Gerry Bowler observed in his book Christmas in the Crosshairs, that while the birth of Jesus has always been important to the gospel, the first generations of Christians “lived in profound expectation of [Jesus’] imminent return.” He suggested that, among other things, when those eschatological hopes weren’t immediately fulfilled, the birth of Jesus began to get more attention. When Constantine issued the Edict of Milan making Christianity a legal religion, the annual celebration of festivals and holy days soon followed.

The history surrounding Christmas has been anything but peace on earth and goodwill toward men. While contemporary religious and cultural traditions may evoke a certain nostalgia for its celebration, its history is actually a mess! One big mess—with feverish disagreements, hostility, and even rioting. In Christmas in America, Penne Restad wrote: “Christians [have] wrestled for centuries with questions of if, when, and how to celebrate Jesus’ birth.”
Stop the sleigh! Christians have wrestled with if Christmas should be celebrated? To some that might be a bigger surprise than the presents under the tree. After all, according to Gallup polling, ninety-three percent of people across all demographics celebrate Christmas in the United States, and of those who are fairly religious that number rises to ninety-six percent. In a society that’s deeply divided on any and every issue, Christmas is a near-universal observance. But it wasn’t always so. Paul VM Flesher said: “The notion that Christians of any stripe should not want to celebrate Christmas is so foreign to our present concept of the holiday that we need to review some history to understand it.”
The incarnation—the act of the eternal and only begotten Son becoming man—is foundational to the Christian faith. As John Chyrsostom preached: “Truly wondrous is the whole chronicle of the Nativity.” For some, the yearly commemoration of that event is one of the most important days of the year. Yet Jesus never indicated that this redemptive act was to be annually celebrated, and its yearly observance didn’t enter into the way the Apostles ordered the worship and life of the church. Early Christian scholar Origen (d. 253) asserted that celebrating birthdays was foreign to Christianity, saying: “It has not come from the thought of any of the saints; not one from all the saints is found to have celebrated a festive day or a great feast on the day of his birth” (Homilies on Leviticus 8).
Gerry Bowler observed in his book Christmas in the Crosshairs, that while the birth of Jesus has always been important to the gospel, the first generations of Christians “lived in profound expectation of [Jesus’] imminent return.” He suggested that, among other things, when those eschatological hopes weren’t immediately fulfilled, the birth of Jesus began to get more attention. When Constantine issued the Edict of Milan making Christianity a legal religion, the annual celebration of festivals and holy days soon followed.
Emperor Constantine commissioned that the Church of the Nativity be built in Bethlehem over the cave where it was believed Mary had given birth to Jesus. Historians debate the role of Constantine in the precise development of Christmas, but it has been suggested that he had a personal interest in the festival of the nativity. Nevertheless, it was in the 4th-century when the Roman Church began celebrating December 25th as the birthdate of Jesus. In the spirit of celebration Maximus of Turin (d. 465) said: “Brothers and sisters, our hearts still echo with the joy of the Lord’s birth, and our continuing gladness creates in us a sense of heavenly festivity. For, though the joyous day itself has passed, the sanctification that joy brought is still with us” (Sermo 6).
As that spirit grew around this man-created holy day, so too did traditions, superstitions, and syncretism. Leading to centuries of trouble was the struggle to keep the celebration set apart from worldly activities. For example, warning of the dangers of celebrating the feast in a worldly way, Augustine (d. 430) preached: “For our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became Man for our sake, paid a price for us. He gave Himself as a price and He did so for the purpose, namely, to redeem and separate you from the pagans. But if you wish to intermingle with the pagans, you do not wish to follow Him who redeemed you” (Sermon 198 on New Years Day). He went on to say: “Therefore, in order to follow your Redeemer, who bought you back with His own blood, do not mix with the pagans by aping their customs and deeds.”
Again, Bowler wrote: “Time after time, century after century, clergy would warn against unseemly folk rituals being practiced by Catholic believers; Christmastide was not the only battlefield but was a particularly contested one.” It seems, however, it was a losing battle. At first, Christians and the church adopted rituals they deemed harmless, but soon even practices once condemned (like gift giving and feasting) became high points of celebration. By the sixteenth century Christmas celebration was well established.
Then the Reformation happened. Often, when we think of the Reformation we think of reclaiming the biblical gospel especially as its related to the doctrine of justification by faith alone. But the Protestant Reformation was also about worship. In his The Necessity of Reforming the Church, John Calvin wrote: “The whole substance of Christianity [is] a knowledge, first, of the mode in which God is duly worshipped; and, secondly of the source from which salvation is to be obtained.” As Sinclair Ferguson concluded: “[The Reformers] well understood that the rediscovery of the gospel and the reformation of worship were two sides of the same coin.”
Following the Protestant Reformation certain branches within Protestantism retained the celebration of Christmas. For example, the Augsburg Confession of the Lutheran churches states: “Of Usages in the Church they teach that those ought to be observed which may be observed without sin, and which are profitable unto tranquility and good order in the Church, as particular holy days, festivals, and the like” (Article 15.1).
Even some of those Protestants who followed a Reformed doctrine of worship gave place to its observance as helpful to piety although not given by God. The Church Order of Dort (1619) prescribed: “The congregations shall observe, in addition to Sunday, also Christmas, Easter and Pentecost”—and they threw in the circumcision of Jesus for good measure (Article 67). Francis Turretin (d. 1687), a Reformed scholastic, said “anniversary days” for the nativity, passion, or ascension should, according to the orthodox, “be left to the liberty of the church.” He argued this even while recognizing the festivals “were kept neither from the institution of Christ nor of the apostles.”
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The memory of those rivers of blood…makes nature tremble. — Antoine Court, 1756

A boulder toppling into a stream may alter and direct its course ever after. In the same way, certain historical events have changed and channelled the culture and mindset of entire peoples for many centuries. You cannot understand the English apart from 1066, Gloriana, Waterloo, and the Blitz. You cannot understand an American apart from the Pilgrim Fathers, the War of Independence, Gettysburg, and Pearl Harbor. You cannot understand an Australian apart from the Endeavour, Burke and Wills, the Ashes, and Gallipoli.
Marie Durand’s eighteenth-century church community cannot be understood apart from the sixteenth-century French Religious Wars, the Saint Bartholomew’s Massacre of 1572, the Edict of Nantes in 1598, the Dragonnades, the Revocation in 1685, and the Camisard Rebellion of 1702–1704.
The “French Religious Wars” describes a series of eight civil wars fought out between 1562 and 1598. An estimated three million people perished, fifteen percent of the French population. Although the antagonists wore their inherited religious labels of “Protestant” or “Catholic,” social and political struggles were the true causes of these wars. A right devotion to the religion of the Bible—which brings reconciliation with God and our enemies—would have extinguished the flames of war.
French Protestants saw these wars as the necessary armed defense of their property and lives from Catholic aggression, of their right to live and worship as Protestants. French Protestant scholars agonized over God’s purposes in these violent struggles and what form resistance should take: whether to passively and patiently suffer persecution, whether to take up arms against tyranny, or whether to flee. This practical-theological struggle continued well into the eighteenth century and is manifest in a number of Marie Durand’s letters and the dreadful decisions that she was required to make.
The Fourth Religious War erupted from the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, which commenced on August 24, 1572. This tragedy needs special mention because of the deep mark it left on both the Huguenot psyche and Catholic-Protestant relations for many generations. Certainly, its reverberations were felt by Marie Durand’s community in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Antoine Court, for example, the leader of the restoration of the Protestant church in France from 1715, wrote in 1756 about “the memory of those rivers of blood […] of that Saint Bartholomew’s Day, the thought alone of which makes nature tremble.” Louis Bourgeon, a specialist on the Massacre, wrote in 1987 how its scale and ferocity had left its mark well beyond the eighteenth century: “The history of Saint Bartholomew’s continues to this day to be the cause of a spirit of passion, conscious or not.”[1]

There is only one way to out of this moral crisis, and it’s by returning to the concept of a unitary right as an objective divine standard in which all society must conform. The question we are confronted with today is not “what should we do?” Rather it is, “Do we have the moral courage to do it?”

During the 2020 campaign candidate Joe Biden famously stumbled over the Declaration of Independence saying “We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women are created…by the…you know…you know the thing…”
Apparently, Mr. Biden didn’t know the thing. More disturbingly, a large swath of the American public don’t “know the thing” either.
The thing that Mr. Biden was referring to was, of course, the endowment of rights bestowed on men by their Creator including, but not limited to, Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
This section of the Declaration is one of the most famous and frequently quoted portions of the historic document. Yet, there is something in this text that has escaped the attention of almost everyone except perhaps a few knowledgeable political philosophers and historians.
So, as it turns out, hardly anyone actually “knows the thing.”
As the fourth century church father, Basil the Great, pointed out in De Spiritu Sancto, every phrase, every word, and every syllable is important when trying to understand a text. To take his argument one step further we can say that every letter is important.
Oliver O’Donovan reminds us of Edward Gibbon’s somewhat exaggerated claim that Christianity was once divided over a single letter. That history is repeating itself only this time with a different letter from the English alphabet. Not since the Christological debates of the fourth century has one letter had so much power to change the course of human events. In the fourth century it was the Greek iota that split the church. In our time it is the letter “s” at the end of the word rights.
While the split is largely between academicians at this point, my concern is for the practical and ethical outworking of O’Donovan’s perspective as he interacts and takes issue with the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff. This essay is meant to be an accurate summary and application of O’Donovan’s position which I take to be persuasive.
The Declaration speaks of rights as a plural and inherent concept grounded in the individual person. The ancients, however, nearly always spoke of right in the singular. Translators have often missed this and translated Hebrew and Greek texts in the plural instead of the singular when the equivalent word for right is carried over into English as it is in Proverbs 8:8-9 and Jeremiah 5:28. The shift begins in the twelfth century and gradually morphs until it reaches its apex in the revolutionary literature of the eighteenth century such as the American Declaration of Independence.
Since the idea of rights conceived in the Declaration are inherent in each person then the practical result is a multiplicity of human rights that can be expanded indefinitely. There are now potentially as many rights as there are people. This conception makes rights synonymous with justice.
The problem arises when these rights must be enforced and defended by using the apparatus of the state. This is precisely where the woke western world finds itself at present, and all political, economic, and linguistic means are being used to coerce people, cultures, and entire states to comply. The message is simple: comply or be canceled. This is no small matter when armies are currently being mobilized to cancel countries that refuse to conform.
This is a seismic shift from the ancient concept of a unitary right as an objective divine standard embedded in the cosmos. In this way of thinking, as John Carlson explains, justice is the measure of society’s realization of this divine order established by God. Moreover, this unitary right cannot be severed from righteousness itself. In the Bible, human rights are always conferred by God in the context of the covenant community. Hence, the right that we have is to cultivate virtue and conform to the divine standard. Whatever does not conform to the divine standard cannot be a right. It can only be wrong.
In the end, these are two different conceptual histories of justice. As O’Donovan warned, “The moment will come when different readings of the world cash out in different practical determinations.” There is much at stake as we can already see in the western world.
Ironically, many conservatives in America nostalgically think that all we need to do is return to the principles of our founding documents to save our country. Until, and unless, we are willing and able to part with the single letter that is causing all the mischief we are still going to be faced with such things as LBGTQ+ rights, drag queen hour at elementary schools, the grooming of young school children, and the mutilation of a 5-year old’s genitalia.
There is only one way to out of this moral crisis, and it’s by returning to the concept of a unitary right as an objective divine standard in which all society must conform. The question we are confronted with today is not “what should we do?” Rather it is, “Do we have the moral courage to do it?”
Earlier this year Governor DeSantis and the Florida legislature were applauded by some, and attacked by many, when they banned classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity for children ages 5-9. I commend the governor and the legislature for protecting kindergarteners through third-graders, but what about fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, and so on. This is essentially putting a band-aid on a cancer. Or to put it another way, it’s treating the symptom not the cause.
The cause is the single letter “s.” And as Jesus said about eyes and hands that cause you to sin, “It is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.”
As for that mischievous letter “s,” it’s past time to pluck it out, and cut it off.
Jim Fitzgerald is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and a missionary in the Middle East and North Africa.
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