The Paganism of Christmas
Black-Eyed Peas
As we close out the remainder of the year, once again, I find my social media feed flooded with anti-Christmas posts claiming that Christmas is a holiday created by the Roman Catholic Church based upon a pagan holiday named Saturnalia. These posts likewise cite random Old Testament passages—out of context, I might add—amongst a list of various reasons why they do not celebrate Christmas.
But then, once December 25th has passed, a peculiar thing happens. These same brethren and fellow ministers (especially in the Southern United States) make social media posts about how they are preparing for their “Black-Eyed Peas New Year’s Day” meal, apparently never considering the pagan connections of eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day.
Now, just for clarification, this blog post is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but the point of this post is actually quite valid in this whole anti-Christmas tradition some of my Apostolic brethren adhere to. It is one thing to simply not participate in a particular holiday or tradition, but it is another thing entirely to preach against a holiday or tradition, especially when you make inaccurate statements regarding history and lift Old Testament passages out of their context.
The following is a list of reasons commonly cited by anti-Christmas preachers not celebrating Christmas that can also apply to not participating in the Black-Eyed Peas New Year’s Day tradition:
1. Jesus never commanded His disciples to celebrate New Year’s Day, let alone eat black-eyed peas on New Year's Day as a tradition. [This is the same exegetical fallacy as saying that Jesus never commanded to celebrate his birth. There are a lot of things Christians participate in—weddings, funerals, baby dedications, etc.—that Jesus never commanded to do.]
2. The Bible never records the apostles either celebrating New Year’s Day or eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day as a tradition. [Same exegetical fallacy as above. The Bible never records the apostles ever bathing, combing their hair, brushing their teeth, etc. There are a lot of things the Bible never recorded. The Bible was not the apostles' day-to-day journal or diary.]
3. The apostles never taught that believers should observe New Year's Day or eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day. In fact, Paul chastised early believers for observing days (Gal 4:10–11). [Random NT passage taken out of context 😉. Also, the same exegetical fallacy as above is often used against Christmas. There are a lot of holidays or celebrations that anti-Christmas preachers hold religiously such as Mother's Day, Independence Day, and Trump MAGA Rallies.]
4. January 1 is not the biblical first day of the new year (Exod 12:1–11). [This is the same argument that December 25 is not Jesus’s birthday, when, in fact, several biblical and historical reasons support a late-winter birth of Christ. See https://theweatherlyreport.blogspot.com/2010/11/paganism-of-christmas.html.]
5. The January 1 date as the New Year was established by Roman emperor Julius Caesar, and thus named the month “January” after Janus, the Roman god of doors and gates, depicted having two faces, one looking forward and one back. [This is similar to the argument that the Roman Catholic Church invented Christmas.]
6. The tradition of eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day originated as a Western African pagan tradition, which found its way into Southern America via enslaved Africans. https://www.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/holidays/why-do-you-eat-black-eyed-peas-collard-greens-new-years. [This is similar to the claims that Christmas was an ancient pagan celebration of the birth of Tammuz or Saturnalia.]
7. The tradition of eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day is based on the superstition of prosperity and luck. You might as well call black-eyed peas “Magic Prosperity Legumes.” Paul declared that the love of money is the root of all evil (1 Tim 6:10). [Another random NT passage taken out of context. This is similar to how some preachers take "tradition" passages out of context.]
8. Black-eyed peas are actually beans, one of the foods that the LORD listed as “defiled bread” that Israel ate among the Gentiles (Ezek 4:9–13). [A random OT passage taken out of context similar to how anti-Christmas preachers misuse Jeremiah 10:1–5.]
9. Cornbread is a type of cake. Since January 1 is founded on the pagan god Janus, it could easily be argued that corn “cake” is an offering to a pagan god. Jeremiah 7:18 and 44:19 speak against making cakes to the queen of heaven. [Another random OT passage taken out of context. This is similar to how anti-Christmas preachers take OT passages about trees out of context.]
10. New Year’s Day celebrations were illegal in early America. The Puritans did not celebrate New Year’s Day or any other religious holidays. [Inaccurate historical fact taken out of context. Just keep this in mind next Christmas when you see the anti-Christmas posts boasting that Christmas was illegal “in early America.” Actually, Christmas—as well as all holidays—was illegal in Massachusetts. Other colonists in New England, such as Germans, Scandinavians, and Dutch, celebrated Christmas.]
Now, again, this post is meant as a bit of tongue-in-cheek, but the Southern tradition of eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day DID originate from a pagan West African prosperity superstition! My anti-Christmas brethren may reply that “they” are not eating black-eyed peas for some kind of pagan prosperity blessing. Oh really??!!
What you are saying then is that you are participating in the same type of tradition (eating black-eyed peas) on the same day (January 1), but somehow, your eating of black-eyed peas is not a pagan tradition because that is not why you are eating black-eyed peas. How is this type of justification any different from those who celebrate Christmas, especially when Christmas (December 25) is not the same date at Saturnalia or the Winter Solstice? There is a much closer connection to the pagan origins of eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day than any supposed pagan connection(s) of the Christmas holiday.
So, this New Year’s Day, when my anti-Christmas brethren are simmering their “Magic Prosperity Legumes” in their cauldrons along with baking their corn cakes in their ovens, remember that every reason you can come up with that you are not, in fact, participating in an ancient West-African pagan tradition equally applies to those who celebrate Christmas—that they too are not participating in some supposed pagan holiday.
If you are going to preach against Christmas, then please, at least be consistent and do not eat your “Magic Prosperity Legumes” on the first day of the month honoring the pagan god Janus. Better yet, just understand that neither celebrating Christmas nor eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day means that you are ignorantly participating in some pagan festival.
Meanwhile, this Southern Apostolic preacher had a wonderful Christmas visiting family in Texas and has already made plans to eat some black-eyed peas with Chow Chow (my daughter made for me as a Christmas gift) and cornbread on New Year’s Day! 😋😋😋
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