As someone who was raised within the Messianic “Jewish” community, I do not have any kind of emotional attachment to Christmas. My parents allowed me to celebrate Christmas, but I chose not to because of personal convictions. This wasn’t the norm in the Messianic community I grew up in. I can only think of two families in my former congregation who openly observed the holiday. It seemed like everyone else treated Dec. 25 like an average day.
As a kid, the holiday season brought on a lot of internal anxiety. I was only around evangelical crowds, and saying “I don’t celebrate Christmas” was almost always followed up by a thousand questions about my spiritual beliefs. The conversation almost always ended with an invite to that person’s church. While I want to believe that person had good intentions, it always felt like the invitation was to attempt to ‘convert’ me into mainstream evangelicalism.
I was also anxious because I was in a way, fearful of almost everything associated with the holiday. Celebrating the birth of Christ? It’s not a commandment so I better not participate. Celebrating it around the winter solstice must be extra bad as well. Christmas trees? Pagen. Christmas music? Just annoying. These anxieties were a product of my environment. While I can’t recall a time that this was spoken on at the pulpit, it’s a common conversation amongst messianic friends during December. In my experience, learning about the roots of Christmas and Easter is what prompts individuals to explore Messianic synagogues. As a result, it is a passionate subject for many in the movement.
My faith was driven by fear. I don’t think that I would have been as plugged into my congregation if I didn’t have an internal anxiety about accidentally (or intentionally) fucking up. Within my entire experience in fundamentalism, I was convinced that I had more freedom because of the rules. Turns out, I never learned how to make decisions for myself. If I was anxious 24/7, how much freedom did I actually have? After I left church, I realized just how little I let myself take a step back and breathe.
Where am I now? I have learned that Christmas was never the enemy. The real enemy? Fear. In my opinion, the Messianic movement is driven by it. In the past couple of years, I’ve celebrated the holiday and you know what? The vast majority don’t love season because they are intentionally trying to ‘disobey god’ but love it because of things like nostalgia, traditions, family time, and music. All of which are traits of why Messianics love the holidays that they celebrate. Sure, Christmas is not a biblical holiday, but does it inherently mean that it is bad?
Whether you celebrated or not, I hope you had a great holiday season.
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Thanks for the Read !!!!
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