darkness - Christ has risen, and the tomb is empty.  The egg is therefore not a childish decoration but a sacramental reminder — a tiny herald of the Resurrection. Whenever we see it, we are invited to remember the central proclamation of our faith: “He is not here. He is risen.”

 

6. The Liturgical Year:  Participation, Not Mere Memory

The early Church insisted that in the liturgical celebrations we do not merely recall events - we participate in the saving work of Christ made present through the liturgy.  In Advent we learn to long;  in Christmas we learn to adore;  in Lent we learn to repent;  in Easter we learn to rejoice;  and throughout Ordinary Time / Kingdomtide we learn to walk with the risen Lord.

 

This rhythm does not enslave us - it frees us.  It teaches us to see our lives inside God’s story rather than inside the world’s secular, commercialised version of time.  In fact, it delivers us from the tyranny of secular time and re-immerses us in the story of salvation.

 

7. A Countercultural Witness

To keep the Christian festivals is to live counter the secular of our time – it is to rebel against the dictatorship of relativism – it is to declare: 

• time is not empty;

• history is not random;

• human life is not a series of disconnected moments.

To celebrate Advent, Christmas, and Easter and indeed the whole liturgical year, is to announce to the world:  “Christ is the Lord of time.  Christ is the centre of history.  Christ is the One in whom all seasons find their meaning.”

And thus, we keep the Christian year not because we are weak, but because God is worthy.  We sanctify time because He sanctified it first.

Therefore, to celebrate the liturgical year is an act of identity, evangelisation, resistance, and worship.

Conclusion

Christians do not celebrate Christmas, Easter, or the liturgical year because we are half-pagan.  We celebrate because:

• God truly entered history;

• Christ truly died and rose;

• the Holy Spirit truly sanctifies the Church;

• time truly belongs to the Triune God.

 

To refuse the Christian festivals is to flatten time into secular emptiness.  To embrace these festivals is to confess what the whole Church has always proclaimed:

“This is the day the Lord has made - this is the story the Lord has written -  we will rejoice and be glad in Him.”

Thus, far from being forbidden, the Christian festivals are a profound expression of biblical faith, apostolic tradition, and the lived confession of the Body of Christ in history.

 

Sources & References

Primary / Historical

• St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies

• St. Athanasius, Festal Letters

• St. Leo the Great, Sermons

• Julius Africanus, Chronographiae

• Egeria, Pilgrimage Diary

• Hippolytus, Chronicon

• Chronograph of 336

Modern Scholarly & Theological

• Catholic Answers, various articles on Christmas & Easter

• Gabriel Hughes, 25 Christmas Myths and What the Bible Says

• Ashley Wallace, The Liturgical Home: Eastertide

• Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist

• Thomas J. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year

• N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God