Harper’s Bible Dictionary gives this accounting of the origin of Christmas: Is God pleased when we celebrate the Christmas season?
“The term appears as early as A.D. 1123 in Old English as “Cristes maesse” (and variations) and “Christmas” by 1568, meaning Mass of Christ. The actual date of Jesus birth is unknown. There is no evidence of celebrating the nativity before the third century. January 6 became widely observed in the third century to commemorate the “manifestation” (“epiphany”) of Christ on earth, including his birth, baptism, and the visit of the Magi, with varying local emphases.How does the historical record compare with the Harper’s Dictionary?“The celebration of the nativity is attested in Rome in A.D. 336 (where Epiphany, January 6, commemorated the visit of the Magi), and this became widespread in the fifth and sixth centuries. Although there are various theories on the selection of December 25, the most widely accepted is that this date had already been a major pagan festival, that of Sol Invictus, the “birth” of the “Unconquerable Sun,” marking the winter solstice (the sun’s triumph over darkness). With the triumph of Christianity, Christmas replaced the pagan festival, Christians having applied “Sun of Righteousness” (Mal. 4:2) to Christ.”
The following extensive quotes are taken from The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop, First Edition, 1916, Second American Edition, 1959:
Pages 91 to 94:
“The festivals of Rome are innumerable; but five of the most important may be singled out for elucidation—viz., Christmas–day, Lady–day, Easter, the Nativity of St. John, and the Feast of the Assumption. Each and all of these can be proved to be Babylonian. And first, as to the festival in honour of the birth of Christ, or Christmas. How come it that festival was connected with the 25th of December? There is not a word in the Scriptures about the precise day of His birth, or the time of the year when He was born. What is recorded there, implies that at what time soever His birth took place, it could not have been on the 25th of December.Page 96 to 99:
“At the time that the angel announced His birth to the shepherds of Bethlehem, they were feeding their flocks by night in the open fields. Now, no doubt, the climate of Palestine is not so severe as the climate of this country; but even there, though the heat of the day be considerable, the cold of the night, from December to February, is very piercing, and it was not the custom for the shepherds of Judea to watch their flocks in the open fields later than about the end of October. It is in the last degree incredible, then, that the birth of Christ could have taken place at the end of December. There is great unanimity among commentators on this point. Besides Barnes, Doddridge, Lightfoot, Joseph Scaliger, and Jennings, in his “Jewish Antiquities,” who are all of opinion that December 25th could not be the right time of our Lord’s nativity.“And if any shall think the winter wind was not so extreme in these parts, let him remember the words of Christ in the gospel, ‘But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter,’
“Indeed, it is admitted by the most learned and candid writers of all parties that the day of our Lord's birth cannot be determined and that within the Christian Church no such festival as Christmas was ever heard of till the third century, and that not till the fourth century was far advanced did it gain much observance. How, then, did the Romish Church fix on December the 25th as Christmas-day? Why, thus: Long before the fourth century, and long before the Christian era itself, a festival was celebrated among the heathen, at that precise time of the year, in honour of the birth of the son of the Babylonian queen of heaven; and it may fairly be presumed that, in order to conciliate the heathen, and to swell the number of the nominal adherents of Christianity, the same festival was adopted by the Roman Church, giving it only the name of Christ.
“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. In Egypt, the son of Isis, the Egyptian title for the queen of heaven, was born at this very time, “about the time of the winter solstice.” The very name by which Christmas is popularly known among ourselves—Yule–day—proves at once its Pagan and Babylonian origin. “Yule” is the Chaldee name for an “infant” or “little child;” and as the 25th of December was called by our Pagan Anglo-Saxon ancestors, “Yule–day,” or the “Child’s day,” and the night that preceded it, “Mother-night,” long before they came in contact with Christianity, that sufficiently proves its real character. Far and wide, in the realms of Paganism, was this birth-day observed.
“This festival has been commonly believed to have had only an astronomical character, referring simply to the completion of the sun’s yearly course, and the commencement of a new cycle. But there is indubitable evidence that the festival in question had a much higher reference than this—that it commemorated not merely the figurative birth-day of the sun in the renewal of its course, but the birth-day of the grand Deliverer. Among the Sabeans of Arabia, who regarded the moon, and not the sun, as the visible symbol of the favorite object of their idolatry, the same period was observed as the birth festival. Thus we read in Stanley’s Sabean Philosophy: “On the 24th of the tenth month,” that is December, according to our reckoning, “the Arabians celebrate the BIRTHDAY OF THE LORD—that is the Moon. The Lord Moon was the great object of Arabian worship, and that Lord Moon, according to them, was born on the 24th of December, which clearly shows that the birth which they celebrated had no necessary connection with the course of the sun.
“The Saxons, as is well known, regarded the Sun as a female divinity, and the Moon as a male. It must have been the birth-day of the Lord Moon, therefore, and not of the Sun, that was celebrated by them on the 25th of December, even as the birth-day of the same Lord Moon was observed by the Arabians on the 24th of December.“Even where the sun was the favorite object of worship, as in Babylon itself and elsewhere, at this festival he was worshipped not merely as the orb of day, but as God incarnate. It was an essential principle of the Babylonian system, that the Sun or Baal was the one only God. When, therefore, Tammuz was worshipped as God incarnate, that implied also that he was an incarnation of the Sun. In the Hindoo mythology, which is admitted to be essentially Babylonian, this comes out very distinctly. There, Surya, or the Sun, is represented as a being incarnate, and born for the purpose of subduing the enemies of the gods, who, without such a birth, could not have been subdued.Page 102:
“It was no mere astronomic festival, then, that the Pagans celebrated at the winter solstice....The wassailling bowl of Christmas had its precise counterpart in the “Drunken festival” of Babylon; and many of the other observances still kept up among ourselves at Christmas came from the very same quarter. The candles, in some parts of England, lighted on Christmas-eve, and used so long as the festive season lasts, were equally lighted by the Pagans on the eve of the festival of the Babylonian god, to do honour to him: for it was one of the distinguishing peculiarities of his worship to have wax-candles on his altars.
The Christmas tree, now so common among us, was equally common in Pagan Rome and Pagan Egypt. In Egypt that tree was the palm-tree; in Rome it was the fir; the palm-tree denoting the Pagan Messiah, as Baal-Tamar, the fir referring to him as Baal-Berith. The mother of Adonis, the Sun-God and great mediatorial divinity, was mystically said to have been changed into a tree, and when in that state to have brought forth her divine son. If the mother was a tree, the son must have been recognized as the “Man the branch.” And 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. As Zero-Ashta, “The seed of the woman,” which name also signified Ignigena, or “born of the fire,”he has to enter the fire on “Mother-night,” that he may be born the next day out of it, as the “Branch of God,” or the Tree that brings all divine gifts to men.
“ But why, it may be asked, does he enter the fire under the symbol of a Log? To understand this, it must be remembered that the divine child born at the winter solstice was born as a new incarnation of the great god (after that god had been cut in pieces), on purpose to revenge his death upon his murderers. Now the great god, cut off in the midst of his power and glory, was symbolised [symbolized] as a huge tree, stripped of all its branches, and cut down almost to the ground. But the great serpent, the symbol of the life restoring AEsculapius, twists itself around the dead stock (see Fig. 27), and lo, at its side up sprouts a young tree—a tree of an entirely different kind, that is destined never to be cut down by hostile power—even the palm-tree, the well-known symbol of victory.
“The Christmas-tree, as has been stated, was generally at Rome a different tree, even the fir; but the very same idea as was implied in the palm-tree, was implied in the Christmas-fir; for that covertly symbolised [symbolized] the new-born God as Baal-berith, “Lord of the Covenant,” and thus shadowed forth the perpetuity and everlasting nature of his power, now that after having fallen before his enemies, he had risen triumphant over them all. Therefore, the 25th of December, the day that was observed at Rome as the day when the victorious god reappeared on earth, was held at the Natalis invictisolis, “The birth-day of the unconquered Sun.” 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 come to life again.
“In the light reflected by the above statement on customs that still linger among us, the origin of which has been lost in the midst of hoar antiquity, let the reader look at the singular practice still kept up in the South on Christmas-eve, of kissing under the misletoe [mistletoe] bough. That misletoe [mistletoe] bough in the Druidic superstition, which, as we have seen, was derived from Babylon, was a representation of the Messiah, “The man the branch.” The misletoe [mistletoe] was regarded as a divine branch —a branch that came from heaven, and grew upon a tree that sprung out of the earth. Thus by the engrafting of the celestial branch into the earthly tree, heaven and earth, that sin had severed, were joined together, and thus the misletoe [mistletoe] bough became the token of Divine reconciliation to man, the kiss being the well-known token of pardon and reconciliation. Whence could such an idea have come?
“May it not have come from the eighty-fifth Psalm, ver. 10,11, “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have KISSED each other. Truth shall spring out of the earth [in consequence of the coming of the promised Saviour], and righteousness shall look down from heaven” Certain it is that that psalm was written soon after the Babylonish captivity; and as multitudes of the Jews, after that event, still remained in Babylon under the guidance of inspired men, such as Daniel, as a part of the Divine word it must have been communicated to them, as well as to their kinsmen in Palestine. Babylon was, at that time, the center of the civilised [civilized] world; and thus Paganism, corrupting the Divine symbol as it ever has done, had opportunities of sending forth its debased counterfeit of the truth to all the ends of the earth, through the Mysteries that were affiliated with the great central system in Babylon. Thus the very customs of Christmas still existent cast surprising light at once on the revelations of grace made to all the earth, and the efforts made by Satan and his emissaries to materialise, carnalise, and degrade them.“The consideration of the next great festival in the Popish calendar gives the very strongest confirmation to what has now been said. That festival called Lady-day, is celebrated at Rome on the 25th of March, in alleged commemoration of the miraculous conception of our Lord in the womb of the Virgin, on the day when the angel was sent to announce to her the distinguished honour that was to be bestowed upon her as the mother of the Messiah. But who could tell when this annunciation was made? The Scripture gives no clue at all in regard to the time. But it mattered not. Before our Lord was either conceived or born, that very day now set down in the Popish calendar for the “Annunciation of the Virgin” was observed in Pagan Rome in honour of Cybele, the Mother of the Babylonian Messiah. Now, it is manifest that Lady-day and Christmas-day stand in intimate relation to one another. Between the 25th of March and the 25th of December there are exactly nine months. If, then, the false Messiah was conceived in March and born in December, can any one for a moment believe that the conception and birth of the true Messiah can have so exactly synchronized, not only to the month, but to the day? The thing is incredible. Lady-day and Christmas-day, then, are purely Babylonian.Page 91:“If Rome be indeed the Babylon of the Apocalypse, and the Madonna enshrined in her sanctuaries be the very queen of heaven, for the worshipping of whom the fierce anger of God was provoked against the Jews in the days of Jeremiah, it is of the last consequence that the fact should be established beyond all possibility of doubt; for that being once established, every one who trembles at the Word of God must shudder at the very thought of giving such a system, either individually or nationally, the least countenance or support. Something has been said already that goes far to prove the identity of the Roman and Babylonian systems; but at every step the evidence becomes still more overwhelming. That which arises from comparing the different festivals is peculiarly so.”
This ends the quotes from The Two Babylons by Hislop.Does God Say it is all right to worship him in the same way as heathens did to their gods?
Deuteronomy 12:1-4:
“These are the statutes and judgments, which ye shall observe to do in the land, which the LORD God of thy fathers giveth thee to possess it, all the days that ye live upon the earth. Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place. Ye shall not do so unto the LORD your God.”
Deuteronomy 12:29-32:
“When the LORD thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land; Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise. Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods. What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.”
Many of the paganistic customs anciently observed on this day [Christmas], are still practiced today. For example, the evergreen tree was treated much in the same way then as it is now. The burning of the yule log, the hanging of the mistletoe, the eating of the boar's head, and the “Christmas goose,” all had their origin in Babylon. Details concerning these ancient observances can be found in The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop, and in numerous other reference books.The word of God speak plainly
concerning AN IDOL TREE:“Thus saith the Lord, 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 ax. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammer, that it move not”(Jeremiah 10:2-4).
When you study this keep in mind Jesus’ words in Matthew 15:9:“In vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.”
There is no place in the Bible telling us that it is God’s will that we observe the birthday of His Son. We do have to observe His death:
John 6:53: “Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.”
To place Jesus back into Christmas assumes that He was once in it, that He once had something to do with it. Understand some facts from history: Put Christ Back Into Xmas?
“The observance of December 25 [as a “Christian” festival] only dates from the fourth century and is due to assimilation with the Mithraic festival of the birthday of the SUN” (World's Popular Encyclopedia; Vol. 3).
“Gradually a number of prevailing practices of the [heathen] nations into which Christianity came were assimilated and were combined with the religious ceremonies surrounding Christmas. The assimilation of such practices generally represented efforts by Christians to transform or absorb otherwise pagan practices” (The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible; Vol. 1; page 805).
“The pagan symbolism was taken over and, in the Christian view, elevated. Jesus became the [pagan] ‘Sun of Justice’ and the ‘Sun of Righteousness’” (Celebrations: The Complete Book of American Holidays; Myers; page 310).
“Our Christian festival [Christmas] is nothing but a continuation under a different name of this old solar festivity [Saturnalia]”(The New Golden Bough; Frazer and Gaster; page 653).
“The pagan Saturnalia and Brumalia were too deeply entrenched in popular custom to be set aside by Christian influence...The pagan festival with its celebration with little change in spirit and in manner” (The New Schall-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge; 1908 edition; III; page 48).
Put Christ back into Christmas? It can't be done! Christmas is a borrowed heirloom that was lifted from the heathen scene 300 years after our Lord ascended to heaven. He was never in the festival, nor has He ever condoned it. Mankind should be contemplating how they might better put Christ into their lives!
Rejecting Christmas, is in no way slighting or downgrading the actual fact of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. That historical event is of monumental importance to all Christians. The recorded accounts of that birth are to be held in the highest honor. The Virgin birth, as related by God, is a vital part of our belief.
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