Nov 26, 2018
by Rev. Nicholas J. Kersten
Director of Education and History
The question of the keeping of holidays and festivals among Seventh Day Baptists is for some a matter of dire importance which points at the purity of our faith. For others, it is seldom given a second thought as they carry out whichever traditions have been handed to them. Given those divergent postures, it is inevitable that the questions of how important these holidays and traditions are arise with some frequency among our people.
When we study the Scripture, we find there is little question that Jesus not only observed the holy days and festivals prescribed by the Mosaic Law (esp. in Leviticus 23), but that he did so perfectly. In addition to the holy days and festivals, Jesus seems to view important community events like weddings and public meals as opportunities to minister to lost and broken people.
Interestingly, however, Jesus is silent about the cultural clothes these festivals were almost certainly dressed in. There are about 1500 years between Moses giving the instructions about the feasts and Jesus’ keeping of them. During that time, the people of Israel took the land, lost the land, (some) were taken into captivity, (some) returned from captivity, (a smaller group) eventually overthrew their Greek rulers, and then subsequently adopted at least some elements of their surrounding Greco-Roman culture. The Old Testament feasts kept by Jesus were almost certainly not kept the same in the first century as they were when they were originally given by Moses. Despite the reality of changing culture and language, there is no indication in the scriptures that these changes presented any real obstacle in keeping them, providing the heart of the keeper was aimed at the purpose for which the feast was given in worship and adoration of the giving God.
The question with respect to the festivals is whether we believe they remain as a commanded celebration for us or if they were specifically for the people of Israel and subsequently changed in some way or fulfilled in Jesus. Because they are part of the Mosaic Law, we should consider them in the same way we do the other commands of the Law. The majority of SDBs now (and throughout our history) have therefore approached the feasts warily, for fear of being pulled into legalism through the observance of them and other aspects of the Law. This is not to say that there are not some SDBs who observe the feasts or other elements of the Law—only to say that such individuals represent a minority both at present and historically.
The question of “Christian” holidays like Christmas and Easter is slightly different, however. For starters, there is no Biblical command that any days be recognized as holidays in the New Testament. Neither is there any prohibition of establishing celebrations of Biblical events. That said, there are no exact dates given for some events (like the birth of Jesus Christ), while others are dated relative to their proximity to Jewish feasts, complicating the establishment of a yearly holiday. Furthermore, there are no suggestions that early Christians kept any of these holidays. Instead, as the Christian faith spread in the third and fourth centuries, it sought to recast existing cultural celebrations as a means of teaching Christian truth as a contextualization strategy. This permitted people to retain some of their yearly rhythms while infusing them with new meanings.
It seems we must address the real issue at the heart of the questions we might have about
holidays and festivals: as (mostly) Gentile believers in our contemporary context, we must
make a choice about which cultures we will honor and borrow from in our celebrations and
how and why, and make our celebration, however conceived, about Jesus.
If we choose to keep the Old Testament feasts, we must admit that we are populating our keeping of the feasts with a different culture than the one into which they were originally given. We will take from historic and current Jewish traditions what we can and reform them for our own celebration of Jesus Christ. This will likely lead us away in key respects from the Jewish festivals to honor the Messiah most Jewish people have not realized—most Jewish people would find one or more aspects of our celebration of the festivals deeply foreign. Likewise, the Old Testament passages which command the festivals do not instruct us to recast the days to honor Christ, so we must go beyond the written commandment if we are to honor Christ in the festival.
On the other hand, if we choose to adopt the dominant cultural tradition and celebrate Christmas and other Christian holidays, we have other challenges. The first of these is that some aspects of our current “Christian tradition” (candles, trees, special foods, etc.) are cultural relics from the pagan festivals which were repurposed so long ago. Perhaps even more dangerous is that current cultural pressure on these holidays (especially Christmas) in the form of commercialism and consumerism could distract us from the real purpose of the holiday such that we worship an idol instead of Jesus Christ.
Even larger than the confused cultural sensibilities in the options are the challenges in Biblical consistency. If we contort our principles of interpretation to allow or disallow certain things, we stray, no matter which final position we adopt. If we allow our current cultural baggage to cause us to justify our desired practice using scripture, we name our idol, and in a way that is possibly worse than some tepid celebration of a reconstituted festival or misconceived holiday. Whatever position we adopt, we must be prepared to use it broadly, applying the same principles to the same sorts of issues. As one example: if someone would say that a Christmas tree, with it is lights and decorations, is an idol, they must also then contend with a more pressing and ubiquitous idol: their television. The texts applied to naming the tree as an idol could as easily be applied to the TV (and other things).
SDB icon A.H. Lewis wrote more than 100 years ago about these dangers in his book, Paganism
Surviving in Christianity. In it, he not only identifies what he believes are pagan elements in the way Christians lived in his day, but also the broader questions of interpretation which gave him greater concern. Lewis seemed to believe that only a divinely inspired faith could withstand the corrupting power of pagan culture, and that if people kept their eyes on the scriptures and did their research, they would arrive at the truth: “…It is clear proof of the divine character of Christianity, that it was not wholly destroyed by its contact with paganism.” Lewis seems to have had trouble with how closely the contemporary keeping of holidays echoed the pagan ones, not with the repurposing of the pagan holidays as such: that the supposedly Christianized pagan festivals had too much pagan and too little Christ.
More recently, my predecessor as Historian Don A. Sanford suggested in a small tract called
“Holidays and Holy Days” that the greater risk to contemporary Christians is in missing a special opportunity to celebrate a Biblical event, skipping the debate on pagan roots and Jewish law and moving to the action step. He favorably quotes English historian Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) who wrote: “Things said to be ever done will prove to be never done unless sometimes solemnly done,” before suggesting that we ought not miss the opportunity to take time each year to celebrate Christmas: “…The celebration of the Nativity adds to our consciousness the importance of Christ’s presence throughout the rest of the year.” As with Lewis, Pastor Don seems to think that the part that is important is how you honor Jesus in the holiday, not the surrounding cultural trappings.
The difficulties with the various positions are why Seventh Day Baptists must continue to give space for conscience while seeking unity in our churches about these things. If we are being honest, our own cultural sensibilities can be as big a factor in our decisions about festivals and holy days as anything we find (or don’t find) in scripture. No matter our decision, we should commit ourselves to honoring Jesus Christ as Lord and loving our neighbors as ourselves, even if they make different choices than we do in these things. Honoring Jesus as King should be our highest goal and our most basic expectation. May you celebrate the birth, sinless life, blameless death, and triumphant resurrection of Jesus Christ this month!