'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house… You know the story, a fat man in a red suit travels the world in a single night in a sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer to deliver toys made by elves in his workshop at the north pole. He enters through the chimney, puts gifts, or coal, into stockings hung by the fireplace and presents under a decorated evergreen tree. In the lead up to all of this, people sing songs like, Frosty the Snowman, and Jingle Bells. TNT and TBS have their marathon of the movie A Christmas Story and after you have seen that you can settle in for 12 hours of NBA games during which you can sit down to feast on a Christmas ham. This Christmas celebration is the secular one, nothing to do with the birth of the Savior where God Himself puts on skin and enters our world as a helpless infant.
Many celebrating the Christmas above will proclaim that everyone knows, “Jesus is the reason for the season!” May I ask where Jesus is in any of that? There is a second story that will be told in countless churches around the world leading up to December 25th. This story begins nine months earlier when Mary, the mother of Jesus, is visited by an angel that reveals to her that she has been chosen to bear the Son of God. As Mary’s time to deliver the child draws near, her husband Joseph takes her on a long journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. When they get to Bethlehem, they discover that there is no room for them in the inn so they must stay with the sheep in the stables. Mary delivers the baby, lays Him in an animal feeding trough, a manger. Some shepherds that were nearby were told by an angel to go see this baby; and they did. Most every nativity scene you will see will also include three wise men at the birth delivering gold, frankincense and myrrh. You can read the story in Luke 1 & 2, and Matthew 1 & 2.
Why December 25th? Christians will say that we don’t know when Jesus was born so that day is as good as any other to celebrate it. There are theories that I won’t delve into here, but the important part is that they believe that the date isn’t in their Bible. Is that true? Was the Creator of the universe short sighted and didn’t know that he would eventually have to send His Son to redeem the world? Did He say, “Didn’t see that coming?” I don’t think so. Many Christians spend little to no time in the Tanach, the Old Testament. If they open their Bibles outside of church, it is mostly in the New Testament where Jesus Christ is (they are Christians of course). Many churches spend a massive amount of time on the writings of Paul, some on the Gospels and most, including churches I have attended, little to none on the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Very little is taught from the Tanach though it is the larger portion of the book! Let’s start at the beginning, back in Genesis 1. In verses 14-15 we read, “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to distinguish between the day and the night, and let them be signs to mark the seasons and days and years. And let them serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth.’ And it was so.” Here, the Hebrew word underlying “seasons” is mo'edim (מ֣וֹעֲדִ֔ים) meaning appointed time, meeting, assembly or festival. It’s an appointment, not a season such as spring or summer. We learn in Genesis 1 that there will be appointments on God’s calendar, He has plans! If we jump forward to Leviticus 23 and Deuteronomy 16, we find where these appointments are defined. Of these appointments, also called feasts, three are where (Exodus 34:23) “all your men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord, the God of Israel.” Paul explains in Colossians 2:16-17, that these feasts/festivals are a shadows of things to come, “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.” Don’t misunderstand Paul here, 2 Peter 3:16. For the purposes of this piece, we will focus on the third of these feasts, the fall feast of Sukkot also known as Feast of Tabernacles or Feast of Booths.
In Leviticus 23:33-36 we find, “The Lord said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites: ‘On the fifteenth day of the seventh month the Lord’s Festival of Tabernacles begins, and it lasts for seven days. The first day is a sacred assembly; do no regular work. For seven days present food offerings to the Lord, and on the eighth day hold a sacred assembly and present a food offering to the Lord. It is the closing special assembly; do no regular work.” This is a commanded feast where the Israelite men were commanded to assemble to keep the feast. These feasts are not one-and-done events; they are remembrances of past things and/or pointing to future events. In the case of this feast, when it was given, it was so that the Israelites would forever remember their forty years wandering in the desert where they lived in a Sukkah, a tabernacle, after Yehovah God liberated them from Egypt. This feast also points to the future Millennial Kingdom commencing at the end of this age, where Jesus Christ will live and reign with humans on Earth for one thousand years. That is the ultimate fulfillment of this feast, but it is the intermediate fulfillment of this that we are interested in here.
Please consider this third story that begins with John the Baptist in Luke 1. I will not go into deep detail here but will provide links to resources where you can be a Berean and see if what is presented is true; use the links. John’s father, Zechariah, is a priest of the division of Abijah. This division tells us when Zechariah is on duty serving in the temple. In addition to his two normal appointed times of service each year, he would also be on duty at each of the three feasts each year where all adult males are required to assemble. Zechariah was serving at the feast of Shavuot (what Christians would later call Pentecost) when he was chosen by lot to enter the Holy of Holies and burn incense. He is told by an angel that he is about to become a father even though he and his wife Elizabeth are very old and past childbearing age. He doesn’t believe it and is struck deaf and dumb until he circumcises and names his newborn son John, eight days after his birth. With this information we learn that it was probably about June when Zechariah returned home, and Elizabeth became pregnant. Getting pregnant in June means that John is born in the spring of the following year, most likely on Passover. We later learn that Mary was visited by angel Gabriel when Elizabeth was six months pregnant, which would be December on our calendar, and told that she would give birth to a son, the Son of God. Nine months from December would put Mary’s due date in the fall of the following year, the time of the fall feasts.
Mary was visited in Nazareth by the angel but ends up delivering her Son in Bethlehem. Why were they so far from home? The Bible tells us that Joseph was required to register when a census was taken, and he had to do that in the town his family is from. Joseph and Mary, being descendants of King David, went to the city of David, that is Bethlehem, to take care of this requirement. It is not a minor trip to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Since Joseph was already going to be in Jerusalem three times that year for the feasts, and since Bethlehem is only about six miles from Jerusalem, he would go register while attending the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot). Mary wasn’t required to go to the feast, but families frequently attended together. As a side note, who else was required to go to the feast? Mary’s father, along with every other adult male. He may have even brought his wife, Mary’s mother, as well. They were part of a large group traveling south to the feast. There would have been over a million people showing up to the feast. Jerusalem is not large enough for all those people to show up and build a Sukkah to live in for a week, so staying in Bethlehem, and other surrounding villages, would be common where they could easily walk to Jerusalem to go to the Temple for the festivities during the feast. So, they arrive in Bethlehem and find there is no room for a very pregnant Mary at the inn. Why is that? Well, a multitude has shown up for the feast. Women and children are not required to stay in the Sukkah, they can stay at an inn. Other families got to Bethlehem before Mary and Joseph and rented all of the rooms, so Mary had to stay in the Sukkah with Joseph. Mary gave birth to her Son on the first day of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, the fifteenth day of the seventh month, in the Sukkah. English Bibles say he was placed in a manger but that is likely an inaccurate translation by people that didn’t understand the feasts and culture. Eight days after this day is another feast day, a High Sabbath, The Last Great Day, Shemini Atzeret (שְׁמִינִי עֲצֶרֶת). What day is a boy to be circumcised? The eighth day, Leviticus 12:3, “On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised.” These are the only two High Sabbaths where there are eight days between them. Coincidence? I think not. Yehovah God called out these feast days about 1,400 years prior to the birth of his Son. Everyone was gathered together when these events transpired! What a plan! This is the intermediate fulfillment of Sukkot and the final fulfillment is close at hand! The angel did appear to shepherds, told them of the birth and they went to the Sukkah to see this for themselves. There were no wise men, Magi, bearing gifts there; they didn’t arrive until about fifteen months later.
This third story has the advantage of keeping the events in the context of where and when they were happening. These people were the descendants of the kingdom of Judah that returned from Babylon, they are Israelites, they are Jews. They were keeping the feasts. The second story, the traditional one, ignores the Torah, the rules they were to live by.
Does the truth matter? It should since Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” It can mean, “No one comes to the Father except through truth!” In Deuteronomy 12:29-32 we are given a warning, “The Lord your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess. But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, “How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.” You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods. See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it.” Please watch The Christmas Question below, it will show the pagan roots of many of the traditions we have today regarding Christmas (the first story above), how those people worshipped their gods. Read this part again, “How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.” You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates.” Jeremiah 16:19 says, “O LORD, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit.” We have inherited lies! We don’t have to continue in them, in fact, we are commanded not to. Our traditions mix the first two stories together. The truth is, we were commanded 1,400 years before the event to celebrate His birth every year, on Sukkot.
To have this third story told to you in more detail, I recommend this YouTube series, The Chronological Gospels television series. The entire series is very informative but episodes 5 – 8 will tell this story. You can also read about the story in The Greatest Story Never Told, and The Chronological Gospels Bible.
New here? Consider reading the introduction here.