As December days shorten, darkness overcomes light. Frigid blasts whistle through leafless, lifeless trees. Frozen ground is covered in silence. Nothing moves. By all appearances nature has died. But then, intruding on the pervasive quiet, comes the most hyperactive frenzy of merrymaking glitz and glitter ever conceived by man. Wine flows freely, songs of cheer echo through halls strung with holly and mistletoe. Gifts are exchanged while candles and fires like a thousand points of light puncture the darkness.
Out of the throes of encroaching death springs a wild celebration of life – all in the urgent hope of awakening the gods of life and fertility.
It’s Christmas, 2,000 years before the Savior’s birth. Or, it’s today. Time has no claims on this ancient rite.
Early American Warning
Contrary to common belief, Christmas anciently was not the celebration of the birth of the Savior at Bethlehem. That connection came much later to this heathen festival celebrating life.
The fact that the holiday is deeply rooted in pagan sun worship was more than enough reason to keep the Puritans and other early American settlers seeking spiritual purity from having any part of it.
“Long before the fourth century, and long before the Christian era itself, a festival was celebrated among the heathen at that precise time of year, in honor of the birth of the son of the Babylonian queen of heaven; and it may fairly be presumed that, in order to conciliate the heathen, and to swell the number of the nominal adherents to Christianity, the same festival was adopted by the Roman Church, giving it only the name of Christ. This tendency on the part of Christians to meet Paganism half-way was very early developed,” Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons, p. 93.
No Thanks to Babylon
Christmas, with its trappings of life-celebrating superstitions, stretches back to ancient civilizations.
Steeped in beliefs of reincarnation and immortality, the pagan Babylonians thought that their king and sun-god Nimrod, who had been cut down, was brought back to life in the form of a green tree.
His return coincided with the winter solstice at the end of December, when the sun returns in its astronomical cycle and days begin to lengthen once more. And so we see the burning of the yule log signifying the sun’s light and warmth, and the evergreen tree wrapped in lights.
As pointed out in the book, 4,000 Years of Christmas by Earl W. Count, “Mesopotamia is the very ancient Mother of Civilization. Christmas began there, over four thousand years ago, as the festival which renewed the world for another year,” p. 18.
Lies of Yuletide
None of the facts surrounding Christmas is a mystery. You can read about them every year in newspapers and magazines appearing in December. The total indifference churchianity has to the revelation of the heathen roots of Christmas is remarkable.
Saturnalia is the forerunner of Christmas. It was an ancient Roman festival in honour of the god Saturn, held on December 17 of the Julian calendar and later expanded with festivities through to December 23. It was the most popular holiday in Rome and its celebrations are the source of many of the traditions we now associate with Christmas.
But by the fourth century CE western Christian churches settled on celebrating Christmas on December 25, which allowed them to incorporate the holiday of Saturnalia. Many of the traditions of Saturnalia—including giving gifts, singing, lighting candles, feasting, and merrymaking—had become absorbed by the traditions of Christmas.
Unable to refute its pagan origins and practices, they shrug, “We keep Christmas for the children. How can we deny them that?”
Think a minute. Aside from being anchored in dark, mystery worship, the perceived “biblical” side of Christmas is tethered to a series of falsehoods and distortions. Should heathen fictions be the basis for the adoration of the Son of Righteousness, even if He were born then? Jeremiah 10 clearly says not to learn the ways of the heathen.
Saint Nick has usurped the role of the Savior. Children are taught to be good for Santa’s sake (a mythological character who can do magical things), not for the righteous Judge whose birthday is presumably being honored.
Yet, we still have a big problem even if we remove Kris Kringle from the scene.
Christmas promotes covetousness in its obsession with gifts. This annual greedfest is betrayed by the fact that retailers earn up to half their yearly sales during the Christmas shopping frenzy.
What a strange birthday observance anyway — where celebrators gather to give gifts to one another and not to the one whose birthday is supposedly being honored!
Through common angel and mother-child icons displayed during the observance, both young and old are exposed to blatant idolatry. This is in flagrant violation of the Second Commandment not to make any graven image of any likeness on earth or heaven nor to bow down to them.
The tree itself becomes that image of adoration. Contests are held for the most beautifully decorated trees and homes, while churches long ago broke the barriers to the forbidden by erecting evergreens in their halls.
Christmas transfers the ancient worship of the sun to worship of the Son, violating Yahshua’s own words to Satan, “You shall worship Yahweh your Elohim and HIM only shall you serve,” Matthew 4:10.
Tradition says the shepherds came and worshiped Yahshua in the manger. The Bible, however, says they glorified Yahweh the FATHER for all that they had seen and heard, Luke 2:20.
No Command for Christmas
Nowhere does the Bible say or even hint that the Messiah was born on December 25. That date coincides with the Saturnalia, the pagan Roman feast held in December at the winter solstice in honor of the returning sun (god).
In the spirit of throwing in with what cannot be overthrown, the Roman church adopted this day of the sun’s annual rebirth as the birth of the Son of Yahweh.
Significantly, not one verse in the Scriptures commands man to remember the birthday of Yahshua’s human advent. If there were, rest assured man would virtually ignore it, as he does other direct commands of Yahweh. Ironically, this holiday conspicuously missing from Scripture tops the charts of man’s religious celebrations!
“In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men,” Yahshua said in Matthew 15:9.
Other truths twisted into fantasy include the fact that the wise men never came to the manger but to the Messiah’s house as much as two years later (Matt. 2:11). Neither is it clear how many came. Nor were their gifts meant as birthday presents but royal offerings for a King, of the Jews.
A Relative Latecomer
Nowhere in the entire Bible do we find that anyone kept Christmas. In fact, Christmas as a celebration of the Savior’s birth was not observed before the fourth century of the modern era. These facts alone are testimony to the absence of any heavenly command or mandated biblical practice.
As Hislop reminds us, “That Christmas was originally a pagan festival, is beyond all doubt. The time of the year and the ceremonies with which it is still celebrated, prove its origins. In Egypt, the son of Isis, the Egyptian queen of heaven, was born at this very time, ‘about the time of the winter solstice.’ The very name by which Christmas is popularly known among ourselves –Yule-day – proves at once its Pagan and Babylonian origin. ‘Yule’ is the Chaldean name for infant or ‘little child’ and as the 25th of December was called by our Pagan Anglo-Saxon ancestors…long before they came into contact with Christianity,” pp. 93-94.
A person who seeks only the pure word of truth will give up the solar survival of Christmas in favor of what Almighty Yahweh DOES command in His Word. Leviticus 23 lists seven annual observances that Yahweh gave man as an ordinance “forever,” but which are largely ignored today.
These are called Feasts of Yahweh, not Feasts of the Jews or of any other nationality or race. They are for ALL men everywhere in honor of the one true Creator Yahweh, the Designer and Maker of the universe. Shouldn’t True Worshipers seek to keep the days specifically COMMANDED in the Scriptures, and not the holidays man has devised – that are not?
