I saw this meme on Dr John Gill being "santa claused."
Out of curiosity, I googled "John Gill and Christmas" and got this result.
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"It directs to the observation of several fasts and festivals, which are no where enjoined in the word of God, and for which it provides collects, gospels and epistles to be read: the fasts are, Quadragesima or Lent, in imitation of Christ’s forty days fast in the wilderness, Ember weeks, Rogatian days, and all the Fridays in the year; in which men are commanded to abstain from meats, which God has created to be received with thanksgiving. The festivals, besides, the principal ones, Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, are the several saints days throughout the year; which are all of popish invention, and are either moveable or fixed, as the popish festivals be; and being the relics of popery makes us still more uneasy and dissatisfied with them.
Source: The Dissenter’s Reasons for Separating from the Church of England, Occasioned By A Letter wrote by a Welch Clergyman on the Duty of Catechizing Children. Intended chiefly for the Dissenters of the Baptist Denomination in Wales.
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Just for your information.
John Gill stated in his writing documented above:
Christmas is "of POPISH INVENTION.... no where enjoined by the word of God."
Charles Haddon Spurgeon on Christmas:
https://things-new-and-old.blogspot.my/2012/12/charles-h-spurgeon-on-christmas.html
Charles Haddon Spurgeon on Christmas:
https://things-new-and-old.blogspot.my/2012/12/charles-h-spurgeon-on-christmas.html
“There is no reason upon earth beyond that of ecclesiastical custom why the 25th of December should be regarded as the birthday of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ any more than any other day from the first of January to the last day of the year; and yet some persons regard Christmas with far deeper reverence than the Lord’s Day. You will often hear it asserted that “The Bible and the Bible alone is the religion of the Protestants,” but it is not so. There are Protestants who have absorbed a great deal beside the Bible into their religion, and among other things they have accepted the authority of what they call “the church,” and by that door all sorts of superstitions have entered.
There is no authority whatever in the word of God for the keeping of Christmas at all, and no reason for keeping it just now except that the most superstitious section of Christendom has made a rule that December 25th shall be observed as the birthday of the Lord, and the church by law established in this land [England] has agreed to follow in the same track. You are under no bondage whatever to regard that regulation.
We owe no allegiance to the ecclesiastical powers which have made a decree on this matter, for we belong to an old-fashioned church which does not dare to make laws, but is content to obey them. At the same time the day is no worse than another, and if you choose to observe it, and observe it unto the Lord, I doubt not he will accept your devotion: while if you do not observe it, but unto the Lord observe it not, for fear of encouraging superstition and will-worship, I doubt not but what you shall be as accepted in the non-observance as you could have been in the observance of it.”
Charles H. Spurgeon, introductory comments before preaching on the birth of Jesus Christ, December 24th, 1876
