The Christmas season offers excitement and a mighty rush to buy all of those Christmas gifts that other people don't necessarily want. Christmas music in the malls makes for a merry environment, and if you're drawn into it you'll be humming the songs piped throughout the mall. Santa Claus is everywhere, overseeing whether we're naughty or nice. In grandiose displays, his reindeer soar above the clouds, pulling a sleigh full of toys. It's Christmas time, beginning here in America immediately after our Thanksgiving Day.

What's wrong with this picture? Christmas, though kept by well-meaning people, turns out to be a hoax. And, be honest, we all know that it is! But do parents bother to tell their kids the truth that Santa can't be everywhere at once, that he's not real, that you can't find him in the Bible and that Christmas was never given to us by Jesus Christ?

It's a fact that the most popular holidays aren't the Holy Days of Christ our Savior. He never observed them. He never told His Church to observe them or any days like them.

Why then are they so popular?

We human beings, with our conflicted human nature, are at once wonderful and perplexing. If large enough groups of people get together to do something, more people will follow.

One man tried a simple experiment to see if people would follow his lead. He simply walked out on a busy city sidewalk and began to stare up in the sky. Soon people began to look up and some commented that they "knew" what he was looking at; they saw "it" too. We all are social creatures. It is in our nature to follow others, especially if they are in the majority.  

Another illustration of this tendency comes from an older television show called Candid Camera that showed how people do funny things in public, without much thought. In one scene at the border of a state in New England the producers placed a man dressed as a police officer standing beside a sign that read, "The state of Delaware is now closed." Drivers jammed their brakes, skidding to a stop. A long line of incoming vehicles began to back up.

One rather perceptive driver confronted the policeman with these pleas: "Hey! My wife and kids are in Delaware. I've got to go home. They're expecting me." Another person saw that the outbound lanes were filled with moving vehicles, leaving the state. "How come the state is closed for us but not for those other people driving out of the state? If the state is closed, then shouldn't they stay in the state?"  

It's a common habit of people not to question social norms. Sociologists call this the principle of social proof, where "we determine what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct" (Robert Cialdini, Influence: Science and Practice, 1993, p. 95). Christmas is a perfect example of this common human trait.

Within a hundred years of Jesus Christ's ascension a large number of former pagans were becoming "professing" Christians. Many of them, however, refused to abandon a popular pagan holiday called the Midwinter Festival. Centuries later their pagan celebration was simply changed to "Christmas" and accepted as a "Christian" tradition without any biblical backing.

But is Christ really in Christmas? Is there scriptural authority for keeping it?

The answer on both counts is an emphatic no! God never authorized the repackaging of any pagan festival in a "Christian" wrapper. Rather, God commands in His Word that His own Holy Days should be observed(Deuteronomy 16). They are the only true Holy Days you'll find in the New Testament.

God's sacred Holy Days have great meaning. They are commanded in the Bible for the faithful servants of God to observe. Jesus kept them. His apostles kept them. So did the New Testament Church. And there are clear scriptural reasons why you and I should keep them. Together they reveal God's overall plan for the salvation of humankind, showing why, how, and when God plans to save humanity.