THE CATHOLICS INVENTED CHRISTMAS

Regarding the period when Catholicism originated Christmas, the Catholic Encyclopedia says it was NOT among the early festivals of the Church, because Ireneus and Tertullian, at the end of the second century, omit it from their list of feasts. The first evidence of any observance of the birth of Christ appears about 200 AD in Egypt. It was not earlier than 330 AD that Dec. 25 was chosen by any "Pope", and it was not universally accepted till long after that--for the position and authority of the "Pope" was then still far from established.

In the Schaff-Heroz Religious Encyclopedia, we are told-- "From the beginning of the fourth century, when the restless searchings of the nature and persons of Christ drove men's minds into many singular errors, the Eastern Church began to feel the importance of emphasizing the actual birth of Christ by a separate festival...The date once fixed, Christmas gradually became one of the three great annual festivals of the Church."

And from the Abbott-Conant Dictionary of Religious Knowledge-- "Christmas seems to have first appeared in the Roman Church after the middle of the fourth century. At a somewhat later period it spread into Eastern Asia. It was not received with equal readiness by all the churches. Some denounced it as an innovation... It was not till the sixth century that anything like unanimity prevailed as to the day to be observed. The manner in which this festival came to be observed in the Romish Church, and through it to the other churches, is as follows: In this season of the year, a series of heathen festivals occurred, the celebration of which was in many ways closely interwoven with the whole civil and social life of the Romans. These festivals had an import which easily admitted of being spiritualized, and tranformed into a Christian sense. First came the Saturnalia, which represented the Golden Age, and abolished for a while the distinction of ranks. Then came the custom, peculiar to this season, of making presents, afterwards transferred to the Christmas festival. After the Saturnalia came the Festival of Infants [Juvenalia], at which the children were presented with images. Next came a festival still more analogous to Christmas, that of the shortest day [Brumalia], the Winter Solstice1, the Birthday of the New Sun, about to return once more toward the earth... Hence the celebration of the Nativity of Christ was transferred to Dec 25. In the Romish Church, Christmas is a very high festival."

Regarding the attitude of early Christians toward such things, Auld says-- "As for the first believers, they had NOT THE SLIGHTEST INTEREST IN ANYTHING OF THE KIND. Hope in the Lord's imminent return from heaven in great power and glory was the flame that fired their devotion."

In the book, The Customs of Mankind, we read-- "Christmas was originally a festival of the Winter Solstice. It was customary to hold great feasts in honor of the HEATHEN GODS. The early teachers of Christianity PROHIBITED THESE FESTIVALS as unsuited to the character of Christ. Yet the symbols and customs of the old festivals are adapted to the new, and so we find Christmas patterned with many customs of pagan origin. To the mind of the Puritans, Christmas smelled to heaven of idolatry... The Puritans abolished Christmas as a hateful relic of Popery."

Tertullian--who wrote (says Encyclopedia Britannica) "in a period when a LAX SPIRIT OF CONFORMITY had seized the churches": about 200AD--says regarding decorating with evergreens and ceremonial candles-- "Let those who have no Light, light their lamps, let them affix to their posts laurels. YOU [Christians] are the Light of the World, a tree ever green. If you have renounced temples, make not your own gate a temple [by heathen wreaths]."

Crippen says-- "At the time of persecution, Christians were detected by NOT decorating their houses at the Saturnalia."

Some conformed to the heathen customs to avoid suspicion, and to appear like their neighbors, so they would not be looked on as odd and different. This practice was strongly condemned by the early church.

And Campbell relates-- "There can be no doubt that [some of] the early Christians also frequently shared in the frolics of their heathen neighbors; and the fathers of the Church had considerable difficulty in prevailing on their members to refrain from such unedifying pastimes. The early Christians discouraged the use of evergreen decorations in Christian homes and assemblies, because their display had long been associated with heathen festivals. Bishop Martin of Braga forbad the use of all greenery and 'other dangerous Kalend customs'."

Crippen remarks -- "So long as heathenism was in full vigor, the ancient Christians were puritanically jealous of anything that might seem like coqueting with idolatry. But when heathenism was declining, there was a disposition to adopt its customs. What had been heathenish became rich with Christian (!) symbol."

Note that last statement. Auld too betrays the same perverted outlook-- "The use of evergreens is one of the happy (!) contributions which PAGANISM made to the Christian festival. At first the Church frowned upon this intrusion of paganism into the sacred season. But altogether, the ancient Church was wisely tolerant (!) in her attitude to heathen IDEAS and customs ... hence the curious and interesting MIXTURES of IDEAS -- pagan and Christian -- which became charmingly (!) entwisted."

After unsuccesfully fighting the adoption of pagan customs, says Campbell -- "The clergy endeavored to transform the heathen revels into amusements which -- if not really more spiritual in character -- had at least the merit of recognizing the authority of the Church."

The Encyclopedia Britannica confirms this -- "As Christianity spread among the peoples of pagan lands, many of the practices of the Winter Solstice were blended with those of Christianity, because of the liberal ruling of Pope Gregory I and the cooperation of the missionaries." That is, instead of teaching the converts to abandon their old superstitions, and to start a clean new life solely according to the Way of God, the Church found it more practical and profitable to give the old superstitions new names, and mix Christianity with paganism.

The Christmas extravaganza has become the standard for traditional holidays today. Families will gather around December 25, gorge on ham and turkey, stare at a decorated tree while a swooning Bing provides the ambience, while exchanging billions of dollars in gifts. A crescendo of months of retailer pre-hype will come to a climax on one glorious orgy of joy and peace. Or, theoretically, anyway.

Christmas is assumed by many to be rooted in the Bible. A revealing survey would be to poll frantic Christmas shoppers to find out how many know the origins of Christmas.

Do YOU know what Christmas is all about? If Christmas is that significant – the biggest holiday of the year demanding a great deal of your time and money – shouldn't you at least know what it is actually all about?

Do you observe Christmas because you believe it is in the Bible? Try as you might, you will not find a hint of Christmas anywhere in the Scriptures. There is neither a call to observe it nor an example where anyone in the Bible did so. Shocking? Millions are oblivious to this simple fact!

As one authority puts it, "There is no historical evidence that Jesus' birthday was celebrated during the apostolic or early post-apostolic times," (Christmas, p.47) The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Another writer makes this astounding statement: "The day was not one of the early feasts of the Christian church. In fact the observance of birthdays was condemned as a heathen custom repugnant to Christians," The American Book of Days, by George W. Douglas.

What an eye-opening statement: The single most important religious holiday observed today in Christianity would have been FORBIDDEN in early New Testament times! Many other historians and Biblical scholars corroborate this fact.

Now read a candid admission from The New Catholic Encyclopedia, "Inexplicable though it seems, the date of the [Messiah's] birth is not known. The Gospels indicate neither the day nor the month," vol.3, p.656. And the Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature says, "The fathers of the first three centuries do not speak of any special observance of the nativity. No corresponding festival was presented by the Old Testament ... the day and month of the birth of [the Messiah] are nowhere stated in the Gospel history, and cannot be certainly determined," Christmas, p.276.

If Christmas is as popular and pervasive a religious holiday as retail sales indicate, why isn't it found anywhere in the bible?

The bible, itself, does not place the birth of Christ anywhere near the solstice. In fact, it states otherwise. Luke 2:8: "And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night." Is this describing a cold, wintry December scene?

According to Jeremiah 36:22, December is wintry in the Holy Land. It is the rainy season where on occasion snow covers the ground. Luke, however, says that sheep were still in the open fields. This had to be before the cold winter rains and snows began to fall. The livestock had not yet been moved to shelters. Notice: "It was a custom among Jews to send out their sheep to the deserts about the Passover [early spring], and bring them home at the commencement of the first rain" (Clarke's Commentary by Adam Clarke, vol.3, p.370). Clarke says the first rain commences in October or November. He adds, "As these shepherds had not yet brought home their flocks, it is a presumptive argument that October had not yet commenced, and that, consequently, our Savior was not born on the 25th of December, when no flocks were out in the fields ...the flocks were still in the fields BY NIGHT. On this very ground the nativity in December should be given up." December is no time for flocks and their shepherds to be standing out in the field.

Sun (Not Son) Worship

If Christmas is not in the Bible, where did it come from?

Christmas was an invention of the Roman church, designed to compete with the heathen Roman feast of Saturnalia in honor of the sun deity Mithras. Mithras bore remarkable similarity to the Biblical Messiah. The Mithraic feast, like Christmas, was celebrated to commemorate his birth. Notice the astounding parallels, as detailed by Joscelyn Godwin, professor at Colgate University: Mithras was "the creator and orderer of the universe, hence a manifestation of the creative Logos or Word. Seeing mankind afflicted by Ahriman, the cosmic power of darkness, he incarnated on earth. His birth on 25 December was witnessed by shepherds. After many deeds he held a last supper with his disciples and returned to heaven. At the end of the world he will come again to judge resurrected mankind and after the last battle, victorious over evil, he will lead the chosen ones through a river of fire to a blessed immortality," Mystery Religions in the Ancient World, p.99. Godwin remarks, "No wonder the early Christians were disturbed by a deity who bore so close a resemblance to their own, and no wonder they considered him a mockery of [the Messiah] invented by Satan."

These two popular movements were vying for dominance in the Roman Empire – one pagan, the other Christian. Historian and archaeologist Ernest Renan once wrote, "If Christianity had been halted in its growth by some mortal illness, the world would have been Mithraist" (Marc Aurele, p. 597). Caught in the middle were the Roman emperors, who wanted to unify and solidify their diverse empire. They didn't need divisive religious factions. For political reasons, the Roman rulership saw great advantage in synchronizing and harmonizing these religious beliefs into one.

So today, much of what is accepted as Bible-based tradition is the direct result of compromising and mixing with heathen religion. Roman Emperor Constantine, a former pagan himself, gave the most significant push to the Christian-pagan blending of teachings like Christmas. Among other things, he would decree that worship for Christianity switch from the seventh day Sabbath to the first day of the week – Sun-day – the day the pagans worshiped the sun.

"This tendency on the part of Christians to meet Paganism half-way was very early developed," says Alexander Hislop in The Two Babylons, p.93. Interestingly, Hislop notes that at the same time the pagans gave up precious little of their own beliefs and practices. "And we find Tertullian, even in his day, about the year 230, bitterly lamenting the inconsistency of the disciples of [Messiah] in this respect, and contrasting it with the strict fidelity of the Pagans to their own superstition." Hislop then quotes Tertullian, the most ancient of the Latin church fathers whose works are extant, as he decries the early church observances: "By us who are strangers to Sabbaths and new moons, and festivals, once acceptable to [Yahweh], the Saturnalia, the feasts of January, the Brumalia, and Matronalia are now frequented; gifts are carried to and fro, new year's day presents are made with din, and sports and banquets are celebrated with uproar."

A mass is a celebration of the Eucharist or the emblems of the death of the Savior. Yet, "Christ-mass" is an observance supposedly in honor of His birth. Why? The answer is found with the secular ancients. Mithras was known as the Sun Deity. His birthday, Natalis solis invicti, means "birthday of the invincible sun." It came on December 25, at the time of the winter solstice when the sun began its journey northward again. Pagan peoples were overly concerned with life and fertility. They saw life fading in the darkness of winter and so held festivals in honor of and to beckon back the sun to give life and light to the earth once more. The Dictionary of the Middle Ages explains how a mass came to be celebrated for the supposed birthday of Jesus:

"In patristic thought [the Messiah] had traditionally been associated with light or the sun, and the cult of the Sol invictus, sanctioned as it was by the Roman emperors since the late third century, presented a distinct threat to Christianity. Hence, to compete with this celebration the Roman church instituted a feast for the nativity of [the Messiah], who was called the Sol iustitiae .... Usually when Christians celebrated the natalis of a saint or martyr, it was his death or heavenly nativity, but in this case natalis was assigned to be [the Messiah's] earthly birth, in direct competition with the pagan natalis," pp.317-318. (That is, it was to compete with the birthday of Mithras.) So confused were some about what or whom they were worshiping that Pope Leo I (440-461) chastised Christians who on Christmas celebrated the birth of the sun deity!

The sun cult was particularly strong at Rome about the time Christmas enters the historical picture, according to the New Catholic Encyclopedia. "The Feast is first mentioned at the head of the Depositio Martyrum in the Roman Chronograph of 354. Since the Depositio was composed in 336, Christmas in Rome can be dated that far at least. It is not found, however, in the lists of Feasts given by Tertullian and Origen," vol.3, p.656.

Where did Mithraism come from, this Roman religion that venerated the sun deity and influenced Christianity so greatly? Kenneth Scott Latourette in A History of Christianity, traces Mithraism to the mystery religions of Egypt, Syria, and Persia. "Almost all the mystery cults eventually made their way to Rome," he notes. "They were secret in many of their ceremonies and their members were under oath not to reveal their esoteric rites. Numbers of them centered about a savior-god who had died and had risen again. As the cults spread within the Empire they copied from one another in the easy-going syncretism which characterized much of the religious life of that realm and age," pp.24-25.

As we have seen, Christmas as the observance of Jesus' birth did not come into existence immediately. It was not kept for at least three centuries after Jesus' birth! That's a period longer than the entire existence of the United States. But Christmas as a pagan holiday traces back thousands of years before christ.

The Madonna and child theme, which is universal or evident in hundreds of religions down through the centuries, had its origin in Babylon. The similarities with Biblical elements found among pagan religions is not simply coincidence.

Elements of this worship are still found in today's Christmas rites. The Romans worshiped Tammuz as the sun deity Mithras in a special observance called the Saturnalia. The Saturnalia was named for Saturn, otherwise known as Cronus. Cronus is an alias of Tammuz. His wife and mother was Rhea (Semiramis).

The Saturnalia, therefore, was just another observance for Tammuz, the counterfeit redeemer. The Romans kept the Saturnalia in December, at the time of the winter solstice in honor of the returning sun. The festival lasted seven days. "All classes exchanged gifts, the commonest being waxed tapers and clay dolls," says the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition. "These dolls represented original sacrifices of human beings to the infernal god," vol.24, p.231.

During the Saturnalia the social structure was turned upside down. Frequently the master would serve the slave, who could shout at his master and carry on as lustily as he pleased. Social permissiveness reigned. A King of the Saturnalia was chosen by lot. He "ruled" according to his wildest whim. His counterpart was Lord of the Misrule in medieval England and King of Carnival or Rex in today's Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

Legend has it that the Saturnalia was instituted by Romulus under the name Brumalia (from bruma, meaning winter solstice), Britannica, p. 232. "The pagan Saturnalia and Brumalia were too deeply entrenched in popular custom to be set aside by Christian influence," notes the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Enowledge, p.48. And so, the church established the birthday of jesus to coincide with the heathen feast day. "...the Latin Church, supreme in power, and infallible in judgement, placed it on the 25th of December, the very day on which the ancient Romans celebrated the feast of their goddess Bruma. Pope Julius I was the person who made this alteration" (Clarke's Commentary). This fact is supported by the New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, p.223: "December 25 was the date of the Roman pagan festival inaugurated in 274 as the birthday of the unconquered sun which at the winter solstice begins again to show an increase in light. Sometime before 336 the Church in Rome, unable to stamp out this pagan festival, spiritualized it as the Feast of the Nativity of the Sun of Righteousness." Hislop observes, "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 origin," The Two Babylons, p.93.

This blending of observances only served to confuse worshipers. By the middle of the fifth century, Pope Leo the Great rebuked his over-cautious flock for paying reverence to the Sun on the steps of St.Peter's before turning their backs on it to worship inside the westward-facing basilica. Even some bishops, like Troy, continued to pray to the sun. He eventually went back to sun worship entirely (The Early Church, by Henry Chadwick).

As the Roman Empire spread, so did the customs of Christmas. Cultures in northern Europe contributed some of their own customs, or twists on some old themes, nearly all of which had a basis in Babylonian paganism. The decorated tree, St.Nick, yule log, wreaths, cookies, berries, mistletoe, bonfires, roast goose, roast pig, wassailing, caroling, and other familiar fixtures were added or embellished for the Christmas-Saturnalia in various countries. When the Protestant movement attempted to rid itself of the excesses and sins of Roman Catholicism, there also came an opposition to Christmas that almost obliterated it entirely in England. "In England, for example, the Puritans could not tolerate this celebrating for which there was no biblical sanction. Consequently, the Roundhead Parliament of 1643 outlawed the feasts of Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide, along with the saints' days," Celebrations, p.312.

For a period of 12 years the staunch Puritans kept the shackles on Christmas, making it an ordinary day of business and even a day of fasting. Yet with the Restoration in 1660 the citizens reclaimed Christmas, but it was a different festival from what it had been. The religious aspects were often neglected, with the result that the secularization of the holiday was well under way.

In America, strong religious antagonism to the feast of Christmas lasted from 1620 to 1750... 130 years! In 1776 General George Washington surprise-attacked the German Hessians on December 25, winning a critical Revolutionary War battle by defeating the Christmas-celebrating, drunken German mercenaries. Obviously, Christmas was not an important celebration for the founding father and first president of the United States!
It was to take many years for the regard for Christmas to grow to what it is today in America and around the world. In Boston, up to 1870, anyone missing work on Christmas Day would be fired. Factory owners customarily required employees to come to work at 5 AM on Christmas -- to insure they wouldn't have time to go to church that day. And any student who failed to go to school on December 25 would be expelled. Only the arrival of large numbers of Irish and northern European immigrants brought acceptance of Christmas in this country. Christmas did not even begin to be a stat holiday anywhere in the United States until very late in the nineteenth century, with Alabama being the first state to make it so.

Henry Ward Beecher, clergyman and lecturer, wrote in 1874 of his boyhood in New England, "To me Christmas is a foreign day, and I shall die so. When I was a boy I wondered what Christmas was. I knew there was such a time, because we had an Episcopal church in our town, and I saw them dressing it with evergreens, and wondered what they were taking the woods in church for; but I got no satisfactory explanation. A little later I understood it was a Romish institution, kept up by the Romish Church."

In Old Testament times an indispensable part of Baal worship involved the asherah, a sacred tree stem or pole (from which we get the May pole). Notice what the prophet Jeremiah[10:2-5] wrote in connection with tree-idol worship: "Thus says Yahweh, learn not the way of the heathen ... for the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go ..."

It is a historical fact that trees were decorated and adored by ancient peoples in honor of pagan deities, as this source reveals: "We can find enough instances of the use of trees, even decorated ones such as the pine tree on which images of the god Attis were hung amid rows of ribbons at a spring festival, to convince us of the ultimately pagan origin of our custom," Celebrations, p.331. Although based in mystery worship, the modern Christmas tree as we know it traces to Europe. "...tree worship is well attested for all the great European families of the Aryan stock. Amongst the Celts the oak-worship of the Druids is familiar to everyone. Sacred groves were common among the ancient Germans, and tree-worship is hardly extinct among their descendants at the present day" (The Golden Bough, p.58).

How the evergreen tree was popularized for Christmas in Europe comes by way of one of the earliest stories told of St. Boniface as an 8th century missionary in Germany. "He was trying to stamp out the pagan rite of sacrificing people to the oak tree. He led his followers into a forest at yule time. Showing them a fir tree, he said it pointed straight upward to the [Messiah]. 'Take this tree into your homes,' he said, 'as a sign of your new worship [Christianity]. Celebrate [Yahweh's] power no more in the forest with shameful rites, but in the sanctity of your homes with laughter and love,' " Compton's Encyclopedia and Fact Finder, vol.5, p.326.

Pagan rites were synchronized into Christian worship. Rather than abolishing what was heathen-based, the practice became to modify it – to make it fit somehow into biblical worship.

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