There are several good reasons for skipping Christmas this year—if not in years beyond 2020.

Reason #1: The historical realities behind the event.

• There is no reference anywhere in the Bible to the month, day—or even the year—of Jesus’ birth. 
• There are no sources outside the Bible that give a date to Jesus’ birth.
• Jesus never commanded his followers to celebrate his birth—but he did call on them to remember his death.  It’s called Easter.
• Many of the “religious” traditions associated with Christmas stem from the pagan Roman festival, Saturnalia, which celebrated the “birthday” of the sun.
• This was celebrated December 17-25. 
• Saturnalia traditions included feasting, gift-giving, lighting candles (to ward off evil spirits) and displaying wreaths (as a sign of coming spring).
• Early Christians tried mightily to convince their members to stop celebrating the Saturnalia.
• When these efforts failed, the Roman Catholic Church, in 336 A.D. “Christianised” the festival by naming Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25, as Jesus’ birthday.

Reason #2: It’s based on a story that’s patently false.

The story of the Three Wise Men—or Kings—bringing gifts to the infant Jesus was added long after Jesus’ birth.

Realistically, there was no reason why anyone in Israel would have known—or cared—about the birth of yet another Jewish child.

If he had actually been born the son of a king, then his birth might have mattered to people generally. 

In his 1973 bestselling Alexander the Great, Robin Lane Fox explains that “in antiquity…life’s perspective was reversed, and youth was mostly described through a series of anecdotes which falsely mirrored the feats of the adult future; proven kings or bishops were remembered as kings or bishops when young.”

Thus, Alexander the Great, the future conqueror of the Persian empire, has been depicted—as a boy—astonishing Persian ambassadors with precocious questions about the innermost workings of that empire.

For followers of the crucified Jesus, it was essential to establish his divinity from the outset of his birth. And what better way to do this than having not one but three Kings show up, uninvited, to declare his reign over them?

Reason #3: It’s actually blasphemous. 

Assume, for a moment, that the story of the Three Wise Men—or Kings—is true. 

The whole point of the story is to establish that Jesus’ birth was a truly special event—and a recognition of his fate to redeem humanity from sin.

No one else in that story is depicted as giving—or getting—gifts.

No matter how much a child might be loved today, almost no one expects him to be a future savior.

So giving him gifts is essentially a parody of the acknowledgement of Jesus’ divinity. 

Reason #4: Christmas is overwhelmingly a commercial—not a religious—event.

• The Christmas shopping season can start as early as September. Some consumers begin shopping even earlier.
• For 2019, industry analysts expected the average American to spend $920 on holiday gifts, up from $885 in 2018 and reaching a total of more than $1 trillion.
• Santa Clause made his first appearance in Coca-Cola magazine ads in the 1920s.
• In 2019, the average cost of Christmas was $668, up from $633 in 2018.  
• In 2019, 20% of consumers anticipated taking on debt due to Christmas shopping, with the average amount being $720.
• For many stores, holiday shopping accounts for nearly a third of annual sales.

Reason #5: At least for 2020, celebrating Christmas within large families could prove fatal.

A December 19 story in Business Insider carries the attention-catching headline: “The Thanksgiving Surge in Coronavirus Deaths is Here. It’s ‘Horrifically Awful,’ a Hospital Chaplain Said.” To sum up its contents:

• More than 47,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 since Thanksgiving.
• COVID-19 is now the country’s leading cause of death.
• It’s just the beginning of the effects of Thanksgiving travel and gatherings,

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention begged Americans to forego traveling for Thanksgiving. But at least 55 million Americans ignored that warning. Their selfish, egotistical mantra—“I want to be with my family!”—overrode their supposed concern for the lives of their relatives.

As a result, untold numbers of those families will not again be sharing Thanksgiving—or anything else. 

And Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top expert on infectious diseases, has warned that the Christmas season will pose an even greater threat. 

COVID-19 Virus

People will gather not just for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, but for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day—not to mention any parties held in-between those dates.

The virus spreads faster indoors, where large numbers of people don’t wear masks, pack closely together, and talk or laugh loudly, thus spreading the droplets across a room.

There will be people who insist that Christmas is a religious event that they are commanded to celebrate—even in the midst of a deadly plague.

For those people, it’s a good time to remember the advice of 1 Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”