Christ Church, Verses Christmas Christians

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What the Early Church Actually Celebrated — Before Rome Rewrote the Calendar

STORY MODE — BEFORE CHRISTMAS EXISTED

    The year is about AD 140. A small house-church gathers quietly in a courtyard tucked between stone homes. Rome tolerates them at best, hunts them at worst, so everything they do is simple… quiet… intentional.

    The believers arrive in twos and threes. A widow careful with her small clay lamp. A fisherman with bread wrapped in linen, still warm and fresh. Two young men carrying a Scroll of the Prophets step inside the small room growing crowded. A mother with a baby asleep against her shoulder sat quietly against the wall in the corner.

    No one is rushing. No one is decorating. No one is rehearsing a play or building a stage. They enter whispering one phrase to each other, “Maranatha.” Come, Lord.

    Inside the light is warm and soft a single table sat in the back. It only had the one lamp on top, yet the whole place filled with it's glow.

Bread. A cup. A scroll.    

Nothing extra. Nothing borrowed from the world around them. And yet… the room feels full. Alive. Holy. Not because of the props. But because of the presence.

    Tonight, as they gather it won't be busy. It won't be filled with distractions. Their hearts are not trying to make the prettiest meal. They are content without a meal. Instead, they will celebrate: the resurrection, the breaking of bread, the teaching of the apostles, the prophets pointing to Messiah, the hope of His return.

    No nativity scene. No tree. No winter festival. No date on the calendar set aside for the birth of Christ. No plays, no kids to dress up, no lights on the tree and most of all no consumerism telling us we need things we have no use for.

    Not because they didn’t love Jesus. But because the early church never celebrated His birthday. Not once. Not for nearly 300 years. It wasn’t part of their faith… their rhythm… or their worship. 

They celebrated what Jesus DID, not when He was born.

   

    I can hear you.... Jennifer, this is great… but my kids will never understand. We need something, don’t we? We’re still celebrating Christ… so it’s okay, right?

    That’s where the modern crisis lives. We assume our children won’t understand obedience. We assume they need entertainment to stay interested. We assume tradition is too powerful to challenge. But none of that is true.

    Your kids will understand. Because it is your duty to help them understand. And God never commanded parents to use cultural traditions to help children find Christ— He commanded parents to model truth. 

If Christ Himself isn’t enough without the holiday, then the holiday has become your Christ.

    The heart of the message gets buried under layers of “fun,” tradition, sparkle, and culture.

    Kids don’t need a holiday to know Jesus. They need a home that refuses mixture. And yes, it takes time, intentionality, awkward conversations, and a willingness to stand alone.

 

    But they will learn, and what they gain is far more powerful than any sentimental December memory: They gain a faith anchored in truth, not tradition. For me, the starting place is simple:

Strip away everything it is NOT
before you replace it with what IS.

Because here is the real truth we keep avoiding: Not only did the early church NEVER celebrate Jesus’ birth in December… we have allowed pagan customs to infiltrate:

  • our homes,

  • our rhythms,

  • our worship,

  • and our children’s understanding of Christ.

    We’ve done exactly what Israel did and we justified what God forbids and baptized culture with religious language.

    We let tradition become our excuse. We let tradition become our education.  But let me ask you something and yes, it is intentionally uncomfortable: If “tradition” is a valid excuse, then why don’t you become a cannibal? Some cultures do it. It’s tradition. It’s normal to them.

    “But that’s different!” Exactly. Tradition is NEVER the measure of truth. God is. “It’s Christmas. It’s harmless.” Is that really the argument? Harmless? Is it harmless to adopt a holiday rooted in darkness, slap Jesus’ name on it, and call it holy?

    Is it harmless to train your children to associate Christ with practices the early church warned us repeatedly to avoid? Is it harmless to merge worship with idols and expect our kids to grow pure in their faith? “It’s just lights, food, gifts, and fun.” Is it?

    Really? Or have we simply grown comfortable in the mixture God asked us to reject?  Because mixture always feels harmless until it numbs the heart,
dilutes the truth and becomes the very thing that keeps a family from knowing God as He is, not as culture remade Him.

BUT HERE IS THE GOOD NEWS 

Just because December traditions aren’t from Scripture
doesn’t mean you can’t worship Jesus this month.

It means:

You don’t need the world’s traditions to honor Christ.
You can reclaim your own.
Your biblical ones.
Your early-church ones.

Here are the real traditions Jesus and the early believers lived by, and you can build December around these:

SO, WHAT DID THE EARLY CHURCH CELEBRATE?

1. The Resurrection (weekly & yearly)

The very center of their faith. Every gathering echoed, “He is risen.”

2. Passover — fulfilled in Christ

They didn’t abandon it. They saw Jesus in it.
His blood. His sacrifice. His deliverance.

3. Pentecost

Not as a Jewish holiday, but as the anniversary of the Holy Spirit’s fire.

4. The Lord’s Supper (daily or weekly)

Not a ritual. A family meal remembering a Savior who died and rose again.

5. The Coming Kingdom

Their hope wasn’t a baby in a manger. It was the returning, King.

 

This is what the persecuted church clung to.

🕯 1. Sabbath Rest

A weekly stopping. A return to God’s rhythm. A breath. A reset. A holy space.

🍞 2. Breaking Bread Together

A shared meal. A remembrance of love, sacrifice, and community.

📖 3. Reading the Prophets About Messiah

Isaiah, Micah, Daniel. The actual announcement of the coming King.

🔥 4. Celebrating the Resurrection Life

Every week. Every gathering. Every prayer.

🌿 5. Remembering His Return

“Maranatha.” The heartbeat of the early church. The hope that shapes everything.

🎉 6. Practicing Purity Instead of Blending

The early church refused mixture. They walked away from culture, not into it. That was their worship.

✨ **If you want Christ-centered tradition this month…

you don’t have to adopt Rome’s. You can adopt the Apostles’. And that is far more powerful than a date on the calendar.

“Yeah but it isn’t flashy, full of events, or busy… what will we DO with ourselves?”

(The question every modern Christian asks out loud or silently.)

Let’s be real for a moment.

If we stripped away the:

  • stage lights
  • rehearsals
  • cute kid programs
  • themed services
  • holiday décor
  • countdowns
  • productions
  • potlucks
  • Christmas Eve candlelight photos

…and just sat in a quiet room with a lamp, some bread, a cup, the Scriptures, and each other…

Most Christians today wouldn’t know what to do with themselves. Because we have confused: activity with anointing, busyness with holiness, performance with presence.

The early church would step into our December and say: “Why are you doing so much to feel so little?”

And that’s the truth no one wants to say out loud.

Busy Worship 

The early believers didn’t need:

❌ full calendars
❌ decorated sanctuaries
❌ soundtracks
❌ productions
❌ themed services
❌ holiday playlists
❌ matching outfits
❌ sentimental nostalgia0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Verses

Biblical Worship

They needed:

✔ a lamp
✔ a scroll
✔ a table
✔ a prayer
✔ a song
✔ a Savior
✔ and each other.

 

Quiet. Simple. Holy.
That was enough. It wasn’t boring. It wasn’t lacking.
It wasn’t “less.” It was real.

So what will we do with ourselves?

The same thing the early church did.

1. We will slow down.

The hardest spiritual discipline in a culture addicted to noise.

2. We will gather simply.

No props. No pressure. No performance. Just people and Presence.

3. We will open Scripture… really open it.

Not themed. Not seasonal. Not tied to manufactured holidays.

4. We will remember Jesus through His traditions — not Rome’s.

  • Breaking bread

  • Sabbath rest

  • Prayer

  • Teaching

  • Acts of generosity

  • Fellowship

  • Hope of His return

5. We will retrain our hearts to recognize God without decorations.

If the only time we “feel Christmas” is when the tree is up,
what are we really celebrating?

6. We will relearn what stillness feels like.

Because most believers don’t know.
And that’s why they fear quiet spaces.

But quiet is where God speaks.

If the light of your faith only shines when the tree is lit,
it isn’t the Light of Christ you’re celebrating —
it’s the glow of a tradition you refuse to test.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

If worship needs:

  • a season
  • a date
  • a mood
  • a soundtrack
  • a theme
  • an aesthetic
  • a tradition
  • a festival

…it isn’t worship. It’s habit wearing a Christian costume.

The early church didn’t need Christmas to celebrate Christ.
They had Christ Himself.

And they had room in their lives for Him because everything
else was ruthlessly stripped away.

Not flashy. Not busy. Not impressive. Just faithful.

1. Did Jesus celebrate Hanukkah?

Yes. Scripture literally says so.

John 10:22–23:

“Then came the Feast of Dedication [Hanukkah]… and Jesus walked in Solomon’s Colonnade.”

Hanukkah = Feast of Dedication.
It wasn’t one of the feasts commanded in the Torah,
but it was a national commemoration of the Temple being restored.

Jesus entered Jerusalem during it
but note this:
He didn’t teach about the festival.
He didn’t observe rituals.
He used the moment to declare:

“I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30)

In other words: He used the setting of Hanukkah — not the holiday — to reveal Himself.

The early church survived persecution with no Christmas.
The modern church can’t survive December without it.
That should terrify us.

Jesus didn’t join cultural traditions.
He walked into them and called people back to God. 
If your December draws you into the culture instead of drawing you to Christ, 
you’re not following Jesus… you’re following the crowd.

2. Did the early church celebrate Hanukkah?

Not in a formal way. The earliest believers were:

  • Jewish
  • Messianic
  • centered around the Temple
  • living in a Jewish rhythm of life

So, they were aware of it, they knew the story,
and some would have acknowledged the historical memory of the Temple being rededicated…

…but there is zero record of the early Christian church:

  • holding services for it

  • creating rituals around it

  • elevating it to a yearly celebration

  • treating it as a religious obligation

  • attaching prophetic meaning to it

  • replacing it with a Christianized version

Hanukkah was a cultural remembrance —
not a commanded feast,
not a covenant festival,
and not something the apostles built into the structure of Christian worship.

3. Would Jesus have “celebrated” it the way Jews celebrate it today?

No. Why?  Because the modern 8-day menorah, dreidel, gift-giving version of Hanukkah is post-Temple, rabbinic, and much later. The Hanukkah Jesus saw was:

a remembrance of the Maccabean revolt
a celebration of the Temple being purified
people gathering and teaching
national pride in God’s deliverance

No 9-branch menorah.
No oil miracle ritual.
No dreidels.
No gifts.

 

4. So what DOES this mean for Christians today?

This is important. Hanukkah was never:

  • commanded by God,
  • practiced as a feast by the apostles,
  • repeated in the early gentile church,
  • or taught as a pattern for believers.

BUT… Hanukkah does foreshadow something important:

God restores what the enemy defiles. 
God lights His temple again.
God rededicates His people.

And that is a powerful truth. But it’s not a holiday we are commanded to keep.

Those traditions emerged hundreds of years later as Judaism evolved in exile. Jesus wasn’t participating in rabbinic customs that didn’t exist yet.

Conformity is easy. Holiness costs. Transformation changes everything

You can’t be set apart if you refuse to be separate

Jesus stepped into cultural moments

He didn’t adopt cultural traditions.

Hanukkah = cultural moment.
Christmas = cultural moment.

Jesus used Hanukkah to reveal His identity.
He didn’t build His worship around it.

So, when Christians ask:

“But shouldn’t we celebrate Christmas because Jesus celebrated Hanukkah?”

The answer is: He didn’t celebrate Hanukkah as a festival. He walked into it and pointed people back to Himself.

That’s exactly the difference between:

  • Christ Church (centered on Jesus), and

  • Christmas Christians (centered on tradition + culture).

One elevates Christ. The other elevates custom.

“If the world can’t tell the difference, it’s not transformation — it’s compromise.”

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