Is Christmas Baal’s Birthday?
"Put the Savior back in
Christmas," people cry.
But was the true Hebrew Messiah
ever there in the first place?
By far the most important celebration in the Western world today is Christmas. Billions of dollars will be spent this year on gifts, gift wrapping, candy, decorations, and greeting cards in a gigantic, annual spending spree that starts in earnest right after Hallowe'en—and shifts into overdrive the day after Thanksgiving.
Merchants of Babylon are hinging their
hopes for the entire sales year on Christmas profits keep the momentum at a
fever pitch. A nonstop flood of advertisements and promotions entice an
exploitable public to continue spending themselves into debt at this time each
year.
The more religiously disposed object to
the commercialization of the "Savior's birthday." They can see that
this annual celebration has little in common with any Biblical observance. On
the contrary. Christmas today is little more than a mandatory ritual of gift
exchanging done under the guise of family togetherness and pleasing children.
But the Bible believer must stop to ask
himself, am I pleasing my Heavenly Father by my Christmas observance? If this
is what He wants me to do, then surely I can find in His very Word—the Bible—at
least one passage telling me to keep this holiday.
Shocking as it may be, you cannot find
even one command in the entire Bible to keep this supposed birthday of the
Savior! Furthermore, nowhere in the New Testament is there a single instance
where someone observed Christmas. Not one of the Apostles observed December 25,
nor did any of them ever in the Savior's 33 years on this earth throw Him a
birthday party. Nowhere do we find His apostles giving a gift to Him on
December 25. Nor did anyone else. Not even to one another.
Unhappy Birthdays
One authority notes, "There is no
historical evidence that our [Savior's] birthday was celebrated during the
apostolic or early post-apostolic times," The New Schaff-Herzog
Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, "Christmas," p. 47.
Another writer makes this surprising
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, George W.
Douglas, p. 658.
As the early believers realized,
observing of birthdays is not a Bible practice. In all three instances where
birthdays are mentioned in the Scriptures, someone died:
The
chief baker was hanged during Pharaoh's birthday party in Genesis 40; Job's
sons died from a windstorm while birthday partying in Job 1:19, and ohn the Baptist was beheaded at Herod's birthday
celebration in Matthew 14:6-10.
The message is quite clear about
birthday celebrations. A man who was formerly into devil worship once commented
that the individual's birthday is a witch's most important day.
Christmas
as a celebration of the Savior's birthday was not widely observed for at least
300 years after His birth. With no Biblical support for it, one needs a good imagination
to base this observance on Scripture! If it were a Scriptural commemoration,
why doesn't the Bible at least tell us which month, let alone which day,
to keep it?
The Savior most likely was born in the
fall, not in the dead of winter, when flocks of sheep were still abiding in the
field, along with the shepherds who guarded them, Luke 2:8. Most Bible scholars
realize this. (For more free
information, write and request “When was the Messiah Born?”)
Christmas as a pagan holiday is another
story altogether. The rites of this observance trace back thousands of years
before the Messiah Yahsha to a place called Babylon.
Springing from that ancient birthplace of paganism are many of the peculiar
customs that make Christmas what it is today. A good share of these practices
came to us directly through the Roman Saturnalia festival.
"Christmas" is a contraction
for "Christ's Mass," a Roman Catholic observance designed as a
compromise with the heathen Roman feast of Saturnalia. The Saturnalia was a
seven-day festival in honor of the deity Saturn. It began on December 17. At
the Saturnalia "all classes exchanged gifts, the commonest being waxed
tapers [candles] and clay dolls. These dolls were especially given to children.
Varro thought these dolls represented original
sacrifices of human beings to the infernal god," Encyclopaedia
Britannica, 11th Ed., vol. 24, p. 231.
Being that no one knew when the Savior
was born, "in [C.E.] 354, Bishop Liberius of
Rome ordered the people to celebrate on December 25. He probably chose this
date because the people of Rome already observed it as the Feast of Saturn,
celebrating the birthday of the sun. Christians honored Chr-st
in-stead of Saturn, as the Light of the world," The World Book Encyclopedia
(1962), "Christmas," p. 416.
We learn, then, that Christmas
represents a thinly veiled compromise with the profane worship of pagan
peoples, which is why we see so many heathen trappings associated with this
winter holiday.
Ask
yourself, what do evergreen trees, Yule logs, candles, bells, mistletoe, holly
wreaths, ham, cookies, tinsel, lights, and wassail bowls have to do with the
birth of the Savior? Each of these Christmas customs has a non-Scriptural
source. Most are rooted in fertility rites or in sun worship from a pagan past.
Birthday of the False Messiah – Baal/Tammuz
Very few realize that not very much has
changed in the way Christmas is celebrated from the way pagans observed the day
(under a different name) centuries before the birth of Yahsha!
Obviously they didn't call it "Christmas." They called this
mid-winter festival by its original heathen or pagan name -- the Saturnalia.
The Scriptures do mention the time of Yahsha’s birth, but Yahsha’s
followers were not told to celebrate it – except to observe YHWH’s
feast of tabernacles in the Fall of the seventh moon which is when he was
born. (Again, please request, “When was
Messiah Born?”) So where did millions of
modern-day "Christians" get the idea to celebrate it?
In ancient times the winter solstice
was celebrated in Babylon as the birth day of Tammuz (Dumuzi),
the god of vegetation This was the shortest day of the year, in the latter part
of December (today it actually falls on December 21). According to the pagans,
the god Nimrod would visit the evergreen tree and leave gifts upon it. This
festival became known as the Saturnalia, and friends and family would exchange
gifts.
Interestingly, the followers of Mithra, as the "nativity" or "birth" of
the sun also celebrated the winter solstice. Mithra
was the Persian sun god, and his worship was widespread throughout the Roman
Empire in the days of the early believers. When the feast was celebrated in
Rome, it was called the festival of Saturn and lasted for five days. In both
ancient Rome and more ancient Babylon, this festival was characterized by bouts
of drunkenness, wild merrymaking, and lascivious orgies, which would begin with
an "innocent kiss" underneath the mistletoe and would then lead to
justification of all sorts of sexual excesses, perversions and abominations.
Alexander Hislop
writes in The Two Babylons:
And first, as
to the festival in honor of the birth of Christ, or Christmas. How comes it
that 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 so ever His
birth took place, it could not have been on the 25th of December. 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. 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 (pp. 91-92).
Hislop continues:
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 until the third century, and that
not till the fourth century was far advanced did it gain much observance (pp.
92-93).
If YHWH wanted us to observe Yahsha’s birthday, don't you think He would have told us
the exact day in Scripture? Since Yahsha and His
disciples lived a thoroughly Jewish lifestyle, the Jewish calendar would have
reckoned it! Why would He have deliberately hidden the exact day from us? Maybe
because Yahsha’s birth date is not important - not
something for us to dwell upon or focus on or obsess about. It is Yahsha’s ministry and His death and resurrection that
embody the Good News of Messiah, not his time as a helpless baby.
Why December 25?
Why did the Roman Church fix upon
December 25 as the day to honor the Messiah's birthday? There are many opinions
on this. One which seems to be valid is that the early Church, in moving all of
its celebrations away from Judaism without denying its followers the holidays
they had come to enjoy, took the date of Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication, and
"Romanized" it. Hanukkah occurs on the 25th day of the Hebrew month
of Kislev, which occurs approximately in December.
Hislop also has an
opinion:
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 honor of the
birth of the son of the Babylonian queen of heaven. It may fairly be presumed
that, in order to conciliate the heathen, and to swell the number of the
nominal adherents of Christianity, the Roman Church, giving it only the name of
Christ adopted the same festival. This tendency on the part of Christians to
meet Paganism halfway was very early developed; and we find Tertullian,
even in his day, about the year 230, bitterly lamenting the inconsistency of
the disciples of Christ in this respect, and contrasting it with the strict
fidelity of the Pagans to their own superstition (ibid. p. 93).
Frazier, in The Golden Bough, states
without hesitation: "The largest pagan religious cult which fostered the
celebration of December 25 as a holiday throughout the Roman and Greek worlds
was the pagan sun worship -- Mithraism." He adds, "This winter
festival was called 'the Nativity' -- the 'nativity of the sun' " (p.
471).
Mithra was not the
only pagan deity said to be born at this time of year. Osiris,
Horus, Hercules, Bacchus, Adonis, Jupiter, Tammuz and
other sun gods were supposedly born at the time of the winter solstice!
Alexander Hislop
confirms this, adding:
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 us -- 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 birthday observed ("The Two Babylons", PP. 93-94).
The festival at Rome, called the feast
of "Saturn," lasted five days, and loose reins were given to
drunkenness and revelry. This was precisely the way in which the Babylonian
midwinter, or December,
festival
was celebrated. Berosus tells us it also lasted
"five days."
Declares Hislop:
The wassailing
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 honor to him: for it was one of the distinguishing peculiarities of
his worship to have lighted wax-candles on his altars (pp. 96-97).
The Pagan Evergreen Tree
What about that old favorite, the
Christmas tree? Surely it wasn't pagan, too, was it? The astonishing answer: "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" (Hislop, p. 97).
Alexander Hislop
makes the symbolism of the Christmas tree, and the Yule log plain. He writes:
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
invicti solis, 'The
birthday 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
(p. 98).
Leave the Darkness
If this were the Savior's birthday and
acceptable to Yahweh, then why do people give gifts to one another and not to
Him? Why does Santa Claus get all the glory and attention? Who gave Santa
Yahweh's right to decide who is naughty and who is nice? Clearly the rituals of
the Saturnalia, as well as pure human traditions, are alive and well each
December 25.
Shaul wrote in
2Corinthians 6:14 and 17: "Be not unequally yoked together with
unbelievers: for what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? and
what communion has light with darkness? Wherefore come out from among them, and
be separate, says Yahweh, and touch not the unclean [thing]; and I will receive
you."
Some will argue that Christmas is a
harmless holiday for the enjoyment of children. If there is no Creator in
heaven, that point may be justified. But the Yahweh of the Bible is very
particular about how we must worship Him and He has no tolerance for heathen
traditions or man's own ways of worship.
He
tells us through the prophet,
"To
what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? says Yahweh...When
you come to appear before me, who has required this [human way of worship] at
your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations..." Ishayah 1:11-13.
Almighty Yahweh thunders in the Book of
Yeremyah not to observe practices like Christmas tree
worship: "Learn not the way of the heathen... For the customs of the
people are vain: for one cuts 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," Yeremyah 10:2-4.
Here is what Yahweh thinks about
man-made celebrations: "I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not
smell [accept] in your solemn assemblies. Though you offer Me burnt offerings
and your meat offerings, I will not accept them," Amos 5:21-22.
If we want to please our Creator, who
has the power over our eternal lives, then we will give up man-made holidays
that He rejects, and we will follow the observances He does command in His Word.
“...only a Remnant will be saved” Romans 9:27
THE REMNANT OF YHWH
P.O.Box 2453
Abilene, Texas 79604
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