Sargo, the Babylonian, lounges by the Hanging Gardens, day­dreaming of the far distant future. What will the 21^stcentury be like, he wonders. “What if I could go to those future lands spoken of in the legends, to see how people live 4,000 years from now?” he fantasizes,chomping on a pork chop.

“Will the great god Bel have allowed the people to be powerful? Will Earth Mother Beltis have protected them through the years, and will Ishtar have blessed them with many children to sacri­fice? Or will future faiths have forgotten our Babylonian beliefs?”

No, Sargo, you would be pleasantly surprised to know that were you alive today you would not feel all that uncomfortable or unfamiliar with the state of religion in the 21^st century. In fact, you may even be moved tell the modern church­goer, “You worship much like I do.”

Sargo, your Babylonian beliefs have become the standard for nearly all the world’s religions. They are evident the world over in a wide variety of religions and practices.

Hindus practice it, still keeping your sacred cow sacred, and still honoring the Trin­ity – except they changed the names to Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. They haven’t lightened up on your belief in immortality of the soul, either, just gave it their own spin in the wheel of samsara.

Your story of Nimrod and Tammuz taught them well. In fact, the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation is a hot item in parts of Europe and America. It’s called New Age. I know, Sargo, it is not new. I realize they should give credit where credit is due. After all, you Babylonians are the true masters of all things heathen.

The fastest growing religion today is Islam. It was started by a man, just as Nimrod founded your faith, Sargo. Mohammed gleaned many of his be­liefs from Judaism and another religion called Christianity. You’ll find essentials of your revered Babylonian mys­teries in these religions as well.

Your notion of a gloomy, dark world where evil people go at death and burn forever still is very much alive. Here again lives that immortal soul idea you are so famous for. Your faith in many deities has an outlet in some faiths today with their venera­tion of saints.

Sargo Would Be Very Comfortable

What day is it? you ask. This is Mon­day, Sargo. You get it? Mon-day/Moon Day, the day your forefathers set aside for moon worship. It still comes right af­ter Sunday, the day your ancients wor­shiped the sun-god Shamas.

All the other days of the week still reflect heathen worship, like Tuesday, the day the deity Tiu was hon­ored. And Wednesday, named after Woden, a Celtic deity who came later in Europe. Then there’s Thor’s day (Thursday), Frigg’s day (Friday), and of course, Saturn’s day (Saturday).

No, Sargo, most people today don’t worship the planets as you Babylonians did, but they do read horoscopes where they seek their futures from the stars – in the same manner your fathers did.

Fortune-telling by the stars is so popular today that even a former First Lady consulted an astrologer before advising her husband.

I believe in the Bible. The Bible con­demns prophesying through the stars.

And the Bible doesn’t name the days of the week either, it only numbers them, except for the seventh, which is called the Sabbath.

What’s the Bible, you ask? It’s the Book inspired by the true Almighty Yahweh and on which Christianity is claimed to be based. Christianity is a major religion that has spread around the world. Its worshipers claim to wor­ship the true Heavenly Father.

You may be surprised that they call Him God. Yes, that’s right. It’s not a name. And I agree that it is rather odd that Christianity seems to be the only major religion in all of history that doesn’t honor the One it worships by name.

Pardon me? …Oh of course, their Mighty One does indeed want to be called by His Name, just as you do yours. He said over and over in His inspired Word that His Name is Yahweh, and even sealed it in the Third Commandment. But THEY don’t think it is important.They say, “He knows who I mean.”

I agree, it IS very strange – and very confusing. But there are many as­pects about this faith that you would find familiar, Sargo.

For instance, if you could see its temples, called churches, you would recognize the tall spires most of them have … Yes, you’re right. They are a carryover of the Asherah you had in Babylon. This is what a scholar says about the asherah:

“Originally a tree, symbolical of the ‘tree of life,’ it was an object of rever­ence and veneration. Then came the perversion of the earlier idea which simply honoured the origin of life; and it was corrupted and debased into the [male] organ of procreation, which was symbolized by the form and shape given to the Asherah. It was the phal­lus image of Isaiah 57:8, and the im­age of the male, Ezekiel 16: 17.” (Com­panion Bible, Appendix 42)

Babylonian Days Prosper

This religion worships on the venerable day of the sun, just as you and your forefathers did, Sargo, when you wor­shiped sun deities. Strangely, their own Bibles command that they worship on the seventh day, not the first day of the week (Ex. 20:10). But because they wanted to break clean from another faith known as Judaism, they decided on their own to change their day of worship.

They chose Sunday because that is the day their converts from pagan Babylonian religions were accustomed to keeping holy. A king even enforced it. His name was Constantine. And they have been observing Sunday ever since.

But there is much more.

They observe a holiday each year in honor of your goddess Ishtar. It still sounds similar: Easter. Many of them even are aware that Ishtar was the Babylonian queen deity of love and fer­tility, yet they still paint and hide eggs, symbols of life and reproduction, and flood this observance with rabbits, also symbols of fertility.

They claim they observe it because the Savior was resurrected on Sunday morning, although Scripture says He was already gone by the time Sunday sunrise rolled around. Anyway, they still honor where this obser­vance really comes from – with your now symbolic rabbits and eggs.

You Babylonians certainly were big on worship of sex. But is that something to be proud of, Sargo? The big paradox is that the Bible condemns mixing these rites with True Worship. “Learn not the way of the heathen,” Jeremiah 10:2 reads, but they continue practicing your pagan traditions of worship anyway. They cite something about do­ing it for the children’s sake.

In Ezekiel, the One they seek to worship says He will have no mercy on those who practice sunrise worship rites:

“And He brought me into the inner court of Yahweh’s house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of Yahweh, between the porch and the altar, were about 25 men, with their backs toward the temple of Yahweh, and their faces toward the east: and they worshiped the sun toward the east… and they put the branch [asherah] to their nose… Therefore shall I deal in fury…” (8:16- 18)

Modern Holly Folly

Amazing, isn’t it, how all these rites of your influential heathen faith are so entrenched in today’s worship? But I’ve barely scratched the surface, Sargo. Where your religion really shines today is in the annual extravaganza called Christ­mas.

The biggest promoters are the merchants, who have kept this observance alive and growing in order to reach their annual sales quota. They claim to make half of their annual sales in the last two months of the year before Christmas, when gifts are exchanged and people go into debt for the next year. So they start Christ­mas advertising in September.

The Bible prophesies that the mer­chants of the earth will “have waxed rich through the abundance of her [Babylon’s] delicacies,”Revelation 18:3. Amazingly accurate, isn’t it? Never so accurate as in this the biggest shopping extravaganza the world has ever seen.

You’ll be more amazed at how Christmas rites are so very like those in ancient Babylon.

Some practices may have changed cosmetically through the years as they left Babylon and diffused through the Mithraic cults and into northern Eu­rope, but the essence still shines through.

For instance, you know about the myth of Nimrod, symbolized by a tree, and how he became deified and was “reincarnated” after being cut down. Well, the fable is still celebrated in De­cember with a yule log. At Xmas the burning log represents the glowing sun­ god Mithras returning to the skies af­ter the winter solstice.

In Egyptian worship Nimrod reap­peared as the palm tree. In Rome and northern Europe he was the fir or evergreen that is always green and seemingly immortal.

One source put it this way, “Now the Yule Log is the dead stock of Nimrod, deified as the sun-god, but cut down by his enemies; the Christmas tree is Nimrod redivivus – the slain god cometo life again,” The Two Babylons, p. 98. It continues, “This entirely accounts for the putting of the Yule Log into the fire on Christmas-eve, and the appearance of the Christmas-tree the next morning,” p. 97.

You pagans were always quite con­cerned when your source of life, the sun, appeared less and less each day at the end of the year. At the winter sol­stice, about December 25, you cel­ebrated the return of the unconquered sun as it made its cyclical appearance once more and promised springtime re­newal of life from the dead of winter.

In honor of the solar deity, even though they may not realize it, people at Christmas today decorate their ever­green trees with bulbs and balls sym­bolic of the returning sun, as well as to honor the renewal of life. Then they stand back and virtually worship this tree idol, placing gift offerings beneath it.

Yes, Sargo, without hesitation you could say that Christmas is indeed a gift from you sun-worshiping Babylonians. Some people today still claim December 25 is the day the Savior was born,but many know bet­ter.

In her book, All About American Holidays, Maymie R. Krythe writes, “The exact date of [the Messiah’s] birth is not known; and during the first two or three centuries little note, apparently,was taken of the anniversary. For church officials opposed such celebra­tions as savoring of paganism,” p. 254.

Early American colonists detested the Christmas observance, realizing its true origins. Associated Press writer Peter Coy writes, “Celebrating Christmas in Mas­sachusetts three centuries ago was risky: Anyone who took the day off from work could be fined 5 shillings. When George Washington crossed the Delaware River the night of Dec. 25, 1776, he could count on catching the Hessian soldiers drunk and sound asleep after a day of carousing. But, for Washington’s men, Christmas was just another day. And it wasn’t until 1836 that the first state – Alabama – de­clared Christmas a holiday.”

Christmas is also rooted in the Ro­man Saturnalia, a sister heathen festival in honor of Saturn, deity of agriculture. According to Funk and Wagnall’s Standard Refer­ence Encyclopedia, “The customs of the Saturnalia were later, in Christian times, blended with those on January 1, the celebration of the New Year, when it was also the practice to give presents, and much of the traditional merrymak­ing of the Christmas season seems to have developed from the earlier pagan festival,” Saturnalia, p. 7825.

Passing on the Mysteries?

You see, Sargo, other cultures also borrowed from your mysteries, and ours borrowed from and built on theirs as well as yours. The Roman counterpart to your Tammuz was Mithras, the sun deity. He supposedly hatched from an egg on De­cember 25.

Because Mithraism was one of the last of your mystery cults to reach the West, it became a rival of Christianity, with which it was contemporary. Many of the practices of Mithraism were picked up by Christian worshipers.

The book, The Golden Bough, says about the blending of Mithraic rites with Christmas nativity customs, “In the Julian Calendar the twenty-fifth of De­cember was reckoned the winter solstice, and it was regarded as the Nativity of the sun, because the day begins tolengthen and the power of the sun to in­crease that turning point of the year. Now Mithras was regularly identified by his worshipers with the Sun, the Uncon­quered Sun, as they called him; hence his nativity also fell on the twenty-fifth of December,” p. 416.

What is the harm in observing holidays your forefathers began? you ask. Well, Sargo, your pagan back­ground allows for the worship of nu­merous “gods.” Naturally, these “gods” don’t mind sharing your worship be­cause they don’t exist.

But Almighty Yahweh does exist, and because of Him you exist. He says that if you seek salvation – to live for­ever in His Kingdom – then you must obey and worship only Him.

Here are His exact words: “I am Yahweh: that is My Name: and My glory will I not give to another, neither My praise to graven images,” Isaiah 42:8. He also said through the Apostle Paul, “Take heed unto yourself, and unto the doctrine: continue in them: for in doing this you shall both save yourself, and them that hear you,” 1Timothy 4:16.

We can’t compromise True Wor­ship, Sargo. The Roman Empire toler­ated many different religions because they did not understand truth, and what they were really after anyway was political unity. So they forfeited truth whenever expedient to appease their subjects. And compromise is what began the fall of man in Eden.

You see, being a follower of the one true Mighty One Yahweh means enjoying a close, father-child union with Him. He actually lives in us by His Holy Spirit power. He says, “You are the Temple of the living Elohim; as Elohim has said, ‘I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their Elohim, and they shall be My people.’ Wherefore, ‘come out from among them, and be separate,’ says Yahweh, ‘and touch not the unclean thing,’ “ 2Corinthians 6:16-18.

If I worship other deities in the popular customs, even though main­taining that I’m really worshiping the true Creator Yahweh, then I can no longer be a son of Yahweh. He makes that clear. It’s like giving up my fam­ily and all it stands for and going to live at the neighbor’s house.

What would you think if your child did that to you, Sargo? It is the same with the Father Yahweh, the only true Mighty One of the universe. When we accept false worship and we compromise the truth, it is the same as leaving our Father.

Think about that, Sargo.

by Elder Alan Mansager

As with Christmas, Easter is an­other major celebration featuring an odd blend of religious, mythical, and profane themes: chalices and chocolate, crosses and croissants; bonnets and bunnies, hymns and hams; Son worship and sun worship.

The unstudied may think it pe­culiar that Yahweh would require His people today to eat unleavened bread for a week following the Pass­over. Yet they find nothing weird about observing the Savior’s resur­rection by searching church lawns for painted eggs … allegedly laid by rabbits!

It is time to conduct our own search­ for the scriptural Easter to see whether there even is one.

One Verse in a Version – Proof of Scriptural Easter?

A peculiar fact jumps out immedi­ately. In a careful examination of the entire Bible we discover that the word “Easter” exists in only one verse: Acts 12:4. In the King James Version it reads, “…intend­ing after Easter to bring him forth to the people.”

But now notice how nearly all other versions trans­late this very same passage:

“ … intending to bring him before the people after Passover,” The New King James Bible.

“ … intending after the Passover to bring him out before the people,” New American Standard

“ … Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Pass­over,” New International Version

“ … with the intention of produc­ing him to the people after Passover,” James Moffat

“ … intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people,” Revised Standard

“ …intending to bring him out to the people after the Passover,” New Revised Standard Version

“ … Herod’s intention was to deliver Peter to the Jews for execution after the Passover,” Living Bible

“ …intending to bring him out to the people after Passover,” Modern Language Bible

“ … meaning to produce him in public after Passover,” New English Bible

“ … intending after the Passover to bring him forth to the people,” The Webster Bible

“ … purposing after the Passover to bring him forth to the people,” The Amplified New Testament

“ .. .intending to bring him out to the people after the Passover,” The New Berkeley Version in Modern En­glish

“ .. .intending, after the pasch, to bring him forth to the people,” Douay­-Rheims (Catholic).

In this last version, “pasch” is simply the near Greek word for the Hebrew Pass­over, Pascha. “Passover” is found 28 times in the King James New Testa­ment, Easter only once. Clearly a translation anomaly exists with the KJV. The idea of a “Scriptual Easter” is simply not true.

As the King James Newberry Refer­ence Bible shows in a side column note on Acts 12:4, the word “Easter” in the King James should have been “Passover” (Newberry includes the Greek letters for “Pascha”).

Amazing, isn’t it? Easter is the second biggest religious celebration of the Bible-professing world, yet, its only scriptural evidence is one erroneously translated word!

Apostles Not Easter Dye Hards

But that’s not all. You don’t have to hunt long to discover that no one in the Scriptures ever observed Easter. Rather, even in the New Testament the Apostolic Assembly continued with the Bibli­cal Holy Days commanded in Exo­dus 12 and Leviticus 23. Our Savior died at Passover as the ultimate Passover sacrifice, a fact the Apostle Paul clearly explains in lCorinthians 5:7.

The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica confirms this simple and astounding fact, “There is no indication of the obser­vances of the Easter festival in the New Testament or in the writings of the apostolic Fathers … The first Chris­tians continued to observe the Jewish festivals, though in a new spirit, as commemorations of events which those festivals had foreshadowed” (“Easter,” vol. 8. p. 828).

The commanded Old Testament Feast days were the ONLY annual observances that the early New Testament Assembly recognized. This fact should speak volumes to every Bible-believer today about the importance of honoring those same observances commanded to Israel.

Writing in Bible Review, Delbert Achuff, Jr., a retired Episcopal minister, noted what would happen if Yahshua were to return to earth to observe modern worship: “He would probably be amazed at what the worshipers accredited to Him. The accretions from having passed through several cultures would puzzle this peasant Jew who said He came ‘to fulfil the Law, not to destroy it’ (Matt. 5:17).St. Paul too is understood in a whole new light when seen as a Jew who is a member of the new sect, defending his new understandings of Torah and relationship with [Yah­weh]. Later he calls it the New Cov­enant, but the word (b’rith in the He­brew) is meaningless if one does not know the Old Covenant.”

Theologians cite Acts 2 as the start of the New Testament Assem­bly. But they neglect the reason that the Apostles and disciples were gath­ered that day. It was in observance of the command in Leviticus 23 to keep the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost)—one of the seven annual holy days!

Nowhere can we find a Biblical injunction to observe the Savior’s res­urrection as a special holiday. The command was and always will be to keep the memorial of His death at Passover. This being the case, where did “Easter” originate?

Thank the Babylonians

Yahshua told His disciples that the poor we would always have with us. The same thing can be said of hea­then worship, at least until Yahweh’s righteous Kingdom is established on earth.

The link between Easter and pa­ganism is so obvious no one could miss it. For starters, take the name. “Easter” even sounds like its name­sake—Eastre, the Saxon deity of dawn, spring, and fertility. One au­thority notes, “Easter is a word of Saxon origin and imparts a goddess of the Saxons, or rather, of the East, Estera, in honor of whom sacrifices being annually offered about the Pass­over time of the year (spring), the name became attached by association of ideas to the Christian festival of the resurrection, which happened at the time of the Passover,” Cyclope­dia of Biblical, Theological, and Eccle­siastical Literature, “Easter,” p. 12.

In his Dictionary of Word Origins” Joseph Shipley writes, “Easter. This is from Anglo Saxon Eostre, a pagan goddess whose festival came at the spring equinox. The festival was called Eastron(plural of Eastre). The Christian festival of the resurrection of [Messiah] has in most European languages taken the name of the Jew­ish Passover (Fr. Paques, It. Pasqua, from Latin pascha … ); but in English the pagan word has remained for the Christian festival,” p. 131.

Before she.was Eastre, the idol was called Ishtar (pronounced by the Assyrians and Babylonians as we do Easter).

John in Revelation tells us that Babylon is the mother of all false worship, and Revelation 14:8 says that Babylon caused all nations to partake in her spiritual unfaithfulness. Our society didn’t escape Babylon’s influence regarding the Easter observance, ei­ther.

Ishtar (a.k.a. Semiramis) was the wife of Nimrod, the priest-king and founder of Babylon. She was the first “deified woman” (Alexander Hislop, ­The Two Babylons, p. 304). The Greeks worshiped her as Aphrodite and the Romans as Venus, goddess of love.

Queen of Heaven

Jeremiah condemns worship of this heathen queen mother in a rite that includes a practice remarkably simi­lar to Easter:

“The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead [their] dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other mighty ones, that they may provoke me to anger” (Jer. 7:18).

“Cakes” is the Hebrew kavvan, meaning a sacrificial cake, which was “used in worship of Ishtar,” The New Brown, Driver, and Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, p. 467.

These “cakes” survive as today’s hot cross buns—an Easter tradition on which are marked crosses, the symbol for woman. In hieroglyphics the cross is a symbol for life. This ancient queen of heaven was the mother of life, the heathen believed.

Also prominent in the Easter cel­ebration is the egg. The 1994 winter Olympics opened with a ceremony featuring a huge egg, ancient pagan symbol of life. Mithras, the sun god, supposedly hatched from a cosmic egg.

Pagan mythology says a mystic egg of the Babylonians fell from heaven into the River Euphrates. Once fish had pushed it ashore it hatched and out came Astarte—Eas­ter (Venus). Hence, the egg became a symbol of Astarte or Easter (The Two Babylons, p. 109).

The egg soon figured into Chris­tian Easter worship. According to Hislop, “A form of prayer was even appointed to be used in connection with it, Pope Paul V teaching his superstitious votaries thus to pray at Easter—‘Bless, O L-rd, we beseech thee, this thy creature of eggs, that it may become a wholesome suste­nance into thy servants, eating it in remembrance of our L-rd J-sus Chr-st,’” p. 110.

Peter Cotton-tale

Imagine honoring Abraham Lincoln with Bingo parties. Or celebrating the first moon walk with a fishing derby. It makes as litte sense to observe the resurrection of the Savior with choco­late rabbits that lay colored eggs. Tradition has melded two entirely dif­ferent observances, intermixed them to produce the strangest of crossbreeds—not unlike remember­ing the Savior’s birth with Santa Claus, reindeer, and evergreen trees.

To understand why the rabbits, we need to go back again to a more ancient festival that in the apostate church merged with Passover to be­come the Easter hybrid.

“Although Easter is a Christian festival, it embodies traditions of an ancient time antedating the rise of Christianity,” says Funk and Wagnalls Standard Reference Encyclopedia. This source goes on to describe Eastre, the Teutonic goddess of spring and fertil­ity, to whom was dedicated “Eastre monath,” corresponding to April. “Her festival was celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox, and traditions associated with the festival survive in the familiar Easter bunny, symbol of the fertile rabbit, and in the equally familiar colored Easter eggs originally painted with gay hues to represent the sunlight of spring” (“Easter,” Ibid, p. 2940).

In its effort to join heathen with Bible believer, the early church ac­commodated many pagan obser­vances, finding common dates on which to merge. Easter and Passover is one example. Try as they could, however, they could not detach the pagan dates from the pagan rites and rituals.

Scriptural Caution

The Easter sunrise service is com­mon today. But how many who par­ticipate realize the ancient worship they are really keeping alive—adora­tion of the sun-god? Ezekiel gives this sobering account of what Yahweh thinks of this cus­tom employed in worship of Him:

“Then said he unto me, Have you seen this, O son of man?  turn yet again, and you shall see  greater abominations than these. And he brought me into the inner court of Yahweh’s house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of Yahweh, between the porch and the altar, were about five  and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of Yahweh, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped  the sun toward the east. Then he said unto me, Have you seen this, O son of man?  Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here? for they have filled  the land with violence, and have returned to provoke me to anger: and, lo, they put the branch to their nose. Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity: and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them” (Ezek. 8:15-18).

Passover is the only legitimate and commanded observance in honor of our Savior’s death. He kept it with His disciples just before He was impaled, and He said He would observe it again in the coming Kingdom. What better certification for an observance can we get? No Scriptural mandate exists for an annual observance of His resurrection. Let alone the idea of a Scriptual Easter.

Yahweh will one day teach man­kind that He is the only true Mighty One. All will learn—through pain of plague, if necessary—that pagan abominations will not be tolerated. And man will one day discover what True Worship is all about and what blessings can be his if he will simply be obedient not to traditions of the world—but to the Word.

by Alan Mansager

If you enjoyed Scriptural Easter and want more info on Easter please check out our free booklet: Easter: The Fertility of it all

Caesar’s idol was named Janus, from which we get our month January. The emperor thought his deity would be the suitable portal to the new year, as one of his faces looked forward to a new year, the other backward.

That’s the sanitized version of New Years. The messy and convoluted history of the January 1 New Year’s observance reveals chronological confusion amid political intrigue, race hatred, and fuzzy math—all in an attempt to improve upon the Biblical calendar as inspired by our Creator.

Ancient Cultures Kept New Year’s

The January 1st new year is an on-and-off tradition. Surprisingly, January 1 has been celebrated as a holiday by Western nations for only about the past 400 years. The earliest record of a new year celebration is believed to have been in Mesopotamia, c. 2000 B.C.E., and was celebrated around the time of the vernal equinox in mid-March.

A variety of other dates tied to the seasons were also used by various ancient cultures. The Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians began their new year with the fall equinox, and the Greeks celebrated it at the winter solstice.

The early Roman calendar designated March 1 as the new year. The calendar had just ten months, beginning with March. That is why the name September means seventh in Latin but is actually the ninth month. October means eight but is actually the 10th. November means 9th but is the 11th. December means 10th but is the 12th month of the secular year.

January Joins the Calendar

The first time the new year was celebrated on January 1st in Rome was in 153 B.C.E. In fact, the month of January did not even exist until around 700 B.C.E., when the second king of Rome, Numa Pontilius, added the months of January and February.

February was the end of the year, making the new year a spring event. The new year was moved from March to January because that was the beginning of the civil year, the month that the two newly elected Roman consuls—the highest officials in the Roman republic—began their one-year tenure. But this new year date was not always strictly and widely observed, and the new year was still sometimes celebrated on March 1.

In 46 B.C. E. Julius Caesar introduced a new, solar-based calendar. The old calendar had become out of sync over the years. This new Julian calendar began the new year with January 1. Within the Roman world, January 1 would become the consistently observed start of the new year. Sacrifices were made to Janus, gifts and visits were exchanged, along with masquerading and feasting.

Not everyone found this observance acceptable. The early Catholic Church condemned the festivities as paganism. “Participation in the ordinary New Year’s Day observances as well as in the Saturnalia of December was from the first discouraged by the Church. Christians were expected to spend the day in quiet meditation, reading of Scripture and acts of charity” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Ed., Vol. 19, p. 594).

During the Middle Ages, the Church remained opposed to celebrating New Years. But as Christianity became more widespread, the early church began melding its religious observances and dates with other pagan celebrations of the day, and New Year’s Day was no exception. New Years is still observed as the Feast of the Savior’s Circumcision by a few modern denominations.

In 567 the Council of Tours abolished January 1 as the beginning of the year. At various times and in various places throughout medieval Christian Europe, the new year was celebrated on December 25; March 1; March 25 (the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Angel Gabriel announced to Mary she would have a divine Son); and Easter. March 25 was the usual date among Christians in early medieval days.
After William the Conqueror became King of England on December 25, 1066, he decreed that the English return to the January 1 new year established by the Roman pagans. This move ensured that the commemoration of the Messiah’s supposed January 1 circumcision would align with William’s coronation, thus tying the English and Christian calendars and his own coronation into one neat bundle. William’s innovation was eventually rejected, and England rejoined the rest of the Christian world and returned to celebrating New Years Day on March 25.

January 1 Again in Vogue

In 1582, Pope Gregory’s calendar reform restored January 1 as new year’s day and synchronized the seasons with the months, which had gotten far out of harmony. This is still the calendar in use today. Although most Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar almost immediately it was only gradually accepted among Protestant countries. The British, for example, did not adopt the reformed calendar until 1752. Until then, the British Empire — and their American colonies — still celebrated the new year in late March or early April.

New Year’s Rites

The giving and receiving of gifts at New Year’s has an ancient past. The Persians exchanged eggs at the beginning of the year. Gift exchanging at New Year’s is a custom strong in Europe. “The Druids distributed as New Year’s gifts branches of the sacred mistletoe. In Anglo-Saxon and Norman England New Year’s gifts were common, ”Britannica. Roman pagans found a different method of observance— drunken orgies—a ritual they believed constituted a personal re-enacting of the chaotic world that existed before the cosmos was put in order by the gods.
However, gift-giving was not always in vogue at the new year observance. Sometimes bloodletting was more the case. Julius Caesar celebrated his first January 1 New Year by ordering the violent routing of revolutionary Jewish forces in the Galilee.

At the 1577 New Year’s inauguration of the second great Roman calendar (Gregorian) Pope Gregory decreed that all Roman Jews, under pain of death, must listen attentively to a compulsory Catholic conversion sermon given in Roman synagogues after Friday night services. On New Year’s Day 1578 Gregory signed into law a tax forcing Jews to pay for the support of a “House of Conversion” to convert Jews to Christianity. On New Year’s 1581 Gregory ordered his troops to confiscate all sacred literature from the Roman Jewish community. Thousands of Jews were murdered in the campaign. Throughout the medieval and post-medieval periods, January 1 was reserved for anti-Jewish activities: synagogue and book burnings, public tortures, and murder.

Yahweh’s Biblical Calendar

The true Biblical calendar is based on the growing season, with the first month called Abib, which is rooted in the green barley grain. This calendar eliminates the need to perpetually adjust month lengths, add leap years and intercalate a 13th month in order to synchronize the lunar and solar cycles.

Here is how Yahweh told us to determine the start of the year: “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb…And you shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it between the evenings.”Exodus 12:2-3, 6. This is the Passover lamb.

Which is this first month when the Passover was observed? “Observe the month of Abib, and keep the Passover unto Yahweh your Elohim: for in the month of Abib Yahweh your Elohim brought thee forth out of Egypt by night,” Deuteronomy 16:1. Abib means green ears (of barley). When the barley grain comes to a harvestable age, then you have Abib. No need to juggle solar and lunar cycles, as they take care of themselves under the Bible’s calendar.

In Yahweh’s calendar, the first day of the year was observed by watching for the first visible crescent of the Abib moon. This “new moon” starts every month (moonth).

Most secular and some religious calendars base their new year on the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox is that instant when the sun is directly above the earth’s equator while going from the south to the north (for the northern hemisphere). It is the time that most believe starts spring. Those who employ the vernal equinox point to Genesis 1:14, claiming that the sun, moon, and stars set the Feasts. It is true that the sun divides day from night and establishes the seasons, while the new moon sets the beginning of months. Yet, nowhere in the entire Bible does the vernal equinox establish Abib. Nowhere in the Bible is there even any mention of the vernal equinox. To say that Genesis 1:14 refers to the vernal equinox is reading what isn’t there.

Abib is a condition of grain as much as a time of year. The King James Version has led some astray in the way it translates moed inExodus 13:10, Numbers 9:2, 3, 7, and 13. The KJV uses “season” in these verses, causing some to believe that the command is specifically for springtime, and therefore must involve the vernal equinox. In reality, the Hebrew moed simply means “set time” or “appointed time.” Yahweh has set Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread by the criteria of the crops, not by a purely astronomical reckoning known as the vernal equinox.

The vast majority of Jews gradually got away from actually looking for the green ears of barley, going instead by a calculated calendar that involved the vernal equinox. This was done for the sake of convenience. But Yahweh tells us that His growing cycle reveals the proper month for His Feasts.

When the Roman church deliberately acted to separate Easter from Passover, it ruled in 325 C.E. in the Council of Nicaea that Easter would fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. This setting of an observance was entirely man-made and appropriately applied to a man-made holiday called Easter. The Roman church on its own volition, therefore, bestowed a legitimacy to the vernal equinox as a calendar marker where it had none before — at least not in any kind of Biblical context. Among heathens, it was a different story.

Vernal Equinox Anciently

The vernal equinox had great significance among historic pagans and their calendars. Note the following:

• “Easter, too, celebrates the victory of a god of light (J-sus) over darkness (death), so it makes sense to place it at this season. Ironically, the name ‘Easter’ was taken from the name of a Teutonic lunar Goddess, Eostre (from whence we also get the name of the female hormone, estrogen). Her chief symbols were the bunny (both for fertility and because her worshipers saw a hare in the full moon) and the egg (symbolic of the cosmic egg of creation), images which Christians have been hard pressed to explain. Her holiday, the Eostara, was held on the Vernal Equinox Full Moon. Needless to say, the old and accepted folk name for the Vernal Equinox is ‘Lady Day.’ Christians sometimes insist that the title is in honor of Mary and her Annunciation, but Pagans will smile knowingly.” – Lady Day: The Vernal Equinox, by Mike Nichols.

• “The vernal equinox has long been a significant event in the lives of agricultural peoples as it symbolizes nature’s regeneration, fertility, growth and bounty. The word equinox comes from Latin and means “equal night” (German Tag und Nachtgleiche). On this day, night and day each last twelve hours. The Vernal Equinox used to be considered the beginning of the Pagan New Year. It was a time of joy called forth by the resurrection of the ‘Light of the World’ (sun god) from the underworld of the winter, from where he arose to join his goddess Eostre.”– by Ruth Reichmann, Max Kade German-American Center, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis.

• “Babylonians and Assyrians placed greater importance on the Equinoxes than the solstices. The most important festival in Babylonia was the New Year, which occurred at the Spring equinox. This was the akitu, a twelve-day ceremony in which the King, as the son and representative of the divinity, regenerated and synchronized the rhythms of nature, cosmos, and human society.”– Tales of the Vernal Equinox, by Robin DuMolin

• “Modern Pagans also celebrate the universal principle of Resurrection at the Equinox – which is named for Eostre, a Pagan goddess. She is the goddess of Spring to whom the offerings of cake and colored eggs were made at the Vernal Equinox. Rabbits, especially white ones, were sacred to her, and she was believed to take the form of a rabbit. She is also said to be the goddess of the East, that being the direction of rebirth. Since the sun rises in the East, she is linked with the sunrise. Traditional Easter services stem from this association.” Ibid. “Easter is supposed to be derived from Anglo-Saxon Eostre, the name of the Norse goddess whose festival is celebrated by the pagans at the vernal equinox.” – A Book About the Bible, George Stimpson, p. 180.

• “Ostara, also known as The Spring or Vernal Equinox, the Festival of Trees, Alban Eilir, Ostara, the Rites of Spring, and the Rites of Eostre, occurs between March 19 and 21 and marks the first day of true Spring. Day and night are equal on this day, hence the name Equinox. It is observed by Pagans throughout the world.” –from The Witches’ Web

• “Pagans revere the G-d and G-ddess through rituals or ceremonies of various kinds. Pagans of the western traditions celebrate eight festivals or Sabbats each year. They comprise the four solar quarters i.e. the two solstices (longest and shortest days) and the two equinoxes (day and night are the same length) plus four Celtic seasonal festivals. All these mark important events in the cycle of life. They are: Ostara (Easter), the spring equinox, 21st March: Return of the sun from the south, springtime proper. Some celebrate a holy union between G-d and G-ddess.” – from What Do Pagans Do?

The secular New Year’s observance is significant beyond a collection of quaint, heathen customs. Scripture records Yahweh’s displeasure whenever anyone fiddled with His holy calendar to devise different observances. The coming Beast of Daniel 7 is an unsettling case in point. This individual, who will pose as the true Messiah, will be empowered by Satan himself. Note especially his actions: “And he shall speak great words against the most high and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time,” v. 25.

This anti messiah will enforce his own calendar on the world, making his own celebrations that honor only himself exclusively. The world is already accustomed to alternate days of worship. His actions will prove to be the definitive calendar crime of all time and he will pay eternally.

Watch “The Pagan Origins of New Years” below:

Cupids are everywhere with bows and arrows, heart shapes, paper lace, birds, and flowers. All these are associated with St. Valentine’s Day. But just where did these symbols and celebration of the 14th of February come from? Most of all, should we be celebrating this seemingly innocent day on which so many remember sweethearts and loves?

A Priest with a Heart

The origin of this day is not clear, as there is more than one explanation. The most accepted legend is that a Roman priest named Valentine had a special feeling for young people.

When the Roman Empire needed soldiers, Emperor Claudius II decreed that no one could marry or become engaged. Claudius believed that marriage made men want to stay at home instead of out fighting wars.

The kindly Valentine defied the Emperor’s decree and secretly performed weddings for a number of young couples. He was arrested, imprisoned, and put to death.

Another legend holds that Valentine was aiding persecuted Christians and was imprisoned. A jailer and his family were so impressed by his sincerity that they became Christians themselves. Valentine was fond of the jailer’s blind daughter and by a miracle restored her sight. On the morning of his execution he sent her a farewell message signed, “From your Valentine.”

February 14 a Fertility Festival

Valentine was beheaded supposedly on February 14. Not so coincidentally, this is also the eve of an important and more ancient Roman festival, the Lupercalia. (Lupus is Latin for wolf.) On this evening Roman youths drew names of girls who would be their partners during this ceremony.

To the Romans, Lupercalia was serious business. Mark Antony was master of the Lupercali College of Priests. He chose the Lupercalia festival in 44 B.C.E. as the proper time for offering the crown to Julius Caesar.

On February 15 the Luperci priests gathered at the cave of Lupercal, where according to legend, Romulus and Remus—founders of Rome—were nursed by a mother wolf.

Following a sacrifice, two youths of noble birth were brought forward. After a ceremony, they ran through the Roman streets, lashing about with goatskin thongs. The streets would be crowded with young women because a lash of the sacred thong was believed to increase their fertility.

The goatskin thongs were called februa and the lashing the februatio, both stemming from a Latin word meaning to purify. From it comes the name for the month February.

Long after Rome had become a walled city and the seat of a powerful empire, the Lupercalia lived on. When Roman armies invaded what are now France and Britain in the first century B.C.E., they took with them many pagan customs. Included was the Lupercalia.

Pagan-Christian Merger

By the fourth century Christianity became the dominant religion in Rome and the Lupercalia was declared unlawful. Throughout the empire the church endeavored to stamp out pagan practices brought in by the heathen.

“Unable to abolish some of the pagan festivals that the people loved, they accepted these and gave them Christian names,” we read in The Story of Valentine Symbols, by Edna Barth.

Barth explains, “So it was with the Lupercalia, which survived late into the fifth century. St. Valentine’s name was given to a festival that had celebrated springtime and fertility in human beings and other animals. And, do what the church might, the ancient meaning never quite left it. Memories of the Lupercalia as a celebration of mating were handed down, attaching themselves to the saint’s name.”

It was the eve of the ancient fest of the Lupercalia, when Romans habitually preserved the memory of an ancient rural deity, Faunus.

It is not difficult to imagine that the public beheading of Valentine the Christian was a pagan’s victory—here was a priest who professed the Bible, beheaded at this heathen celebration!

Frank Staff writes in his book, The Valentine and Its Origins, “In later years when the early Christian fathers were busy obliterating pagan superstitions and dates by substituting those of the Christian belief, names of many of the martyred Saints were used to replace the old festivals.

“In this way St. Valentine, having suffered on the eve of the Lupercalia, the 14th of February was now to perpetuate forever the memory of this festival of the return of the Spring when a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love and when the birds begin mating.

“Centuries later it was usual on St. Valentine’s Day for young men to draw by lots the names of young women, a custom that lingered in some of the more remote villages of the British Isles right up to Victorian times. Some accounts written during the Victorian era of St. Valentine’s Day maintain that the putting of the names of young women into a box to be drawn for by the men was part of the ceremony of the Lupercalia, and has been repeated so often as to be believed true. But it has been authoritatively stated that this has yet to be proved.”

Not all historians agree with Staff, and see a direct connection between drawing names for Valentine’s Day and the Lupercalia,

Strong evidence also exists that the custom of sending valentines and other rituals on February 14 has erotic origins and it likely was a licentious festival. Lupercalia was a spring festival involving peculiar fertility rites and especially involved young people.

The little cherub called cupid, from the Latin cupido or “desire,” is actually the Greek deity of love known as Eros. Alexandrian poets made him popular in Rome (Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia, p. 2542)

Valentine’s Day customs in the United States trace to early settlers from Germany and Britain.

Bottom Line: The Dollar Sign

Valentine’s Day is immortalized by manufacturers of greeting cards and candy, florists and clothiers who see the chance to induce customers through yet one more holiday to part with their money. “If you don’t give a gift at Valentine’s Day you don’t love others” is the subtle message.

The big problem with involvement in worldly holidays and special days of man is their rank pagan origins that have nothing to do with Scriptural worship. Even more, these days have replaced the true, Biblical observances commanded by our Creator. Paganism has always sought to replace True Worship. The one condemnation Yahweh repeatedly leveled against Israel was their desire to participate in the heathenism of those around them and worship other deities in place of Yahweh.

We as believers must never place anything before Yahweh and His way of life. We must give up the ways of a deceived world that has no love of Yahweh.

“Wherefore come out from among them, and be separate, says Yahweh, and touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you,”2Corinthians 6:17.

It is amazing how much our world is steeped in heathen, truth-supplanting tradition. The days of Lupercalia are with us even in subtle ways.

As one writer observed, “Today we still refer to one who fancies himself with the ladies as something of a ‘wolf,’ and when a pretty girl walks down the street young men give a ‘wolf whistle,’ which shows that the spirit of the Lupercalia is still with us.”

Yahweh’s true Spirit is here as well, and available to those who have a real desire to live honestly and purely for Him. A position of rulership in His coming Kingdom awaits those who do.

 By Donald R. Mansager

Christmas, the granddaddy of all worldly celebrations, was never kept with such intensity when we were a more Bible-based nation. The observance was even outlawed by Puritan colonists. But now that it is deeply ingrained in the mass conscience by annual mass practice –and relentlessly driven by merchants with massive greed – it will not be dislodged until Yahshua returns and reinstates His righteous and true holy days.

The Yuletide extravaganza is nowhere commanded or even found in the Scriptures. Yet, we see the familiar signs admonishing, “Put Chr-st back into Christmas” when He was never there in the first place.

In stark contrast to Christmas, just recently honored again by Yahweh’s true saints is the Feast of Tabernacles. This joyous, eight-day Biblical blessing has been a standing command in the Scriptures for more than 3,000 years. It is taught and observed in both testaments. Along with other holy days, it was kept by the ancient patriarchs as well as by the Apostles and Yahshua the Messiah Himself. Still, it remains a near total mystery to the world.

Why do you think that is?

One answer is that man has always had difficulty doing what his Creator asks of him. There is a natural, human resistance against anything Yahweh tells us to do. We would rather make our own rules for life and worship, unfettered by Biblical do’s and don’ts. Added to this clash of the carnal are multiple layers of family ritual and cultural tradition, and a society with preconceived notions about what everyone will automatically be observing. No one ever asks, “Do you keep Christmas?” They just assume you do as most everyone else, and so overcoming that common presumption presents an automatic obstacle.

All of this adds up to a formula for forgetting the Father and just going with the traditional flow.

It’s nothing new. A stubborn Israel was constantly being admonished by Yahweh to follow Him and eschew the ways of the world. They mostly failed. Yet, when Jeroboam created his own false observance a month after the Feast of Tabernacles, ordaining his own priesthood to boot, the people flocked to it, 1Kings 12:32. That’s the nature of recalcitrant man.

The key to True Worship is that honoring the Father must be done on Yahweh’s terms and His alone. If that means keeping His holy days and giving up the world’s holidays, then that is what it must be.

Nowhere in the list of “Days to Keep” found in Leviticus 23, Exodus 12, Deuteronomy 16 and elsewhere do we see any of today’s popular holidays. We are presented the same option as ancient Israel – keep Yahweh’s days as commanded or ignore them and follow the inventions and conventions of man.

Some will take this issue up with their minister, expecting fair and honest consideration of the issue. Instead they will immediately hear the tired old bromide, “Those Old Testament days are unnecessary today. We are in a New Testament dispensation.” (Which leads one to ask, since when did the New Testament teach us to keep heathen holidays?)

Today’s clerics completely disregard the fact that Yahshua the Messiah and His apostles in the New Testament observed the very days found in Leviticus 23, and they will keep them again in the Kingdom along with the resurrected saints, Ezekiel 45:17-25,Zechariah 14:16-19. This fact begs another question: If the Biblical days were kept by the early Assembly and will be kept in the Kingdom, why shouldn’t they be observed now? We are told in 1Peter 2:21 that Yahshua left us an example to follow. Shouldn’t we be following it?

It is appalling that sincere inquirers cannot get the Truth from most ministers who are supposed to be guiding them into it. Instead, they are sent spinning off in an oblique direction whenever they inquire about why the church ignores the Bible’s commanded holy days. Ezekiel prophesied of this very thing, “Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they showed difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from my sabbaths, and I am profaned among them,” 22:26.

If one seriously studies the Bible with an open mind, it will soon be obvious that churchianity is ignoring some of the most important and elemental truths of Scripture – Yahweh’s laws. At the same time telling you how unnecessary Yahweh’s Scriptural holy days are, churchianity observes with dedicated veneration the popular holidays that are completely missing from the Scriptures.

So what will it be, holidays or holy days? Is your desire to please people or to please Yahweh? It is your choice. And so are the consequences of what you choose.

On October 31 children across the land learn how extortion works through one of the world’s most popular of ancient pagan festivals.

We call it Halloween, which is a contraction of the words “Hallowed” and “evening.” But there is nothing holy about this night. “Trick or treat!” the bantam, masked marauders cry as they go from door to door coercing goodies from mostly compliant residents.

Along with blackmail, the chance to deface private property and get away with it is also a big part of this “hallowed evening.” Shaving cream, soap, and toilet paper are essentials in the juvenile vandals’ bags of tricks prepared especially for this weird, annual ritual. Imagine trying to explain the whole scene to a visitor from another planet…

Adults Now Big into the Act

Visit many office buildings and department stores on October 31 and you’ll see adult employees dressed in silly or grotesque costumes, perhaps with painted faces and fluorescent green hair.

They are psyching up for the Halloween party that night — when they’ll have a chance to act foolishly with impunity. It seems that as our world sinks deeper into paganism and fascination with the occult, this holy day of the heathen Druids has zoomed to the top of the holiday charts. In fact, among adults Halloween is starting to vie in popularity with Christmas.

But is Halloween just a harmless time of fun for the whole family, where everyone can practice their pumpkin-carving skills and then head for the store to be the first to sport the latest in weird costumery?

It is time to tear the mask from Halloween and expose it for what it is. What we find at its roots should concern anyone who professes belief in Scripture.

Night of the Wandering Dead

Rooted in Druidic demon worship 2,000 years old, Halloween continues to cast its ugly spell on modern peoples.

The ritual was not called Halloween when the Celtic peoples of pre-Christian Ireland and Scotland observed it on November 1. For them it was the Feast of Samhain (pronounced Sa-ween), Lord of the Dead. This was also the beginning of the Celtic new year, a time to give thanks to the sun god for the harvest.

But it was also a terrifying night when it was believed time stood still and the souls of the dead walked abroad, mingling with the living and playing malicious tricks on them. The Celts thought that the sinful souls who died during the year had been transferred to the bodies of animals. Through gifts and sacrifices these souls could be freed to claim a heavenly reward. Samhain judged these souls and decreed that their existence was to continue as either animal or human.

The spirits of the dead that were thought to collect around houses of the living were greeted with banquet-laden tables. (They believed spirits needed food.) When the feast was over villagers donned masks and costumes to represent the souls of the dead and paraded to the outskirts of town to lead the ghosts away. Thus they thought they might avoid any retribution the roving spirits may cause them in the event they had not provided suitable and sufficient sustenance. Such reprisals included causing livestock to die, turning milk sour, and spoiling food.

In some areas, food was set outside for the spirits so that they would leave the house untouched. The trick-or-treat ritual re-enacts these ancient superstitions.

Amid all of this superstition the Druids were offering up sacrifices to the sun god. “It was common for horses to be sacrificed since they were sacred to the Sun God. There were also human sacrifices. Men, mostly criminals, were imprisoned in wicker and thatch cages shaped like animals or giants. The Druid priests set fire to the tindery cages and the men were burned to death…In the Middle Ages in Europe, black cats were still being thrown to the flames in wicker cages, for they were thought to be the friends of witches or even transformed witches,” Celebrations, The Complete Book of American Holidays, p. 258.

Samhain Merges with All Saints’ Day

So where does “Hallowe’en” come in, this “hallowed evening”? The celebration in the Roman Catholic Church, which was later to merge with Samhain, was known as All Saints’ Day. All Saints’ Day originated in the 7th century when the Pantheon at Rome was wrested from the barbarians, made into a cathedral, and renamed the Church of the Blessed Virgin and All Martyrs. Thus, from honoring all gods (which is the meaning of the Greek word “pantheon”) the Pantheon became the center for glorifying all saints (Funk and Wagnall’s Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, p. 363).

This day that honored all the “hallowed” or holy saints, was first observed on the evening of May 13, and was known as the All Hallows festival.

The day was officially sanctioned in 835 by Pope Gregory IV after it was moved to November 1 to coincide with
Samhain. It began on the evening of October 31, which was called All Hallows Eve.

Thus, without forcing the pagans to drop their heathen practices and accept Christianity, the Roman church merely made room to accommodate the barbarians.

Just as it confiscated the pagan Pantheon for its own uses, the Roman church incorporated the customs of Samhain to further its mission to convert the known world to Catholicism.

The two celebrations made strange bedfellows: one in respect of evil spirits, the other honoring so-called saints.

One writer noted, “The three days between October 31 and November 2 see pagan and Christian celebrations intertwined in a fascinating way. All Hallows Eve, usually called Hallowe’en, is followed by All Hallows’ Day, which is also All Saints’ Day, and the three-day period is a perfect example of superstition struggling with religious belief,” Year of Festivals, p. 76.

Can we mix light with darkness? Is a little compromise with idolatry acceptable to a holy Creator? Paul warns us, “But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to Elohim; and I would not that you have fellowship with devils. You cannot drink the cup of the Master, and the cup of devils: you cannot be partakers of the Master’s table, and of the table of devils,” 1Corinthians 10:20-21.

The joining of the two celebrations spawned an odd hybrid of beliefs about what was supposed to happen in the spirit world. Souls in purgatory appeared as witches and toads to persons who had wronged them. Halloween fires now were used to comfort souls in purgatory and people prayed for them while holding burning straw in the air.

Even the idea of trick-or-treating by evil spirits transformed into an acceptable church practice: costumed children went around on All Souls Day offering to fast for the departed souls in return for money or an offering.

As the Celts converted to the new religion, they did not forget their stories of the dead traveling to the afterworld on Halloween. Rather, exhibitions of this night became more evil and the observance adopted even more malicious overtones.

Let’s take a look at the familiar customs of Halloween and ask ourselves whether they are fit practice for a True Worshiper.

That Smirking Jack-o-lantern

In America it starts as a pumpkin, but in Europe it was often carved from a turnip, large beet, potato, rutabaga or even a skull with a candle in it. The fearsome face of the fat jack-o-lantern was representative of the god of the dead, Saman, who would drive off less powerful evil spirits abroad that night.

As glimmering lights flickered over an English marsh or an Irish bog, people imagined dead souls had returned to earth. They would place the jack-o-lantern on posts and in windows to ward off the spirits of the dead on Halloween.

The word jack-o-lantern is an abbreviation of “Jack of the Lantern.” Jack is another name for joker or Satan. In an Irish tale, a man named Jack was fond of playing tricks on the devil. Annoyed, the devil tossed Jack a burning coal from hell and with that in his lantern Jack was condemned to walk the earth forever.

The jack-o-lantern is a Halloween idol that keeps alive an ancient symbol of demonic superstition.

Witchery and Black Cats

A pagan practice that was not eradicated upon the coming of Christianity was witchcraft. The word “witch” comes from the Anglo-Saxon wicce, or “wise one.” Witches were thought to be possessors of magic.

Witches, who worship the deities of nature, have living talismans or symbols through which they derive their dark powers. They invoke evil spirits to enter the bodies of their talismans. Some witches have dogs, owls, snakes or swine for their talismans, but the most common are cats. Cats have been closely associated with mystery religion from the Egyptians to the Norse. But the Celts had a particular fear of cats, believing they were humans who had been changed into feline form by evil powers. The black cat particularly was connected to demonic powers.

Black cats are the chief idol of the goddess of Wicca, Diana. In legend, she turns into a black cat to commit incest with her brother, Lucifer.

Eventually the Druids themselves came to be regarded as witches. Witch hunting during Halloween became almost a national pastime in the colonial years of our nation.

Halloween is regarded as the highest “sabbath” for practicing witches today.

Witchcraft is demonic worship in diametric opposition to the worship of Yahweh. Yahweh minces no words about it. He told Israel through Moses, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Ex. 22:18). He says in Deuteronomy 18:10, “There shall not be found among you any one that makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that uses divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch.”

How can a True Worshiper allow his son or daughter to dress up in imitation of a witch or warlock, knowing how Yahweh condemns witchcraft? We are commanded to avoid even the APPEARANCE of evil (1Thes. 5:22).

The Airborne Witch

The broomstick is a symbol of the male organ, on which the witch mounts and leaps high around the fields to “teach” the crops how high to grow (ABC’S of Witchcraft, pp. 48-49).

The notion of flying witches relates to the fact that witches believed they could fly great distances to their feasts by smearing their bodies with ointments containing drugs. The drugs gave them psychedelic “trips” making them think they flew (Ibid., pp. 142-146).

Colors of the Demonic

“Orange, black, and red, the devil’s colors, are the colors associated with Halloween…,” so says the Good Housekeeping Book of Entertainment, p. 168.

Black prefigures black magic and demonic influence. The black of night is when these forces of evil are busiest, using the cover of darkness for their sinister works.

Yahweh warns, “Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from Yahweh, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who sees us? and who knows us?” (Isa. 29:15)

In John 3:19-20 Yahshua said, “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that does evil hates the light, neither comes to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.”

How much time should any Bible believer give to a rite that is observed in the dark and that revels in the colors, symbols, and practices of Yahweh’s adversary, Satan the devil?

Skulls and Skeletons

The skeleton is a form of the god of the dead, the witches’ “horned god.” The Dictionary of Satanism by Wade Baskin says this about skulls and skeletons under “skull worship”: “Skulls play an important role as sacred relics and as objects of worship among primitives. Among Polynesians and Melanesians, skulls of ancestors are worshiped in order to establish connections with the spirits of the dead. Like the head of Osiris in Egypt, the skulls of ancestors may also serve as tutelar deities. The head or its parts, each of which may stand for the whole, can be used as magical food or as a means of increasing the fertility of the soil.”

Under “skull,” the Dictionary of Lore and Legend says, “Symbol of death, often with crossed bones beneath.”

Isaiah tells us what Yahweh thinks of the courting of death and the dead: “When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritualists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their Elohim? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?” (Isa. 8:19-20, NIV)

Fires to Call Up the Sun God

Being that Halloween is a Celtic new year’s festival, many of its surviving rituals trace to the Celtic feast. The fire rite was practiced in many areas around the world on the night before the new year. The old fire was allowed to go out and a new one was kindled — usually a sacred fire from which the fires of the village were re-lit. The fires were thought to rejuvenate the waning sun and aid in banishing evil spirits. The Druids built hilltop fires to celebrate important festivals (Celebrations, the Complete Book of American Holidays, pp. 258-259).

Ghosts and witches feared fire, it was thought, and so fire became the best weapon against evil spirits. Witchcraft was punished by burning at the stake, fire being used as a means of purification. The light that fires gave off was a sign of sacredness.

Apple Bobbing

Popular at Halloween parties is apple bobbing. It was a means of divination among the Druids and survives in cultures influenced by the Celts.

Because the apple is a common love charm, the practice of ducking for apples seems to have been associated with the selection of a lover (see The Folklore of American Holidays).

Apple bobbing was originally a fertility rite deriving from the Christmas observance, which was replete with various fertility rites.

Selling Out to Sin

One of the perpetual failings of ancient Israel was their inability to keep their worship pure. The record throughout history has not been any different. Yahweh’s people have always been tempted to compromise their faith by selling out to the dominant culture and its practices.

For those who are satisfied with less than total truth, the concessions come easier.

Today we witness Easter egg hunts on church lawns, Christmas trees in church vestibules, and Halloween parties in church basements (on the pretext of keeping the children off unsafe streets and away from tainted Halloween candy).

“It’s for the children,” goes the rationalization. “We really just do it for them.”

What our children practice they also learn from. Why would we want to introduce to them pagan falsehoods? How can we instill in them a desire for righteousness if we allow them to revel in ancient customs of evil on Halloween? How can we promote healthy, decent values while allowing them to don hideous masks of vile creatures or deformed humans — with the underlying themes of murder, mayhem, and death?

Can we live a lie? Can we mix the holy with the profane and expect Yahweh to still bless us? “Learn not the way of the heathen!” He thunders in Jeremiah 10:2. Come out from among them and be separate, and touch not the unclean thing, Paul writes in2Corinthians 6:17.

Paul also admonished, “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion has light with darkness?” (2Cor.6:14)

Halloween has no redeeming value. It is one big trick on an ignorant or indifferent society, and another victory for the forces of darkness.

Almighty Yahweh gives us a final warning in the law about demonism and witchcraft: “For all that do these things are an abomination unto Yahweh: and because of these abominations Yahweh your Elohim does drive them out from before you. You shall be perfect with Yahweh your Elohim” (Deut. 18:12-13).

Become perfect before Yahweh. Drop the empty, senseless, heathen observances of man and resolve to begin keeping the true holy days He has commanded in His Word. Discover what true blessings and deep fulfillment are when you begin to comply with His will and not the will of society.

Original article by Alan R. Mansager