Charles H. Spurgeon Saw Christmas as a Massive Opportunity for Evangelism

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If Halloween (which also happens on the same day as Reformation Day) isn't the only big opportunity for soulwinning - Christmas is as well and it's the first day of December. Personally, I don't feel like celebrating Christmas because of all the misfortunes and mischief that fall upon people. The rush traffic hours, people asking for the license to sin, the prevalence of drunkenness and gluttony - it should be safe to say why Charles H. Spurgeon changed his mind on 1871 about Christmas. He writes this as the beginning of his said Christmas sermon of said year:
WE HAVE NO superstitious regard for times and seasons. Certainly we do not believe in the present ecclesiastical arrangement called Christmas: first, because we do not believe in the mass at all, but abhor it, whether it be said or sung in Latin or in English; and, secondly, because we find no Scriptural warrant whatever for observing any day as the birthday of the Saviour; and, consequently, its observance is a superstition, because not of divine authority. Superstition has fixed most positively the day of our Saviour’s birth, although there is no possibility of discovering when it occurred. Fabricius gives a catalogue of 136 different learned opinions upon the matter; and various divines invent weighty arguments for advocating a date in every month in the year. It was not till the middle of the third century that any part of the church celebrated the nativity of our Lord; and it was not till very long after the Western church had set the example, that the Eastern adopted it. Because the day is not known, therefore superstition has fixed it; while, since the day of the death of our Saviour might be determined with much certainty, therefore superstition shifts the date of its observance every year. Where is the method in the madness of the superstitious? Probably the fact is that the holy days were arranged to fit in with heathen festivals. We venture to assert, that if there be any day in the year, of which we may be pretty sure that it was not the day on which the Saviour was born, it is the twenty-fifth of December. Nevertheless since, the current of men’s thoughts is led this way just now, and I see no evil in the current itself, I shall launch the bark of our discourse upon that stream, and make use of the fact, which I shall neither justify nor condemn, by endeavoring to lead your thoughts in the same direction. Since it is lawful, and even laudable, to meditate upon the incarnation of the Lord upon any day in the year, it cannot be in the power of other men’s superstitions to render such a meditation improper for to-day. Regarding not the day, let us, nevertheless, give God thanks for the gift of His dear Son.

No one can deny that Christmas itself or December 25th of the Gregorian Calendar has some of its roots on Saturnalia. Yet, one can't also deny that Jeremiah 10:3-5 is definitely not about Christmas trees. It's a problem when people don't read their Bible in context. Jeremiah 10:3-5 is about Christmas trees but grave images that people used. The foolishness described was that people cut trees out of the forest to make graven images of false gods. It wasn't about Christmas trees! I wonder where some people got the idea that Jeremiah 10:3-5 talked about Christmas trees? Christmas trees as a pagan tradition may have not come during the time of Jeremiah either!

The truth is that while the Roman Catholic mass is to be abhorred because the sacrifice of Jesus is already finished on the cross - the opportunity that Christmas presents is massive. Sadly, even some of the best Puritan writers like Arthur W. Pink condemned Christmas as an opportunity. Yet, while Spurgeon despised the superstition - he still saw the opportunity. It's just like Christians may not go around dressing up as witches and demons during October 31 - yet you can't deny that they can evangelize people dressed up as such by giving Gospel tracts with candy. Talk about heckling Satan whenever there's the opportunity to make him mad by preaching God's Word!

Christmas itself is nowhere commanded to be observed at all yet it's not explicitly condemned either. The Scriptures tell Christians to rather celebrate Christ's death on the cross through the Lord's supper. The Lord's supper is served in the evening with both the unleavened bread and the wine. You can't have a complete sacrament of the Lord's supper without both elements namely the bread and the non-alcoholic wine or grape juice. Yet Christmas can also be made as an important opportunity to double one's commemoration of the importance of the incarnation of Christ as a human being. So there's really no reason not to see Christmas as an opportunity to spread the Gospel to a world lost in the materialism that surrounds the season.

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