Happy Christmas Charles!

OK, this isn't very original as a blog post (you can read it on about a million other blogs), but I thought I'd post it anyway. I was having a look at what Spurgeon thought about Christmas. Turns out he said this:

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 any mass at all, but abhor it, whether it be sung in Latin or in English: Secondly, because we find no scriptural warrant whatever for observing any day as the birthday of the Savior; and consequently, its observance is a superstition, because not of divine authority. Superstition has fixed most positively the day of our Savior's birth, although there in no possibility of discovering when it occurred. It was not till the middle of the third century that any part of the Church celebrated the birth of our Lord; and it was not till long after the western Church had set the example, that the eastern adopted it. Because the day in not known. Probably the fact is that the "holy" days were arranged to fit in with the 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 our Savior was born it is the 25th of December. Regarding not the day, let us give God thanks for the gift of His dear Son. - 24/Dec/1871

It also turns out he wasn't a big fan of Father Christmas either (he used the phrase, "deceptive, worldly Santa Claus"! But I'm not going to risk blogging too much about my feelings on that one...

As I often say to my students, who I'm trying to turn into Spurgeon fans, I like to think that if he was still around today, we'd have got on.