This was what we call a rhetorical question.  It was about whether Jesus could come to the Easter feast or not.  The answer to the question didn´t really matter.  The feast would be carried out anyway with everything that went with it.

It´s that way with Christmas also.  The Danish Christmas feast may incorporate the name ”Jesus”, but without filling too much.  In fact He is not wanted at all.  I use to write a Christmas article for my local newspaper.  This year I called it “Birthday without the Birthday Boy?”  They didn´t print it.  It was probably too provocative, i.e. there was too much Christ in it.

But nevertheless we are exhorted to feast.  “Therefore let us keep the feast…”  (1 Cor. 5:8).  What kind of feast?  Read the context please and you´ll notice that it´s about a personal feast, a clean one, without the practice of sin.  Every day.  The Greek construction in the original text suggests a continuous act.

Apart from that we are nowhere commanded to keep formal ”feasts” after the old Jewish pattern.  They were “shadows of things to come” only, but the real thing (the “substance”) came with our Lord Jesus Christ (see Col. 2:16-17).  He should be the continuous feast in our hearts.

We don´t need to deplore a phase-out of the official feasts or holidays of our country, including the Christmas as the legislation may be up to some future day.  For our religion is not external feasts, but Him as the true, present fulfillment of all feasts. 

Whatever happens to our country and the rest of the world, oh, let Christ be our feast.  The feast of feasts will soon find its climax at His coming in the air according to the word of God.  1 Thess. 4:13-18.

-jn-

Dec. 24, 2009.