Fog drifts from an ancient Anglo-Saxon village as the blackened, smoldering ruins of a thatched farmhouse gradually take shape. The smoking embers are all that remain after a carelessly thrown torch set it aflame.

A piercing wail breaks through the chorus of groans made by those whose houses and belongings were destroyed. A family mourns for a daughter killed in a brawl of drunken, violent revelers. But they are not alone; other villages nearby suffer from the same devastation.

The village elders drag themselves from bed, some out of a drunken stupor, others exhausted from the rituals of the preceding days and weary of what is to come. A new religion has been instituted, yet it is not so different from the old. That makes it comforting, but no less dangerous. This ruin that was their village and the lives lost in its destruction are familiar circumstances. This "new" festival is basically a remake of their old festival—a religious appeasement bridging the old to the new.

They are "Christians" now, as their new leaders explain. They are in the midst of the Christmas celebration, which had lately become the pinnacle festival of this religion. Though the name was new, the rituals and trappings were not. They are very old and very much a part of the old, pagan religion they had served for so many centuries.

Christians, Jews and Romans

Thousands of miles away and several hundred years earlier, we can see the gradual acceptance of a pagan ritual into the new religion. Christianity was spreading and evolving rapidly. It was caught up in a whirlpool of political, military and cultural forces that would leave it changed beyond recognition by the time it was introduced to those devastated villagers in England.

Christianity—a movement that began closely connected with Judaism and the ancient nation of Israel—was being transformed into the state religion of the pagan Roman Empire. Being a Christian during the life of Christ meant keeping the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath and observing seven annual festivals shown in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, as well as the New Testament. Jesus Christ was born a Jew, as were many of the first believers. They understood well the Jewish culture and the Old Testament Scriptures.

Roman rulers came from a completely different culture and religious background, so it is easy to understand why they originally confused early Christians with the rest of Judaism.

Imagine yourself as a Roman military/political leader, charged with keeping order in the area in which a large portion of the Jews lived. You grew up in a society that worshipped multiple gods that varied according to what the Caesar of the day preferred. The Jews, on the other hand, had a strange religion that worshipped only one God.

Your task is a considerable one. You must keep order in a Jewish culture about which you know little, but whose people tend to get up in arms over virtually any intrusion into their traditions, religion or holy city of Jerusalem. Suddenly a group of these Jews begins to follow the teachings of a fellow Jew who had been executed some years before. The Jews themselves are rebelling and for all you know these Jewish-Christians might be a part of the fuss; so to keep the peace, you persecute them all as one large group.

Religious transformation

Yet what a change would occur if, as actually happened, Christianity started to gain a footing on its own. Now imagine yourself as an early Christian, disliked by Jews because you are not being Jewish and disliked by Romans because you are considered too Jewish. Furthermore, individuals from various polytheistic religions are converting, coming to Christianity with almost no background in the Old Testament Scriptures or understanding of the Jewish religion and culture from which Christianity had sprung.

Some converts were high-level Roman leaders when, in A.D. 132-135, the Jews of Jerusalem began a violent rebellion against the Roman Empire. Politically, it would be unwise for these new Christians to associate with a religion that looked Jewish, so what do they do? There were two main choices: switch religions or alter their Christian beliefs. (Few made the third choice, the hard choice of sticking with their beliefs and suffering worse persecution.) So gradually beliefs were altered, creating ripples that would reach far into the future.

After a series of revolts, the Jews were banished from Jerusalem and most of Christianity took a decidedly different turn from its Old Testament origins. The Saturday Sabbath was gradually exchanged for a Sunday "Lord's Day," and the Old Testament festivals were replaced by holidays and observances that had no connection to what was written and commanded in the Bible.

Two factors allowed those who then ran the large, visible church to make these drastic changes: Few people were allowed to read the Bible, and if they did, the religious leader was considered to have the power to change biblical teachings anyway.

Christmas past

In the years A.D. 270-275, during the reign of Caesar Aurelian, Christianity had not yet become the religion of the realm. The empire itself was in decay, various colonies were in rebellion, and the Roman military was on the defensive. Aurelian sought to use Mithraic sun worship borrowed from Persia as a religious glue that would bind the empire together.

Aurelian adopted the Mithraic festival that worshipped the birth of the sun god on Dec. 25 with revelry, feasting and other excesses. This was a fairly easy adoption because the highly similar Roman festival of Saturnalia took place in the same season. Saturnalia had even more excessive feasting practices, which at times had required human sacrifice. The origins of Saturnalia can be traced back to ancient Greece, Egypt, Babylon and even to the time of Nimrod and his tower of Babel.

This sun-worshipping festival came into acceptance as a Christian holiday a short time later during the reign of Constantine in A.D. 306-337, following his conversion from Mithraism to Christianity.

The pagan winter festivals had been adopted into Christianity by proclaiming them celebrations of the birth of Christ as the Son of God instead of the sun god. This was done to help ease the conversion of new pagan converts into Christianity. However, it was not biblically accurate. In the Bible the birth of Christ is not celebrated as a festival. Indeed it can be shown that Christ was not born in the winter.

By A.D. 400, Dec. 25 was fully accepted in Rome and included as an official Christian holiday along with Easter and Epiphany, none of which are found in the Bible. By the middle 500s the Christmas holiday was being taken by missionary leaders to the far reaches of the empire and used to convert, among others, the inhabitants of Anglo-Saxon Britain to Christianity.

Christmas quandary

So, through the manipulation of human governments, a pagan festival was adopted into Christianity over three hundred years after Christ lived. Christmas is not found in the Bible and its origins and accompanying practices grew out of various polytheistic traditions: Roman, Babylonian, Egyptian and those still more ancient.

Though Christmas trees and gift giving are seemingly harmless, they are direct participation in those unbiblical traditions. In fact, the book of Jeremiah in chapter 10 warns the people of God to avoid such practices, "Do not learn the way of the Gentiles . . . For the customs of the peoples are futile; for one cuts a tree from the forest . . . They decorate it with silver and gold; they fasten it with nails and hammers so that it will not topple . . . Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, nor can they do any good" (verses 2-5).

Although this account is specifically referring to the making of an idol (verses 6-8), God's command, "Do not learn the way of the Gentiles," applies to all pagan customs.

The results of Christmas revelry from its pagan era to its adoption into Christianity have resulted in devastation and destruction, from chaos in the streets of Rome (as keepers of Saturnalia raged in drunken violence) to Anglo-Saxon villages in smoldering ruins. The historical implications of the winter-solstice Christmas celebration are obvious for those who look. They are not compatible with a truly Christian life.

For more information about God's perspective on Christmas, read or request the free booklet Holidays or Holy Days: Does It Matter Which Days We Keep?. VT