Many Christians today believe that Christmas is a Christian holiday. The fact is that people have been celebrating Christmas, long before the birth of Christ. The festivity was known then, as Saturnalia. Saturnalia was a festival in which the Romans commemorated the dedication of the temple of the god Saturn. As winter approached, they were losing harvest & were in need of the sun in order for their harvest to grow & bear fruit. Saturn was the Roman god of agriculture and harvest.
This meant that the god Saturn was in need of the sun god in order to complete his job, therefore the attention was then shifted to the sun god. The Saturnalia custom is rooted in pagan & Celtic believes & traditions. They believed in human sacrifice including the sacrifice of small children & infants in which were offered to their gods in order to empower the sun to return with strength. They believed that winter was due to the sun losing its power due to a battle between the sun god & the god of the dead. Since winter is annually, they believed these battles were fought annually and thus the sacrifices had to be annually in order to appease or empower their respective gods. Because the sun always return at the beginning of the new year, they believed that its was due to all of their human sacrifices, and costum rituals that took effect; empowering their sun god to return each year victoriously.
The problem was that there was nothing in relation to Christianity concerning Saturnalia. To remedy this, these so called Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th to be Jesus’ birthday.
As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the poor places in Rome were forced to wear clown type of clothing and march through the city streets to the mocking of the crowd, heavely rained by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome sent a petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual Saturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune to make any innovation. On December 25, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots across the country. In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers were disable or disfigured, and many Jewish women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed. Some foundation for a holyday they like to call “Christian”.
Today, the same formula its being used when it comes to repackaging pagan practices and doctrines by just renaming them and giving them a “Christian” name. For instance, Rock & Roll music; So called Christian leaders believe a worldly or pagan person can join a Christian church with out having to leave their worldly Rock & Roll behind, because they can find Rock & Roll in the church too, “Christian Rock & Roll” that is! This is now offered by so called Christian churches today, supposedly to attract and convert the worldly.
The list goes on and on, from Rock, to “Christian Rock”, to Yoga, to “Christian Yoga”, to porn, to “Christian porn”; That’s right… They now even have porn with the name “Christian” before it. These are a few of many traps laid to the undiscerning, designed to lead him into the wrong path, the one that does not lead to heaven, but to death & destruction.
Although this is a different story, the method in which Satan operates, is exactly the same. The Roman Catholic church then, was not concerned with people’s souls, but rather with their contributions to their church. Today, nothing has changed!
The fact is that the bible (The Word of God) is our ultimate measurement authority in which all things should be measured by. With that said, let’s examine the origins of Christmas and lets use the bible as the final authority on this matter as it should be in all matters. After its all said and done, I want you to ask yourself if you as a Christian, should be celebrating “Christmas”.
Also, keep in mind that once a truth is revealed to you, ignorance cannot be used as an excused to continue in a sinful practice, because God will judge us in accordance to the knowledge we have received. Prove of this can be found on John 9:40- 41: “And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also? Jesus said unto them,
Also keep in mind Hosea 4:6: My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.
Just as early Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas with the Saturnalia, so too worshippers of the Asheira cult and its offshoots were recruited by the Church sanctioning “Christmas Trees Pagans had long worshipped trees in the forest, or brought them into their homes and decorated them, and this observance was adopted and painted with a Christian veneer by the Catholic Church. Jerimiah 10:3 says: “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”
Norse mythology recounts how the god Balder was killed using a mistletoe arrow by his rival god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna. Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim. The Christian custom of “kissing under the mistletoe” is a later synthesis of the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificial cult.
C. Christmas Presents
In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelled their most despised citizens to bring offerings and gifts during the Saturnalia (in December) and Kalends (in January). Later, this ritual expanded to include gift-giving among the general populace. The Catholic Church gave this custom a Christian flavor by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas (see below).
“A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit” Matthew 7:18
And now you know the root of Christmas and whether it should be celebrated by bible believing Christians or not. You decide to follow God or not.
And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.
Joshua 24:15 (KJV)
click on the image above to read about the meaning of the word “Christmas’.