Only Pagans Observe Birthdays?

I just realized As Bereans Did has material on birthdays, but it is hidden all around here and there. We have no post specifically dedicated to the topic. About time I remedied that.

Growing up Armstrongist, we were taught never to celebrate birthdays. "It's pagan," they told us, "The only people in the Bible who celebrate their birthday were pagans, so you're a pagan if you do it, too. ...And don't wear makeup!" The Worldwide Church of God abandoned that position shortly after Herbert Armstrong died. Well, that wasn't official enough for some. I still get email asking about this topic. So, today, I want to investigate birthdays and find out whether or not we're pagan for celebrating them.

There isn't a whole lot of material to present, but I did run across some details I found to be interesting. Care to review birthdays with me? Oh, come on. What else did you have to do right now?

BIBLICAL BIRTHDAYS

In the interest of being thorough, let's see the three explicit instances of birthdays being celebrated in the Bible.

The birthday of Pharaoh (which Pharaoh is not known):

(GEN. 4: 20-22) 20 Now it came to pass on the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, that he made a feast for all his servants; and he lifted up the head of the chief butler and of the chief baker among his servants. 21 Then he restored the chief butler to his butlership again, and he placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand. 22 But he hanged the chief baker, as Joseph had interpreted to them.

Pharaoh's birthday is the only one mentioned in the entire Old Testament. That makes it the only birthday in the Jewish scriptures.

The birthdays of Job's children:

(JOB 1: 4-6) 4 Every year when Job’s sons had birthdays, they invited their brothers and sisters to their homes for a celebration. On these occasions they would eat and drink with great merriment. 5 When these birthday parties ended—and sometimes they lasted several days—Job would summon his children to him and sanctify them, getting up early in the morning and offering a burnt offering for each of them. For Job said, “Perhaps my sons have sinned and turned away from God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular practice.

Job did not think his children having birthdays was a sin, he only conjectured that perhaps they might have sinned secretly in one way or the other while they were partying.

The birthday of Herod Antipas:

(MAT. 14: 6-7) 6 But when Herod’s birthday was celebrated, the daughter of Herodias danced before them and pleased Herod. 7 Therefore he promised with an oath to give her whatever she might ask.

(MAR. 6: 21-23) 21 Then an opportune day came when Herod on his birthday gave a feast for his nobles, the high officers, and the chief men of Galilee. 22 And when Herodias’ daughter herself came in and danced, and pleased Herod and those who sat with him, the king said to the girl, “Ask me whatever you want, and I will give it to you.” 23 He also swore to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, up to half my kingdom.”

And don't forget this next one..

The birthday of Jesus:

(LUK. 2: 9-14) 9 And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. 10 Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. 11 For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.”
13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: 14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”

I prefer to include Jesus in the list of birthdays celebrated because the angels rejoiced at His birth, and because of the many people who will not have anything to do with birthdays mainly because of Christmas.

Was the incarnation of our Lord not a miraculous work of God, foretold by prophets, attended by angels, accompanied by signs (the star, the presence of John the Baptist, the visitations both to Mary and Joseph, born of a virgin, the death of the innocents), rich with prophetic imagery (the manger prophesying Jesus as true food from Heaven, the prophetic words of Elizabeth calling Mary the Mother of her Lord, the gifts of the Magi predicting Jesus' death), and did it not fulfill the specific timing as prophesied in Daniel?? The birth was no small event!

Some may balk since Jesus' birth was not a birthday celebration later in His life. I do recognize that and concede the point. Therefore, for the rest of the article I will try to leave it out. Today's post doesn't need it.

As an aside, there are some striking similarities between the accounts of Pharaoh and Herod Antipas. I think you would be very interested if you dug into that.

COMMONERS AND KINGS

If I were to ask you what is one thing all birthdays in the Bible have in common, what would you say? Probably that they are celebrated by pagans, I'd guess. Unfortunately, Job's children make off with that claim. Have you considered that they were celebrated by the wealthy and by kings..?

Job's children, Pharaoh, Herod Antipas - they were clearly advantaged. That is how things were until quite recently. According to the article "The Strange Origins of American Birthday Celebrations" on The Atlantic, until the 1800's, birthdays were rarely for common folk. How many of you honor President's Day in the United States? That was originally George Washington's birthday. Congress declared Washington's birthday a national holiday in 1879. In 1971, the federal holiday was moved from February 11 to the third Monday in February. There is also the slightly lesser-known Lincoln's Birthday. I mention these days because this is typical throughout history. Birthdays were usually for the societal upper crust.

That's just how things were. They had their way of doing things and we have ours, and the two are not the same. That doesn't make either one better or worse. It just makes groups of people think differently about birthday celebrations. It is possible people simply did not think of birthday celebrations as something common folk would do. You go to work on your birthday, peasant, that's what you do.

Society had structures, and most people who weren't in the appropriate social strata would not do those kinds of things. It's not just birthdays that were like this. People often didn't wear clothes of other social strata, or hold jobs, or use titles, or occupy the same spaces, or travel on the same level of the ship, or eat meat often, or any number of other things that were outside of their status. That's just the way the world was, and in many ways still is. It does not appear birthdays became the norm for common folk until the 1800's, when several societies started removing those social stratus barriers between the common and elite.

If you do a study into history, you will find some older practices that were really quite different from what we do today. That doesn't have any bearing on whether or not we are pagans. We aren't. I absolutely reject "once pagan, always pagan". We can place any guilt we may feel at the feet of an ancient Christian writer, Origen.

For more on the subject of "once pagan, always pagan" see our article "Peddlers of Paganism".

ORIGEN

Well, sadly, it seems we cannot have a conversation about birthdays in the Bible without mentioning Origen. That old Armstrongist quote-mining favorite. So, let's get this over with.

Origen touched on birthdays in two of his works from around the years 238-248 AD. Quite early! One I will quote, the other I will ignore. You can read the second quote, which I am ignoring, in his "Commentary on Matthew', available online at the Sacred Texts website. He just condemns birthdays as pagan and claims people who celebrate birthdays dance to the Devil. I just don't want to waste any more space on that than is absolutely necessary, so I will make you aware of it and move on back to Homilies on Leviticus.

On to quote 1....

Here are the actual words of Origen on the subject, from his "Homilies on Leviticus", translated into English:

"But Scripture also declares that one himself who is born whether male or female is not clean from filth although his life is of one day. 16 And that you may know that there is something great in this and such that it has not come from the thought to any of the saints; not one from all the saints is found to have celebrated a festive day or a great feast on the day of his birth. No one is found to have had joy on the day of the birth of his son or daughter. Only sinners rejoice over this kind of birthday . For indeed we find in the Old Testament Pharaoh, king of Egypt, celebrating the day of his birth with a festival, 17 and in the New Testament, Herod. ls However, both of them stained the festival of his birth by shedding human blood. For the Pharaoh killed "the chief baker 19 Herod, the holy prophet John in prison. 20 But the saints not only do not celebrate a festival on their birth days, but, filled with the Holy Spirit, they curse that day."
-Origen, "Homilies on Leviticus", volume VIII. 
Taken from Gary Wayne Berkley, "The Fathers of the Church A New Translation", volume 83, "Homilies on Leviticus 1-16", CUA Press, 2010, p.156.
(You can download a copy of your own for free from Zlip.pub.)

Now, you will want a little context. This entire section of Origen's homily is about this one verse:

(LEV. 12: 2) "Speak to the children of Israel, saying: ‘If a woman has conceived, and borne a male child, then she shall be unclean seven days; as in the days of her customary impurity she shall be unclean."

Origen is trying to expound on the uncleanness of the woman and the child. Origen is making a case that normal humans, including the greatest prophets, are unclean because of their conception and their birth. Then, he makes the case how that does not apply to Mary, because she is a virgin and never conceived in the normal way (in some places, it seems like Origen believes she did not conceive at all, even though Matthew and Luke say she did). The exception applies to Jesus as well.
He makes his distinction for Mary and Jesus, and then he continues on about universal uncleanness for everyone else. That brings us to the where the quote above appears.

When Origen gets to this section I quoted above, he is trying to make the case that all humans are unclean from birth, and birth should not be celebrated by us because we are unclean. He goes on to show how we should curse our birth, even saying the Holy Spirit would lead us into cursing our own birth. (So, when Jesus says it would be better if the one who betrays him was never born, we should all feel that way about ourselves? I don't think so.) He gives examples of Job, David, and Jeremiah. Then, he explains this uncleanness is why the Church performs baptism even on infants. (Recall, he wrote Homilies on Leviticus between 238 and 244. Quite early!)

That is the context of the quote on birthdays.

Do you agree with all of that? I bet you don't. I certainly do not. I have three large issues with it.

1) Not moral uncleanness but ceremonial.

The first major problem I have with Origen's concept of uncleanness is he makes the uncleanness about moral uncleanness. You can see the concept of Original Sin hiding in here. I disagree that the uncleanness in Leviticus 12 is moral. Rather, the uncleanness is ceremonial.

Unclean people were not sinners, per se, rather, they were ceremonially impure and unfit to occupy sacred space or join in the sacred assembly. This uncleanness is taken care of by waiting a few days and offering sacrifices. Childbirth is directly in line with many, many other causes of ritual uncleanness described in the Old Testament, including such things as menstruation, touching a carcass or dead body, touching someone who was unclean, sickness, and etc. This same uncleanness affects animals and inanimate objects. Can dishes sin? No. None of these are moral; all of these are ceremonial. There was no need to go on and on about how we are all unclean from conception and birth, pleading a special exception for Mary and Jesus, because this was never permanent moral uncleanness to begin with. It was all temporary ceremonial uncleanness. And at the end of the day, it did apply to Mary and Jesus after all, as you can read in Luke 2:

(LUK. 2: 22-24) 22 Now when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male who opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”), 24 and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, “A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”

This is Mary obeying the law in Leviticus 12, which absolutely is about ritual impurity. For Origen to make a way that it did not apply to her is to contradict Luke. (There used to be a church holiday called Candlemas that honored this very event.)

But none of this applies to us in the New Covenant.

2) Ceremonial uncleanness not in the New Covenant.

The second major problem I have with Origen is that there is no ceremonial uncleanness in the New Covenant. That is entirely an Old Covenant thing. This objection needs no lengthy explanation. It really is as simple as that. Origen speaks out against birthdays because of a cleanliness system that does not apply to us. I go over ceremonial law a little more in the post "Is Ceremonial Law Removed?"
The entire foundation of Origen's argument is gone.

We are left with his claim that it was only observed in the Bible by pagans.

3) He left out Job's children.

The third major problem I have with Origen is that he only gives Pharaoh and Herod Antipas as his evidence. Except .. he left out Job's children. Given what we know about Job and how he would pray with his children, we can see they were clearly faithful people. Only, they were faithful people who knew how to party. That doesn't make them bad people or pagans.

About that paganism, notice Origen never calls Pharaoh or Herod "pagans". He calls them murderers. His complaint was they shed blood on their birthdays. Job's children definitely didn't do that. I would hardly say it is a compelling argument that no one should celebrate their birthday because Pharaoh and Herod had people killed on theirs. Well, better stop keeping Passover, then. Pilate had someone killed on that day.

The people who use Origen to support their condemnation of birthdays probably do not understand Origen to begin with, but I bet they would also have major problems with Origen if they did understand him. Many would certainly not agree with original sin or infant baptism. I personally hope they would not agree that the Holy Spirit would lead us to curse our birth. So, do they quote Origen as an authoritative source, or just because he is convenient? Clearly, they don't think he is authoritative if they think he is a pagan himself who professes heretical beliefs (heretical to their own systems, I mean). Therefore, it is clear they quote him only because he conveniently says a few words they agree with.

Is Origen as an example of what the early church believed about birthdays? I would not go so far as to hold Origen up as the standard for his time. He was influential and respected, but some of his ideas were unconventional. If this was typical, peddlers of paganism would find other authors of his time to quote.

And that, dear reader, is yet another in a long line of examples of how people will quote mine for things that want to hear regardless of all else.

HEROD ANTIPAS

I actually have a problem 3b.

You probably came here because you heard the only people in the Bible who celebrated their birthdays were pagans. That is what I was told in my days in Armstrongism. Is it true that in the Bible only pagans celebrate their birthdays? No. As we have already seen, Job's children were not pagans. But there is one other non-pagan to discuss: Herod Antipas.

Herod Antipas was the son of Herod the Great. He was half Edomite on his father's side and half Samaritan on his mother's. Was Herod Antipas a pagan? Surprisingly, no. He was religiously Jewish!

The Jewish Encyclopedia article on Herod Antipas says this about him:

"It is true that, at least ostensibly, he complied with the more important ordinances of the Jewish faith, and that he went to Jerusalem to celebrate the feasts."
-"Antipas (Herod Antipas)", Jewish Encyclopedia, 2015, https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7602-herod-antipas. Accessed Nov 3, 2024.

See? Jewish. Go ahead, Google what Herod's religion was. You'll find it was Jewish. It doesn't matter if you think Herod Antipas was a bad Jew. The fact remains he was a practicing Jew. Ergo, by definition he was not a pagan. At the very least, he was not a pagan in the same way Pharaoh was.

The Jewish Encyclopedia article goes on to show that Antipas was hated and did nothing to counter that. Origen, in his Homilies on Matthew, which I did not quote, says Herod Antipas was a worse man than Pharaoh. So, we can conclude Herod Antipas was universally seen as a bad Jew. But if you want to compare bad Jewishness, Solomon was arguably worse yet. So, there's that.
In Herod's defense, he did not want John the Baptist killed. He had carelessly walked into a trap. It was his wife and daughter that were the worse offenders here. Herod was just too weak to stand up and insist their request was unreasonable.

Therefore, the initial claim that the only people in the Bible who celebrated birthdays were pagans is false. Two out of three explicit references to birthday celebrations were non-pagans. That is all that some churches make their stand on against birthdays, and it's not even true.

That will be of little use against people dead set on the accusation of paganism. To them, everyone not in their own system are pagans. So, to them, Job's children and Herod were pagans, regardless. And so are you and I. Case closed.
I simply cannot and will not agree with that.

NOT IGNORED

The point in todays' article is to investigate birthday celebrations, but I want to make a very brief detour.

Understand that birthdays are not ignored by people in the Bible, or even by the Jews outside of the Bible. When I listed the birthdays from the Bible, what I gave you were the three explicit mentions of birthday celebrations. One might conclude that means those were the only mentions, and therefore birthdays were largely ignored. That is not so. What I have not given you are the many, many times ages were mentioned.

People knew how old they were. They had to know their birthday, or roughly know, in order to know how old they were.

Think of all the times you heard a person's age in the Bible. Also, one had to know their birthday to determine things like the age of accountability, the age of eligibility for military service, or coming of age celebrations like bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs (which are inherently a celebration of age), just to name three.

So, people did know their birthdays. They just didn't usually celebrate them.

The ones who lean towards birthdays being pagan will think this is a useless point to make. "Knowing their age is beside the point," they will say, "it is the celebration that is pagan not the knowledge." I hear this complaint. I agree this argument here is weak. But I do mention it for a reason. My reason is to nudge your thinking toward the idea that there is a lot more to the discussion of birthdays in the Bible than just three explicit mentions. There is a lot more to it even than what I've shown you here in this post.

I will recommend another item for you to read, which you can find for free online. There was once an online publication called "Halachically Speaking". They dive into detail on the Jewish perspective on birthdays in volume 9 issue 11, titled "Happy Birthday", dated 2015, written  by Rabbi Moishe Dovid Lebovits and reviewed by Rabbi Benzion Schiffenbauer Shlita. You can find it on the Wayback Machine.

There are some confusing terms in it for non-Jews, but overall it is easily understood. They touch on things it would take me far too much space and words to review, including such things as:

• Jews are not necessarily against birthdays,
• There are birthdays mentioned in the Bible indirectly,
• Birthdays were not ignored by people in the Bible,
• Birthdays in extra-biblical Jewish literature. 

NOT RELIGIOUS

I want you to keep in mind another very important point: Birthdays are not religious celebrations. If they are not religious, then they are not pagan. Pagan, by definition, has to do with religious matters. Pagans can celebrate their birthdays, but birthdays are not by nature pagan.

Birthdays are entirely secular. Birthdays are every bit as secular as the Fourth of July ...the birthday of America. Do you know anyone who condemns secular national holidays like Independence Day, Cinco de Mayo, and etc? I don't. (I'm sure someone out there does.) During my time in Armstrongism, I was never taught to avoid those days. What's the difference? There is none.

Birthdays are just anniversaries. Do you celebrate your wedding anniversary? Then don't throw rocks at birthdays.

Some people will not celebrate the birth of their Lord and Savior but they will celebrate the birth of their nation or their marriage. So, they are not against all birthdays, just specific ones. 

What's more, there are people who say we should not have any celebration that is not specifically commanded in the Bible. Where did they get that notion? Not from the Bible! (Please read Martha's article "Established and Imposed".)

But let's go with that. The new standard is, we can't do anything the Bible doesn't command us to do. Well, the Bible says nothing for or against birthdays. Condemning birthdays is not something we are commanded to do in the Bible! So, why are people doing it? The Bible is neither here nor there about birthday celebrations. It only mentions them as part of the narrative of events. It never says they are good or bad. It seems to me the weakest of all arguments to say if the Bible is against something, don't do it, but if the Bible is not against something, don't do it.

CONCLUSION

We have gone over some things today!

It is not true that in the Bible only pagans celebrate their birthdays. Job's kids were faithful. Herod Antipas was a Jew.
What is true, however, is that only people who explicitly celebrated their birthdays in the Bible were wealthy. Birthdays were for the upper echelons until quite recently, but not because they were rejected as pagan, rather because of societal norms. It seems reasonable to conclude it was the tearing down of social strata in the 1700s and 1800s that led to common birthdays.
Birthdays were not ignored in the Bible. Other birthdays besides the three explicit references are hinted at. Jews are not necessarily against birthdays.
Birthdays are not religious celebrations, they are secular, therefore they are not able to be "pagan" any more than Independence Day or wedding anniversaries.
Origen tried to apply guilt by association, but he misunderstood who kept a birthday in the Bible as well as what the nature of uncleanness is in Leviticus. We know the accusation that only pagans observed birthdays is false. We don't find it compelling to stop just because someone was killed on the day. We know the uncleanness was ceremonial only, and does not apply in the New Covenant. So, any guilt by association is removed.

What is left? Nothing much at all. I would say birthday celebrations come out rather clean in this investigation. Seems to me that makes the answer 'yes'. Yes, Christians may celebrate birthdays.

Were you accused of being a pagan for celebrating a birthday? You can see it was a baseless accusation, made by someone parroting something they heard but did not genuinely understand. People will accuse you of paganism for many things besides just birthdays. If you are considering giving up birthdays because someone accused you of paganism, don't fool yourself that it will help. You will only find you are accused for something else. It is an endless chase. In the end, will you find grace and peace?

I am not here to talk people into celebrating birthdays. My usual disclaimer for things like this is - if you feel guilty about it, don't do it. But research it to see if you feel guilty reasonably or unreasonably, rightfully or mistakenly. Hopefully today's post helped you do just that.

May God guide you to a life that glorifies Him, regardless.

Oh! And a happy belated birthday to you!

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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