Should Christians Celebrate Christmas? The Real Answer

Two believers can sit at the same December table, love the same Lord, read the same Bible, and give opposite answers to one question: should Christians celebrate Christmas? Each can point to verses. Each can name respected Christians who agree.

In some homes the disagreement stays friendly, and in others it strains a family or a church. The question once mattered enough that the English Parliament abolished the day by law. Let’s see what the scripture says about it.

Should Christians Celebrate Christmas? The Short Biblical Answer

A Christian is free to celebrate Christmas and free to leave it alone. Scripture gives no command to keep a day for the birth of Jesus, and it gives no command against keeping one. What it does command is how believers treat each other over days like this one: no despising the person who keeps the day, and no judging the person who does not (Romans 14:3).

Is Christmas in the Bible? The birth of Jesus is told at length in Matthew 1 and 2 and in Luke 1 and 2. The holiday called Christmas is never mentioned, and neither the Gospels nor Acts record the first Christians keeping a feast for His birth.

That answer rests on what Scripture leaves open and on principles Scripture does give. Those principles have limits, and sincere believers have drawn the lines in different places for centuries. The arguments on each side deserve a fair hearing.

What the Bible Commands and What It Leaves Open

Scripture commands plenty about remembering. Israel received appointed feasts, and the church received the Lord’s Supper, where Jesus said, “this do in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:24). No verse tells believers to set aside a day for His birth.

Silence like that can be read two ways. Some hear a closed door: if God did not ask for it, it does not belong in worship. Others hear an open one: if God did not forbid it, it is allowed.

Both readings carry real Scripture. Scripture also speaks to questions like this one in other places, and those places do the deciding.

The Strongest Case Against Celebrating Christmas

Believers who keep no Christmas often hold that view out of reverence for God, and their arguments deserve a hearing at full strength.

Worship God Has Not Commanded

The first argument concerns who decides how God is worshiped. When God gave Israel His commands about worship, He said, “What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it” (Deuteronomy 12:32). On that reading, God alone sets the terms of worship, and a church or family that adds a holy day of its own has added to what He said.

Some Reformed and Presbyterian churches still hold to this principle and keep only the Lord’s Day (Sunday) as a special day of worship. They love Jesus, and they are being consistent with how they read Scripture.

Learn Not the Way of the Heathen

The second argument is about where Christmas came from. Just before that command about adding, God warned Israel about the nations around them: “Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them,” and do not ask, “How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise” (Deuteronomy 12:30). Jeremiah carried the warning forward: “Learn not the way of the heathen” (Jeremiah 10:2).

A believer who learns that December celebrations overlap with the winter festivals of ancient Rome and northern Europe has a serious reason to hesitate. God ties this command to worship, and He says the nations’ worship included acts He hated (Deuteronomy 12:31). That weighs heavily.

Read also: Deuteronomy 12 Summary And Study Guide

Why the Puritans Banned Christmas

The Puritans were English Protestants who wanted worship purified of anything the Bible did not command, and they pressed both arguments hard. The 1645 Directory for Public Worship said that festival days, “vulgarly called Holy-days, having no warrant in the word of God, are not to be continued.”

In 1647 Parliament passed an ordinance abolishing the festivals of Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide (the church’s Pentecost season). Massachusetts passed a law in 1659 fining people for keeping Christmas, and repealed it in 1681. In England the restoration of King Charles II in 1660 ended the ban.

The name itself troubled them, because “Christmas” contains the word Mass, the Roman Catholic service they rejected. They also disliked how the day was often kept, with feasting and drinking that they saw as wasteful and immoral.

A Season That Can Swallow the Savior

A third concern is how the season is kept now. Believers who step back from Christmas sometimes do so because the spending, the noise, and the pressure can crowd out any thought of the Lord the day is supposed to honor. Isaiah records God’s own verdict on feasts kept alongside sin: “Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me” (Isaiah 1:14). Those were feasts God Himself had appointed, so the warning can reach any celebration that has drifted from its purpose.

Is It a Sin to Celebrate Christmas? What Romans 14 Says

Romans 14 was written to believers in Rome who disagreed over food and over special days (Romans 14:1-2, 5). Christmas did not exist yet, and Paul gives a principle for any day that believers keep or skip out of honest conviction. The principle fits Christmas the way it fits any such day.

Both Keep the Day Unto the Lord

Here is what Paul says:

“One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks” (Romans 14:5-6).

Look at what Paul says about each person. The one who keeps the day does it unto the Lord. The one who does not keep it also does it to the Lord. Paul names no winner, because each one acts unto the Lord.

A believer who keeps Christmas to thank God for His Son has not sinned under this passage. A believer who skips it out of devotion to the Lord has not sinned either.

The One Who Judges Is the One Paul Corrects

In Romans 14 Paul corrects an attitude on each side: “Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him” (Romans 14:3). He presses it with a question: “Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth” (14:4). Later he asks both sides, “why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother?” (14:10).

That cuts both ways. A believer who rolls their eyes at the family with no tree stands under verse 10, and so does a believer who calls the family with a tree compromised.

Romans 14 covers matters that Scripture leaves open.

Romans 14:23: When Your Conscience Says No

Paul closes the chapter by guarding the conscience: “whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). A person who does a thing while believing it wrong has acted against what they believe, and that is sin even when the thing is harmless in itself. Paul says as much a few verses earlier: “there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean” (14:14).

So a believer who cannot in good conscience keep Christmas should not be pressured to, and holding back is obedience. A believer who can keep it with thanks to the Lord has the freedom Paul describes: “Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth” (14:22). Neither household is less Christian than the other.

A conscience can be mistaken, and Paul knows it. He calls the believer with extra scruples “weak” (14:1), a word that fits a conscience holding more restrictions than the matter requires.

His instruction to the stronger believer is “receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations” (14:1), which rules out arguing that person out of it across the table. Scripture can train a conscience over time (Romans 12:2). Until it has, the believer follows it.

What Colossians 2:16 and Galatians 4:10 Mean for Christmas

Colossians 2:16-17: Who Is Judging Whom

“Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ” (Colossians 2:16-17). Someone in Colossae was judging believers over food, drink, and holy days, and Paul tells them not to let anyone do it. A shadow shows the shape of something real, and here the real thing is Christ.

The verse was written about the festivals God gave Israel, and the principle it carries reaches further than those festivals: no one has authority to decide a believer’s standing before God by a holy day kept or skipped.

Read also: The Book Of Colossians Summary By Chapter (1-4): Very Concise And Comprehensive

Galatians 4:9-10: When a Calendar Becomes a Condition

Paul writes to the Galatians, “Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years” (Galatians 4:10). Read alone, that sounds like a ban on every calendar. In its setting, Gentile believers were being told they had to take on the Law of Moses, circumcision included, to be accepted by God: “if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing” (5:2). The setting suggests that the calendar had become part of the price of belonging to God’s people.

The same logic fits both directions. If anyone says a believer must keep Christmas to be right with God, Galatians answers them. If anyone says a believer must avoid Christmas to be right with God, Galatians answers them too.

Read also: The Book Of Galatians Summary By Chapter (1-6): Very Concise And Comprehensive

Empty Rules in Both Directions

Paul warns against rules that look wise and do nothing for the heart: “(Touch not; taste not; handle not;” and “which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility” (Colossians 2:21, 23). Jesus addressed the other side of the same danger when He quoted Isaiah: “This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (Mark 7:6).

A Christmas kept with the lights on and the Lord forgotten can fall under Jesus’ words. A Christmas avoided because avoiding it feels holier can fall under Paul’s. Either one can be an empty rule, and what fills it is a heart turned toward Christ, whichever way the household decides.

Read also: 24 Life-Changing Lessons From Mark 7

Should Christians Celebrate Christmas If It Has Pagan Roots?

Two questions sit behind the claim that Christmas is pagan. One asks what is true about the history. The other asks whether history would decide the matter even if the worst claims were true.

What Is Known About December 25

The Bible does not give the date of Jesus’ birth, or even the season. Luke mentions shepherds with their flocks at night (Luke 2:8), and some take that as pointing away from midwinter, though historians urge caution about leaning on one incidental detail.

The earliest Christian writers say nothing about a feast for the birth. Irenaeus and Tertullian do not mention one, and Origen dismissed birthday celebrations as a pagan custom. Around the year 200, Clement of Alexandria listed several days that Christians had proposed for the birth, and December 25 was not among them.

The first record of a Christian feast on December 25 is a Roman calendar from about 354, which marks the day with the words “Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea.” Around the year 400, Augustine wrote that a North African group called the Donatists kept the day, which suggests an older custom in that region.

Historians offer two main explanations for the date. One holds that Christians chose it to match Roman midwinter festivals. The same fourth-century calendar also lists a December 25 festival of “the Unconquered,” which many historians read as the sun god. The other holds that the date came from a calculation.

Around 200, Tertullian reported that Jesus’ death fell on March 25 in the Roman calendar, and Christians came to believe He was conceived on the same day. Nine months later is December 25. Augustine wrote that Jesus was believed to have been conceived on March 25, the day He also suffered, and to have been born on December 25 according to tradition.

The historian Andrew McGowan notes that the earliest known suggestion that Christians moved the date to match a pagan feast appears in the twelfth century, in a margin note on the writings of a Syriac Bible commentator named Dionysius bar-Salibi. His conclusion is that parts of the festival that developed after the fourth century may well come from pagan customs, that the date itself may owe more to Judaism and the dating of Jesus’ death, and that “we cannot be entirely sure” (How December 25 Became Christmas).

That is where the evidence leaves us: two explanations, neither proved. A believer who says Christmas is pagan has said more than the record shows, and so has a believer who says it is not.

Where the Viral Claims Come From

Some of what circulates online goes well past the historical record. A common claim traces Christmas through a chain of Nimrod, his wife Semiramis, and a son named Tammuz. That chain comes from The Two Babylons, a nineteenth-century book by the Scottish minister Alexander Hislop. Ralph Woodrow, who had built a popular book of his own on Hislop’s work, later checked the sources and reported that no recognized history book supported the chain of claims.

A claim that cannot name an ancient source a reader can check deserves caution. Scripture asks believers to be careful with stories about others: “Thou shalt not raise a false report” (Exodus 23:1). That applies to arguments for Christmas as much as arguments against it.

Does Pagan Origin Settle It?

Suppose the worst were true, and every custom in a Christmas celebration came from a pagan festival. Would that settle it for a believer? Paul faced one of the closest cases Scripture offers in Corinth, where meat sold in the market might have been offered to idols first.

Paul starts with the facts: “an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one” (1 Corinthians 8:4). Then he draws the line in two places. On one side: “Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake: For the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof” (10:25-26).

The shambles was the meat market, and a thing’s past does not own it. On the other side: “the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils” (10:20-21). A believer may eat market meat with thanks, and a believer may not sit at an idol’s table.

The difference is what the believer is doing. Eating food with thanks to God is one act, and joining a feast held in honor of an idol is another. Paul adds a third layer: if someone points out that the food was offered to an idol, the believer abstains for that person’s conscience (10:28-29). His summary covers every case: “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (10:31).

Apply that to Christmas. A family that reads Luke 2, sings about the Savior, and gives thanks for the Son of God aims its practice at the Lord, whatever its history, and no idol is being served. Deuteronomy 12 forbids worshiping the Lord by copying the way the nations worshiped their gods, and the ways God names there include burning children (12:31).

Carols, Scripture reading, and a family meal sit a long way from that. The command still stands, though, and it sets the limit: a believer should refuse any custom that offers worship to another god or copies a false god’s rites in worshiping the Lord.

Two questions then do the work. The first asks where a custom came from, which is worth knowing and which depends on who is telling the story. The second asks what the custom is doing now and to whom it is offered, and that is the question Paul asked.

A believer whose conscience still says no after thinking it through has Romans 14:23 on their side, and no one should override it. The same Paul who freed the market meat also told the strong to give it up for a brother’s sake.

Did Jesus Celebrate Christmas? Hanukkah, Purim, and the Added Feasts

Christmas did not exist in Jesus’ day, so the question answers itself. A better one asks whether God’s people kept feasts that the Law of Moses never commanded, and how Scripture treats them.

John records one: “And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon’s porch” (John 10:22-23). The Feast of Dedication, known today as Hanukkah, remembered the cleansing of the temple in the second century before Christ, an event told in the books of the Maccabees, which sit outside the Protestant Bible.

Moses never commanded it. John tells us Jesus was in the temple at that feast. John does not say what Jesus thought of it, so the passage shows His presence and leaves His approval unstated.

Read also: Concise John 10 Summary And Study Guide: The Powerful Meaning Of The Good Shepherd

Scripture holds a stronger example within its own pages. After Haman’s plot against the Jews failed, Mordecai wrote to the Jews in every province to keep two days each year as days of “feasting and joy, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor” (Esther 9:22). The text says, “The Jews ordained, and took upon them” these days (9:27). Purim began as a remembrance that God’s people chose to keep, and Esther does not say God commanded it, and it offers no rebuke of it either.

Deuteronomy 12:32 comes back here, because believers who hold the strict view will point to it. Those who keep such days answer that Deuteronomy 12 guards the commands God gave for worship, while a thankful remembrance of a deliverance adds no command and takes none away. Many believers find that answer enough. Others do not, and Romans 14 tells both groups how to live beside each other.

Read also: The Book Of Esther Summary By Chapter (1-10): Concise And Comprehensive

Jesus did command one remembrance: “this do in remembrance of me,” and the bread and cup “shew the Lord’s death till he come” (1 Corinthians 11:24, 26). That shows remembering matters to Him. It carries no command to remember His birth.

What Scripture Records About Celebrating the Birth

Scripture gives no command for a yearly feast, but it does record how heaven, the shepherds, Mary, and the wise men responded to the birth, and their responses are marked by praise, wonder, and worship. Herod was troubled by the news (Matthew 2:3), so not everyone welcomed it, but those who did welcome it rejoiced.

Heaven praised God: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14). An angel told the shepherds, “I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people” (2:10). The shepherds went to Bethlehem, found the child, and “returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen” (2:20).

Mary “kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart” (2:19). Later, wise men from the east found the young child in a house, and “they rejoiced with exceeding great joy,” “fell down, and worshipped him,” and “presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh” (Matthew 2:10-11). Matthew’s mention of a house and a young child suggests the wise men came some time after the night in the manger.

Scripture records these responses without commanding a yearly repeat of them. A believer who keeps Christmas to thank God for the coming of Christ is doing what the first people to hear the news did: praising, marveling, worshiping, and giving.

Two verses explain why the birth deserves remembering. “When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman” (Galatians 4:4), and “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). God entered His own creation as a human being.

Many understand Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 9:15 as pointing to Christ Himself: “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.” Nothing in Scripture limits that thanks to one date, which is why a believer who skips Christmas can give it on any other day.

The Christmas Tree, Santa, and Gifts

Does Jeremiah 10 Talk About Christmas Trees?

This is the passage posted most often in December: “For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not” (Jeremiah 10:3-4). The resemblance to a decorated tree is real.

Read on, and the picture changes. Verse 5 says of the thing: “They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.”

A craftsman has shaped the wood into an idol, fastened it so it will not fall over, and it has to be carried because it cannot walk. Jeremiah is mocking carved gods.

Isaiah shows the same scene. A man burns part of the tree to warm himself and bake bread, and “the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image: he falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it” (Isaiah 44:17).

Read also: 37 Proven Lessons From Isaiah 44

Jeremiah wrote about six centuries before Jesus was born, and historians trace the decorated Christmas tree to Germany, many centuries after the time of Christ. The passage speaks to anyone who treats a tree, or any object, as holy and bows to it. By the same principle it can speak to a believer who loves what lies under the tree more than the Lord. Beyond that, the tree is a decoration, and the household decides what it means.

Santa Claus and Telling Children the Truth

The name Santa Claus comes from Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century bishop remembered in church tradition for kindness to children and the poor. The stories about him are legends, and the modern figure with the sleigh and the list is a tale that grew out of them.

Scripture never mentions Santa, and it speaks plainly about truthfulness: “putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour” (Ephesians 4:25), and “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour” (Exodus 20:16).

Parents who face this choice land in different places. Some tell their children that Santa is a game the family plays and that he is make-believe. Others leave the story out. Each can be done to the Lord.

The thing worth guarding is a child’s trust. A story told as real, and defended long after a child starts asking, may teach that a parent’s word about things unseen cannot be relied on, and the same child is being taught about Jesus alongside it. Neither choice makes a family more or less Christian.

A Four-Question Test for Any Christmas Custom

Tree, lights, wreath, stocking, cards, cookies, carols: Scripture speaks to none of them by name, so a believer needs a way to sort them. Four questions drawn from the passages above work for any custom.

1. Can I do this with thanks to God and for His glory? (1 Corinthians 10:31.)
2. Does it ask me to do anything Scripture forbids, such as lying, drunkenness, greed, or worship offered to anything other than the Lord? (1 Corinthians 10:20-21; Romans 13:13.)
3. Can I do it in faith, with a clear conscience? (Romans 14:23.)
4. Will it wound a believer whose conscience differs? (“take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumblingblock to them that are weak,” 1 Corinthians 8:9.)

A custom that passes all four can be kept. A custom that fails one can be set aside, and nothing has been lost.

Gifts, Lights, and Food

Gift-giving has a place in Scripture. The wise men brought gifts to the child (Matthew 2:11). God’s people kept Purim with gifts to one another and to the poor (Esther 9:22).

Paul’s line about God’s “unspeakable gift” (2 Corinthians 9:15) names the reason at the center of the faith. A gift given in that spirit echoes the gift God gave, and a gift to someone in need follows Esther’s pattern.

Lights, food, and gatherings pass the four questions in most homes. Scripture is full of feasts with food and joy, and nothing in it condemns a thankful family meal.

When Christmas Becomes the Problem

Scripture warns often about conduct that can creep into a celebration. “Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying” (Romans 13:13). Jesus said, “Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth” (Luke 12:15). Paul calls covetousness idolatry (Colossians 3:5).

The season can bring out all of these. Drink may flow freely, and spending can run past what a household can afford. A gift list can turn into a ledger of who loved whom how much, and the day meant for the Savior can leave no room for Him. At that point the celebration can become idolatry in the sense Paul uses the word for covetousness, and that can happen in any household, with a tree or without one.

Freedom in Christ includes this restraint: “ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another” (Galatians 5:13). A believer who is free to celebrate is not free to sin while celebrating. If the season leaves a household in debt and farther from God, the fix is to do less and mean more of it, and Romans 14 gives the freedom to do exactly that.

Read also: 21 Essential Lessons From Romans 13

Should Christians Celebrate Christmas When the Household Disagrees?

In some households two convictions about Christmas share one roof. One spouse grew up with the tree, and the other grew up hearing the day called a sin.

A believer who left a group that taught against Christmas may now sit among relatives who keep it. A church can hold both kinds of people in one pew. Paul wrote Romans 14 for exactly that mix.

The believer who keeps the day owes a good deal. Paul says, “We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves” (Romans 15:1). He also says, “Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died” (14:15), where “meat” means food, and “judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way” (14:13).

In practice that means no lecturing, no showing off, no pressing a relative to join, and a willingness to scale back whatever wounds, as Paul himself would give up meat for a brother (1 Corinthians 8:13).

The believer who skips the day owes something as well. The family at the other table serves the same Lord, and Paul’s question about judging another man’s servant still applies (Romans 14:4). Declining to join does not require calling their celebration sin, and Galatians 4:10 stands against turning the calendar into a test of fellowship.

Some steps help a household. Agree together on what the home will do, and agree a year at a time. Paul’s “fully persuaded” (Romans 14:5) leaves room to keep the day this year and rest from it the next as the Lord leads.

“Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another” (14:19). Peace in the home outweighs winning the point, because “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost” (14:17).

How to Keep Christmas on Christ

A believer who decides to keep Christmas has plain ways to keep it on Christ. None is a requirement, and a believer who skips the day can give the same thanks on any other date.

• Read Luke 2:1-20, or John 1:1-14, together before any gift is opened.
• Tell whoever is at the table what the day is for, “shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done” (Psalm 78:4).
• Give, and include someone who cannot give back, as Purim did (Esther 9:22).
• Worship with a church family.
• Settle a limit on spending and on drink before the season begins, so Romans 13:13 and Luke 12:15 are decided before the pressure arrives.
• Say a plain thank you for the Word made flesh (2 Corinthians 9:15).

Read also: 37 Essential Lessons From Luke 12

If This Season Is Hard

For some people December is the hardest month. Maybe there is an empty chair at the table. Maybe money is tight, or a family is not speaking, or the first Christmas after a loss has arrived.

The Gospel story makes no pretense that life runs smoothly. The Lord of heaven was laid in a manger “because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7).

The offering made for Him, “A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons” (Luke 2:24), is the one the law allowed for those who could not afford a lamb (Leviticus 12:8), which points to a family without much money. Isaiah, writing of the suffering Servant whom the New Testament applies to Jesus, says He is “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3), and Hebrews says, “we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Hebrews 4:15).

A believer in a hard season has permission under Romans 14:5-6 to do less. A smaller table, a shorter list, or one chapter of Luke read alone can honor the Lord as truly as a larger celebration does. If you want someone to pray with, a pastor or a friend in the faith is a good person to ask.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Articles to Read Next

• 23 Powerful Lessons From Romans 14 walks through Paul’s teaching on days and food that believers disagree over.
• 19 Critical Lessons From 1 Corinthians 8 covers liberty and the weaker brother.
• 26 Powerful Lessons From 1 Corinthians 10 covers market meat, the Lord’s table, and doing all to God’s glory.
• 28 Essential Lessons From Luke 2 follows the birth story the shepherds heard.
• 15 Life-Changing Lessons From Matthew 2 follows the wise men and the young child.

Back at that December table, two believers hold one Lord and two answers. Scripture lets both stand when each acts in faith toward Him, and it lets neither despise the other. This December, decide before the Lord what you will do about the day, and read Luke 2:1-20 once, with others or alone, whichever way you decide. Then extend to the person who chose differently the welcome Christ has already given you: “Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God” (Romans 15:7).