There are several places in the Prophets in which God declares His utter loathing for the observances of festivals and holy days by the Israelites and Jews. He condemned their sacrifices and offerings, calling them “detestable” and declaring that He “cannot bear your worthless assemblies.”

“When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening,” He said (Isaiah 1:12-16).

Through the prophet Amos, God reiterated that He despised their religious festivals, that their assemblies were “a stench” to Him and that He could not stand the songs they sang to Him (Amos 5:21-27).

These were observances that God Himself had prescribed for them in the Torah, yet He condemned them. He would have preferred they ignored them entirely than to have practiced them in the manner in which they did.

The reason?

“These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me,” He said through the prophet. Their teachings were not the word of God, but only man-made traditions observed by rote, Isaiah said – performed out of cultural habit and institutional inertia (Isaiah 29:13-14; Matthew 15).

Worse than that, Amos, Jeremiah and other prophets explained – while they went through the motions of observing the Torah and worshiping the God of Israel at the temple, they also worshiped the false gods of their pagan neighbors and adopted the perverse and wicked practices associated with that worship.

Eventually, after repeated warnings over the centuries, God gave them over to those false gods by sending the Babylonians and Assyrians to conquer them, carry them into exile and destroy the temple.

The Babylonian Exile doesn’t get much attention among Christians, but if we measure it by sheer volume – by all of the warnings by the prophets leading up to it, the record of the actual event and period of the exile, and the aftermath and reflection upon it by later prophets – it far and away dwarfs any other event in the Bible, including the creation, flood, exodus, or even the ministry of Jesus. It was the defining event of Jewish history and loomed large over the period in which Jesus and the apostles taught, providing the precedent and framing when history repeated itself in AD 70 when the Romans destroyed the second temple and scattered the Jewish people once again into exile.

So, if we’re reading the Bible with any attention at all and with the sincere intention of listening to what God wants to teach us by it, the lesson of the Exile cannot be overstated. The case could be made that everything else in the Bible – including and most importantly the gospel itself: the message of salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus – revolves around the Exile as its central, defining axis.

Return from Exile

The most significant holiday in the Western world today is Christmas – the day we mark the birth of Jesus, the Messiah.

The “Messiah,” as defined by the prophets, is the anointed deliverer promised by God who would regather the Israelites from exile and restore the temple and establish God’s kingdom on earth. The Persian emperor Cyrus allowed the Jewish captives to return and rebuild Jerusalem and the temple in the latter half of the 6th century BC. But, the Jews still considered themselves to be in exile up through the time of Jesus, because they continued to live under foreign domination and because the Shekhinah – the Glory Cloud of God’s Presence that had descended upon the ark and the tabernacle in the time of Moses and again upon the temple in the time of Solomon, which was seen by the prophet Ezekiel to depart the temple prior to its destruction by the Babylonians – had not returned to the rebuilt temple. They had returned to the land and resumed the forms of worship prescribed in the Torah, but they were still alienated from God.   

The disciples of Jesus witnessed that promised “end of exile,” however, when fire from heaven descended upon them on the Day of Pentecost following his death, resurrection and ascension – God’s Presence now dwelled within the Church as the New Temple.

So, on Christmas Day, social convention has it that we gather among friends and family to feast and celebrate, exchange gifts, sings songs and make merry.

To reiterate, the Christmas holiday is commonly regarded as a family affair and the occasion for relations close and distant to regather and reconnect.

‘Tis the Season for Hollow Sentiment

At the same time, there is another social convention which dictates that religion and politics are off-limits for discussion at family gatherings. Such topics are too inflammatory, too personal, too emotionally charged, and so inappropriate to the “Christmas spirit” of festivity and merrymaking.  

To state the obvious: Christmas is – in theory, at least – a religious holiday. It is the religious holiday.

So we gather with family to celebrate it.

But it’s considered rude to discuss religion at family gatherings, and the larger the gathering, the greater the offense against decorum and propriety it is.  

See the problem here?

The irony is stark, yet so obvious and ever-present that pointing it out seems tedious and trite.

And, in fact, the farcical quality of our “Christmas” observance goes far beyond just the obvious collective distraction or disinterest in the ostensible subject of the holiday.

In ancient and early-medieval northern Europe, it was believed that, on the night of the winter solstice, the god Odin – depicted as an old man with a long white beard – would fly over their homes on his eight-legged steed Sleipnir, dispensing blessings and curses to each household according to their desert. Children would leave out hay and honey-sweetened cakes as sacrificial offerings in the hope of receiving a blessing for their family for the year to come.

Not all children today are explicitly taught about Jesus and why his birth is celebrated, but virtually all children are taught about the magical man from the North Pole who rides the sky and brings them presents if they’re on his “Nice” list. Ironically, there is an ever-growing list of scifi/fantasy franchises based on some messianic hero or another – “Harry Potter,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Dune,” “The Matrix,” “Star Wars,” “Avatar,” “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” “Game of Thrones,” Superman, the Silver Surfer, etc. Jesus Christ, and the messianic template he embodies, is an inexhaustible wellspring of inspiration for pop culture. Hollywood has made billions of dollars, if not trillions, repackaging and retelling versions of his story. Yet, as a culture, we are convinced that for Christmas to be exciting for children, we need to provide some colorful mascot for them to worship alongside or instead of Jesus himself.

This is rank idolatry no different than that of the Israelites and Jews leading up to their exile. It’s also great practice for atheism later in life.

Christ and Belial

I realize, of course, that it’s not realistic to expect non-believers to celebrate the birth of Jesus with the focus and solemnity it deserves. They are not my target audience.

A church I used to attend had a succession of large garage doors along the wall between the sanctuary and the lobby. Twice a year, those doors would be opened and about 500 or so additional seats set up in the lobby in order to increase the seating capacity, because there was always an enormous influx of attendees for the Christmas and Easter services. The sanctuary alone could seat, I would conservatively guess, about 3,000 people, and it was typically about half to two-thirds-full during any regular service, but for the Christmas Eve service, with the additional seating, it was standing-room only.

One year, as we were setting up the additional seats, the pastor and I were deep in discussion about something when it suddenly struck me that we wouldn’t see any of these people again. This was their one and only involvement in church all year. And what kind of message were they going to hear? Would they be duly warned that they were lying to themselves to think God was honored by their empty ritual observance? Would they be told that their sentimental indulgence for nostalgia’s sake had nothing to do with the Spirit of God – that it was nothing but their limbic system running on childhood conditioning, not an actual religious experience? Would they hear anything at all to challenge them to make Jesus Christ anything more than the distant second-place mascot to their seasonal routine?

And, for that matter, are the regular churchgoers – whose Christmas observances are presumably more sincere – doing anything different in the eyes of God? Aren’t we just as deluded? Don’t we lead our children in the same rank idolatry that they do, but with less excuse? Do we not also, in effect, praise the gods of gold and silver as we feast and drink from vessels plundered from the temple (so to speak)? Are we not, just like them, merely worshiping at the altar of our own prosperity? Aren’t we yoked with them in the same practices, which we tacitly endorse by our silence, at best, if not by our active participation?

As tactfully as I knew how, I voiced some of these observations to my pastor. He answered with the expected platitudes about “meeting people where they are” and “putting the cookies on a shelf where they can reach them.”

And, I don’t doubt his sincerity quite so much as his discernment.

But, I can’t help but observe that our church got more money in the collection plate during that yearly Christmas Eve service than any five (or 10?) other services of the year combined (not counting Easter). And, it also occurs to me that if they hear a message to harsh their holiday vibe, they’re likely to take their business elsewhere in years to come.

I get the temptation. Churches have to keep the lights on and pay their staff. I get it. In the religion industry, it’s a consumers’ market, and you have to get butts in seats.

But, it is a temptation, and Jesus had a lot to say against large crowds and wide paths as a measure of security or faithfulness.  

And, if the Bible teaches us anything, it is that God does not change, that He does not want the Church to operate like a business, and that history repeats itself.

If that’s true … God’s people are overdue for another exile.

Or, perhaps, we’re already in exile, but we’re so numb to the difference between faithfulness and apostasy that we didn’t notice when it happened.