Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
Our little children are deeply affected with the festivities and glitter of this holiday. We should try to take them to some Islamic camps and conferences at this time and give them some other alternate programs and activities.
As for your question, you have to bear in mind the fact that it is wrong to let your kids celebrate Christmas for many reasons. The most important one is that Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) once saw people celebrating non-Islamic holidays, and he disapproved of the act and explained to them that Allah has given Muslims two better ones (i.e., `Eid al-Fitr and `Eid al-Adha).
Therefore, we should obey the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) and develop a Muslim identity in ourselves and our children.
In addition to this already sufficient reason, you have to dissociate your children from the Christmas spirit, even if you don’t celebrate it for Jesus (peace be upon him).
Actually, Jesus was not born on that day. It was the Roman god Mithra’s birthday that was celebrated on that day and the Christians made it Christ’s birthday to compete with the popular Roman holiday.
Therefore, your children should learn the truth, and at the same time, you can exchange gifts on other occasions, such as during the Islamic holidays, or on other occasions such as at the end of the school year.
If you start celebrating Christmas with your children, even as a non-religious holiday, you will be setting a wrong example for them and you will be creating a conflict that they will suffer from in the future.
They take you as their role model and you should live up to it. As insignificant as you may think it is, in reality, it is not.
Dear brother, try to get your children out of the holiday spirit by spending quality time with them, by traveling with them (if possible), and by decreasing their exposure to the holiday influence on TV and in shopping malls.
The above Fatwa is excerpted, with slight modifications, from: www.islamicity.com
Dr. Muzammil H. Siddiqi, Former President of the Fiqh Council of North America, states:
I do agree that our little children are deeply affected with the festivities and glitter of this holiday. We should try to take them to some Islamic camps and conferences at this time and give them some other alternate programs and activities.
But Muslim families should not have Christmas trees in their homes, nor should they put up lights inside or outside their homes at this time. We should tell our children that we are Muslims and this is not our holiday. This is the holiday of our Christian neighbors and friends. We may give greetings to our Christian friends and neighbors on their holiday, but we should not make it our own holiday.
Almighty Allah knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.