Christmas is NOT for Christains

Thank you again, Mr. Weiblud. I did appreciate the sermon out, by the way. All of you souls out there.

Well, I mentioned that my wife and I were able to visit our daughter and our grandkids, our son-in-law. We also were able to get there for a big Christmas parade. It's like 75-80 degrees out, and the parade is coming down our street where we're living. And people were all excited. They were out on the streets and big festivities. In a couple of weeks, of course, we can all breathe a sigh of relief to some degree. And yet, doesn't this season sometimes cause some people to get a very warm, contented feeling? The Christmas carols, the emphasis on giving and family, the good food, the good fellowship. It's all associated with this season, and it is something that many, many people really enjoy. Yes, I know the stress levels are also at an all-time high during this season, and it is true that more people do commit suicide than at any other time of the year. So it's not all about warm, fuzzy feelings this time of year, but many people truly do love Christmas time. In fact, I really enjoyed Christmas back before I stopped observing Christmas, back when I was a teenager and a child. So I can understand why people would be drawn to Christmas. I can understand the warm, fuzzy feelings at Christmas time. And you really can't blame people for enjoying Christmas in certain ways. God said, forgive them. They know not what they do. And I think that is largely true, although there is a lot of evidence out there that people could know a whole lot more than they seem to in regard to Christmas. These people never consider that it might actually be wrong to celebrate Christmas. Those who truly love it the most, I think, they don't really consider that it might be wrong. How could it possibly be wrong? Are we not celebrating the birth of our Savior, of Jesus Christ? Are we not promoting family togetherness, giving and forgiving at this season of the year? Isn't this the season to be jolly? What could possibly be wrong with a little egg nog, with a little mistletoe? Can we determine how God views this holiday? What are its origins? How did Christmas celebrations begin? Does it even matter how Christmas began? What does the Bible say about Christmas? What support can we find in the Bible for the celebration of the most popular religious holiday of the year? Is Christmas really for Christians? So I've actually got three titles for today's sermon. I didn't have enough room in the bulletin. So I just left it out. It's 4,000 years of Christmas. It's Christmas is it for Christians? And also the deceitfulness of Christmas? So you take your pick, whichever one you like the best. What about the origins of the Christmas celebration? How did it begin? Well, historians tell us the Christmas celebration came from very questionable origins. William Wash, who lived 1854 to 1919, summarizes the holiday's origins and practices in his book, The Story of Santa Claus. He says, we remember that the Christmas festival is a gradual evolution from times that long-antidated the Christian period. It was overlaid upon heathen festivals, heathen or pagan festivals, and many of its observances are only adaptations of pagan to Christian ceremonies. So what he's saying is they took a lot of pagan celebrations and they made it look like it was Christian.

You've probably heard about the book entitled 4,000 Years of Christmas. Of course, Christ has only been around... I mean, Christ came as a human baby about roughly 2,000 years ago. So how could there possibly be 4,000 Years of Christmas? Well, there's a book entitled 4,000 Years of Christmas that was written by Earl and Alice Count.

And it's not against Christmas, but it goes into the origins, and it's pretty factual about how it began and the pagan origins, the heathen origins of Christmas. How could pagan practices become part of the most major of church celebrations? What were these heathen festivals that lent themselves to Christmas customs over the centuries? Now, during the second century BC, the Greeks practiced rites to honor their god Dionysus, also called Bacchus.

The Latin name for this celebration was Bacchanalia. You may have heard that term, Bacchanalia. It spread from the Greeks to Rome to the center of the Roman Empire. It was on or about December 21st that the ancient Greeks celebrated what are known to us as the Bacchanalia, where festivities in honor of the god Bacchus, the god of wine.

In these festivities, the people gave themselves up to song, to dance, and other revels which frequently passed the limits of decency and order, according to Wash that I mentioned earlier. That's on page 65 of his book. Because of the nocturnal orgies, there were orgies that were affiliated with these festivities, the Roman Senate suppressed its observance in 186 BC. So 186 years before they started counting the era after Christ.

186 BC. It took the senators several years to completely accomplish this goal because of the holiday's popularity. I don't know that they ever really fully accomplished that. It seems like there's still a lot of festivities going on this time of year that aren't always appropriate, certainly.

Suppressing a holiday was unusual for the Romans since they later became a melting pot of many types of gods and worship. Just as the Romans assimilated culture, art, and customs from the peoples absorbed into their empire, they likewise adopted those peoples' religious practices.

It was very common for them to allow different religious practices. In addition to the Bacchanalia, the Romans celebrated another holiday called the Saturnalia, held in honor of the god Saturn, the god of time, which began on December 17th. That's when they began the festivities, December 17th, and it continued for seven days. These also often ended in riot and disorder. Hence, the words Bacchanalia and Saturnalia acquired an evil reputation, according to Wash on page 65 of his book. The reason for the Saturnalia's disrepute is revealing.

In pagan mythology, Saturn was an ancient agricultural god-king who ate his own children, presumably to avoid regicide. Regicide is when they kill the king. The family kills the king, so they can become king. So it was not a pretty thing, oftentimes, what went on in these families, these kingly families, killing one another. Saturn was parallel with a Carthaginian bale, a god whose brazen, horned effigy contained a furnace into which children were sacrificially fed. These are some of the origins of why we observe Christmas this time of year. Bacchanalia and Saturnalia and the melding of the two together. That's actually from William Sansom, entitled A Book of Christmas, a book he wrote back in 1968 on page 44.

Notice the customs surrounding the Saturnalia. I'd like to quote from the Christmas Almanac by Gerard and Patricia Del Rey. The Christmas Almanac, which was written in 1979, this is on page 16. All businesses were closed except those that provided food or revelry during the Saturnalia.

Slaves were made equal to masters or even set over them for a brief time. Gambling, drinking, and feasting were encouraged. People exchanged gifts called strene from the vegetation goddess Strenea, whom it was important to honor at midwinter. During the coldest times of the year, they liked to honor these vegetarian goddesses so that they didn't just disappear.

They liked warmer weather. They were looking forward to warmer weather. There's a lot of superstition built into these holidays and their festivities. Men dressed as women or in the hides of animals and caroused in the streets. Candles and lamps were used to frighten the spirits of darkness, which were considered powerful at this time of year. At its most decadent and barbaric, Saturnalia may have been the excuse among Roman soldiers in the east for the human sacrifice of the King of Revels. This is according to Gerard and Patricia Del Rey in the Christmas Almanac. Both of these ancient holidays were observed around the winter solstice, the day of the year with the shortest period of daylight.

I'd like to quote from a book entitled The Trouble with Christmas by Tom Flynn, written in 1993. This is from page 42. From the Romans also came another Christmas fundamental, the date December 25th. When the Julian calendar was proclaimed in 46 AD, it set into law a practice that was already common, dating the winter solstice as December 25th. So it was not the birth of Jesus Christ. December 25th was nowhere near the time when Jesus was born.

There were animals out in the fields. They were grazing at that time of year. It was not in the dead of winter. But on December 25th, there were other things going on. Winter solstices were being observed. Again, from The Trouble with Christmas, later reforms of the calendar would cause the astronomical solstice to migrate to December 21st. But the older dates' irresistible resonance would remain. On December 25th, that influence would remain. Now, I'd like to quote from the Christmas Almanac on page 15. Why was this date significant this December 25th?

The time of the winter solstice has always been an important season in the mythology of all peoples. The sun, the giver of life, is at its lowest ebb. So put yourself in the mind of a very superstitious person living thousands of years ago, middle of winter. It's very cold out. Probably not. Most people weren't living in Texas. Even in Texas, it does get cold at times on December 25th. But in some areas of the world, it was very, very cold. So, getting back to this quote, It is the shortest daylight of the year.

The promise of spring is buried in cold and snow. It is the time when the forces of chaos that stand against the return of light and life must once again be defeated by the gods. So, again, these were very superstitious people. They believed in the sun god.

They believed in a myriad of gods, the ice god, various gods. They were basically at war with each other. And who was going to win? They were praying for the sun god to win. They liked being warm. So, at the low point of the solstice, the people must help the gods through imitative magic and religious ceremonies. People would get very religious.

The colder it got, the more religious they would get. The sun begins to return in triumph. The days lengthen, and though winter remains, spring is once again conceivable. For all people, it is a time of great festivity because, again, the sun is going to return.

It's going to get warm again. The flowers are going to bloom. The trees are going to get their leaves again. And life goes on. During the days of the apostles in the first century, the early Christians had no knowledge of Christmas as we know it. But as a part of the Roman Empire, they may have noted the Roman observance of the Saturnalia while they kept their customary feasts of the Lord.

They were busy keeping the feasts of the Lord that are listed, obviously, in Leviticus 23. Those were the observances that they were keeping, not a Christmas observance or not some kind of Saturnalia or Bacchanalia. Let's go to Deuteronomy 12 and see what God says about how He desires to be worshipped. Deuteronomy 12. Shouldn't it matter how God desires to be worshipped, or is it that we can just decide how we want to worship God or how we want to view God, how we want to serve Him?

Deuteronomy 12, verse 29. When the Eternal, the Lord your God, cuts off from before you the nations which you go to dispossess, He's obviously talking about the children of Israel, His chosen people, His people that were to set an example to be a light to the nations, and you displace them and dwell in their land because God wanted them to displace those peoples and again be an example of His way of life. Take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them after they are destroyed from before you and that you do not inquire after their gods.

And of course, we know that they did not follow through and did not totally destroy those peoples, so there was a great influence that was coming from these pagan heathen peoples that were allowed to live, saying, How did these nations serve their God? He's saying, Don't ask questions like, How did these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise. God obviously wanted the children of Israel to follow Him and to worship Him in the way that He intended, not to go after these pagan superstitious gods, not to worship the creation, but to worship the Creator.

Because that's what everyone was doing. They were worshiping the creation, the sun, the moon, the stars, the ice, the vegetation, all these different gods, thousands, hundreds of gods. Verse 31, You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. For every abomination to the Lord which He hates, they have done to their gods. For they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. And I already mentioned that that type of thing was happening in relation to the Bacchanalia and the Saturnalia. There was actually child sacrifice, thinking they were doing God a service, thinking they were worshiping God.

God said He wanted no part of that. Verse 32, Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it. You shall not add to it nor take away from it. Now, you would think that if God wanted us to observe Christmas, there would be some mention of it in the Bible. There would be something that would indicate that that is what God would want. But obviously, there is no indication of whatever that we are to observe.

December 25th, because that day is so steeped in paganism and celebration of other gods, God would want us to stay away from that date. I think it is really important for us to consider this. I don't think this has been spoken of in any major way since I've been here in the past three years. From time to time, it's good for us to consider why do we do what we do?

Why don't we do what others around us are doing? We're the only ones that don't have Christmas ornaments on our block. The neighbor asked me, are you going to put up Christmas lights this year? I think he took note that I had not done that the last couple of years. So he asked me, and I said, no, no, we don't do Christmas lights. We do believe in Christ, but we don't do Christmas lights. I'm pretty sure they realize we don't keep Christmas.

I think that subject has come up before. I don't remember exactly. Which neighbor I've told, which neighbors I have, and I don't worry too much about it. If it comes up, it comes up. But I'm sure they'd like to be 100% on our block, so we're the spoilers. There's five people on our block. It's a cul-de-sac, and we're the only ones that are not with the program. And I suspect you're not with the program either.

Over the following centuries, new humanly devised observances, such as Christmas and Easter, were gradually introduced into traditional Christianity. History shows that these new days were forcibly promoted, while the feast days of the Apostolic times were systematically rejected. How many people observe God's annual Holy Days? How many people keep the Days of Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, Feast of Tabernacles? When you compare how many people are observing God's True Days, and how many people are keeping these pagan holidays like Christmas and Easter, it's not even close. I mean, following the majority is obviously not always the way to go. Let's go to 2 Timothy 4.

2 Timothy 4, again where we get some scriptural guidance. 2 Timothy 4, verse 1. I charge you, therefore, before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead, at His appearing and His kingdom, preach the Word, be ready in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, exhort, with all long suffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers, and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and they will be turned aside to fables. That's exactly what has happened.

That prophecy has been fulfilled. Today, very few people are observing God's Holy Days. Very few people are observing the true Sabbath each week. They're not keeping the annual Holy Days, but every year they look forward to observing Christmas, and starting earlier and earlier, it seems. Easter is also a big religious holiday. These are fables. Easter bunnies, those are fables. They're not true. That's what a fable is. It's not true. Santa Claus does not come down chimneys.

Burning chimneys. I always wondered how in the world he ever got down our chimney, because in the wintertime in Ohio, it was always burning pretty brightly. It puzzled me how he could do such a thing.

John 4, verse 24, says, God is spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth. So it does matter a whole lot how we worship God and Jesus Christ. It's an abomination to keep these days. That's why we don't do it. Children, you should realize that there are many, many good reasons why your parents aren't keeping these days. Now, that doesn't mean you have to go out and share everything with all of your classmates about the pagan origins.

They may not understand what that means anyway, because they haven't been taught any better, but your parents know better. God's called them. God is teaching them His way. So it's their responsibility to teach you His way. So that's why we do what we do. There are many good reasons why we don't observe Christmas, why we don't observe Easter. Christmas, the purported festival of the birth of Jesus Christ, was established in connection with a fading of the expectation of Christ's imminent return. This was from Encyclopedia Britannica, the 15th edition. On page 499, the article, Christianity. So it's saying that Christmas was established in connection with a fading of the expectation of Christ's imminent return.

So it wasn't until the third century, late in the third century, early fourth century, that these festivities were becoming Christianized. They weren't expecting Christ's imminent return so much at that point. And so they were looking for something to hang on to, to cling to. Why not celebrate Christ's birth on December 25th? You know, why not just put it all together and act like it's Christian and do it?

There was a lot of that rationale going on around that time. The message of Jesus Christ and the apostles, the gospel of the kingdom of God, was soon lost. That was not a message that was going out. There was tremendous persecution that came upon the early church. The Christmas celebration shifted Christianity's focus away from Christ's promised return. And of course, a false Christianity was developing, and this was a huge part of that false Christianity, this observance of Christmas.

Christmas celebration shifted Christianity's focus away from Christ's promised return to His birth. But is this what the Bible asks Christians to do? Nowhere does it say anything about observing the birth of Jesus Christ. It does say to look for His return and to always be ready for His return. Gerard and Patricia Del Rey explain the evolution of December 25th becoming an official Roman celebration.

They say, Saturnalia and the Calens, or the New Moon, were the celebrations most familiar to early Christians, December 17th through 24th, that was the Saturnalia celebration, and January 1 through 3rd.

But the tradition of the New Year's and New Year's Day and Christmas, they're all tied in very closely. But the tradition of celebrating December 25th as Christ's birthday came to the Romans from Persia. Mithra, the Persian god of light and sacred contracts, was born out of a rock, according to legend. Mithra was born out of a rock on December 25th. Rome was famous for its flirtation with strange gods and cults. And in the 3rd century, in 274 AD, the emperor, who was not a Christian, Aurelian, established the festival of Deus and Victis Soles, the day of the invisible sun on December 25th. Again, they were sun worshipers. They kept Sunday as a day of worship. They didn't keep the Sabbath. They kept Sunday.

And they also began observing Christmas. It was just a carryover of the pagan celebrations of December 25th that had been going on for hundreds and hundreds of years. Getting back to this book by Gerard and Patricia Del Rey, Mithra was an embodiment of the sun, so this period of its rebirth was a major day in Mithraism, which had become Roman's latest official religion with the patronage of Aurelian, the emperor Aurelian. He bought into this religion this Mithraism. It is believed that the emperor Constantine adhered to Mithraism up to the time of his conversion to Christianity. He was probably instrumental in seeing that the major feast of his old religion, Mithraism, was carried over to his new faith. So there's a huge link there between the celebration of Mithraism, the god Mithra, the sun god, December 25th, and now Christmas being on December 25th. Although it is difficult to determine the first time anyone celebrated December 25th as Christmas, there's no particular date that we can turn to specifically. Historians are in general agreement that it was sometime during the 4th century. Sometime in the 300s AD is when Christmas began being celebrated as a Christian holiday. Now this is an amazingly late date when you think about it. Christmas was not observed in Rome, the capital of the empire, until about 300 years after Christ's death. Its origins cannot be traced back to either the teachings or practices of the earliest Christians. The earliest Christians had gone into hiding for the most part. They had been scattered. They had been persecuted. There was a false Christianity that was gaining popularity. And when Constantine converted, supposedly, he was about as converted as a jackrabbit from everything I've heard, having killed many of his family members. He was not a good guy.

So the introduction of Christmas represented a significant departure from the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. That's from Jude 3. Although Christmas had been officially established in Rome by the 4th century, another pagan celebration later greatly influenced the many Christmas customs that we practice today. That festival was the Teutonic Feast of the Twelve Nights. You've heard of... there's a song about the 12 days of Christmas, the 12 nights, the 12 days of Christmas, celebrated from December 25th to January 6th. This festival was based on the supposed mythological warfare between the forces of nature, specifically winter, called the Ice Giant, which signified death versus the Sun God, which represented life. The Winter Solstice marked the turning point. Up until then, the Ice Giant was at his zenith of power. After that, the Sun God began to prevail. As Christianity spread to northern Europe, it met with the observance of another pagan festival, held in December in honor of the Sun. This time, it was the Yule Feast of the Norsemen, which lasted for 12 days. So we got 12 nights, we got 12 days. During this time, log fires were burnt to assist the revival of the Sun. Shrines and other sacred places were decorated with such greenery as holly, ivy, and bay. It was an occasion for feasting and drinking. By the way, I'm reading now from L. W. Cowie and John Selwyn Gummer from a book entitled The Christian Calendar, written in 1974. This is on page 22. Equally old was the practice of the Druids, the cast of priests among the Celts of ancient France, Britain, and Ireland, to decorate their temples with mistletoe, the fruit of the oak tree. Now, I have some mistletoe up in my oak trees on my property. You can see it. It's very prominent this time of year. It's green, and everything else looks dead. But the mistletoe is thriving. It's a parasite, living off the oak tree, and it was considered sacred. Among the German tribes, the oak tree was sacred to Odin, their god of war, and they sacrificed to it until St. Boniface in the 8th century persuaded them to exchange it for the Christmas tree. A young fir tree adorned in honor of the Christ child. It was the German immigrants who took the custom to America. Again, this is according to L. W. Cowie and John Gummer in the Christian calendar. So, let's go to Jeremiah 10. I think the origin of the Christmas tree was long before the 8th century. Let's go to Jeremiah 10. I know some people scoff at this, but boy, it sure sounds a lot like a Christmas tree to me. Jeremiah 10.

Let's begin reading in verse 1. Jeremiah 10 verse 1. Here the word which the Eternal speaks to you, O house of Israel, thus says the Eternal, Do not learn the way of the Gentiles. God says, Don't learn the way of the pagans. Don't learn the way of the Gentiles. Allow me to be your teacher. Allow my word to teach you, to guide you, to show you how to live and how to conduct yourselves. Do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven, for the Gentiles are dismayed at them, for the customs of the peoples are futile, for one cuts a tree from the forest. The work of the hands of the workmen with the axe, they decorate it with silver and gold. Okay, so you take a tree out of the woods, decorate it with silver and gold, fasten it with nails and hammers, so that it will not topple. How many times back in the old days, some of you, you wanted to make sure the Christmas tree was not going to fall over, right? You didn't want to burn your house down. I remember we'd put the Christmas tree up in the living room, and we would try to make sure that the thing wasn't going to fall down and burn the place down. It sounds to me like this is what they were concerned about as well, so that it will not topple. Now, of course, they didn't have all the lights and the electricity and things that we have today. So, anyway, it says they are upright, like a palm tree, and they cannot speak. These Christmas trees are not speaking. They must be carried because they cannot go by themselves. Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, nor can they do any good. So, it sounds to me like there was a lot of superstition going on with these trees that they were bringing out of the woods, and they were decorating them, they were bowing down before them, they were bringing gifts, putting gifts under them, exchanging gifts. I mean, that seems to me like a forerunner of many even Christmas observances today.

It says, So there's a contrast being made here that God is supreme, that God is all-powerful, that God is almighty, and yet some people are doing really stupid stuff. Like taking trees out of the woods, decorating them, bowing down before them, thinking there's some power. See, the evergreen was a symbol, again, of life, and they were a very superstitious people. So, they would bring the evergreen trees into their homes.

Verse 8, But they are altogether dull-hearted and foolish, a wooden idol. Okay, now it's calling it an idol, a wooden idol. A wooden idol is a worthless doctrine. Silver is beaten into plates. It is brought from Tarshish and gold from Eufaz, the work of the craftsmen.

And of the hands of the metalsmith, blue and purple are their clothing. They are all the work of skillful men. But the Lord is the true God. So, it sounds to me like there was a lot of decorating going on, and they were making money by doing this sort of thing. This was becoming a practice. It was becoming commercialized. They were decorating these trees.

Verse 10, So, again, there's a contrast being made here between this type of worship and true worship, of worshiping the true God. He is the living God and the everlasting King. At His wrath, the earth will tremble, and the nations will not be able to endure His indignation. God is not happy about this type of celebration. This is not something that we should take lightly. These celebrations are not something we should take lightly. They are truly an abomination to God, and yet He allows it to go on and on. His patience is quite amazing, but He's going to send His Son back. It's not going to be so good for people that want to do this sort of thing and bring dishonor to Him and to His Son.

Thus, you shall say to them, verse 11, The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens, He has made the earth by His power. So, again, there's a contrast between these false gods and the true God. He has made the earth by His power. He has established the world by His wisdom. And has stressed out the heavens at His discretion. When He utters His voice, there is a multitude of waters in the heavens, and He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth. He makes lightning for the rain. He brings the wind out of His treasuries. All the power that we see in a storm, that's God's power. And a lot more besides that. And yet, people are frightened in these storms. Hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis. When God allows these things to come together, it wreaks tremendous havoc on the earth.

Everyone is dull-hearted without knowledge. Every metalsmith is put to shame by an image. For His molded image is falsehood. And there is no breath in them. They don't live. They're not to be worshipped. They're not to bow down before that sort of thing. They are futile. They are a work of errors. In the time of their punishment, they shall perish. The portion of Jacob is not like them. For he is the Maker of all things. The true God is the Maker of all things.

And Israel is the tribe of His inheritance. The Lord of hosts is His name. Let's drop down to verse 23 and just read a couple more verses in this chapter. Verse 23, So again, is this describing a pagan heathen practice of bringing an evergreen tree into one's home, standing it upright, decking it with ornaments? You be the judge. You be the judge. Instead of worshiping the Son God, converts were told to worship the Son of God. The focus of the holiday subtly changed, but the traditional pagan customs and practices remained fundamentally unchanged.

Old religious customs involving holly, ivy, mistletoe, evergreen trees were merely dressed up in Christian attire. We should keep in mind that Jesus Christ warns us to beware of things that masquerade as something they are not. In Matthew 7, verse 15, Jesus Christ says, Beware of false prophets who are wolves in sheep's clothing. And Satan does have his own ministers, and they're looked upon as ministers of light when they are truly ministers of darkness. And again, Christmas is the most popular Christian holiday observed by churches around this globe. They haul Christmas trees into their places of worship, and they deck them with ornaments and silver and gold. Not real silver and gold, but fake silver and gold.

You know, it's really quite amazing. It's really very clear. I mean, people are without excuse in many respects because it's right before them if they just open their eyes. Many of the other trappings of Christmas are merely carryovers from ancient celebrations. Santa Claus comes from St. Nicholas, the saint whose festival was celebrated in December, and the one who, in other respects, was most nearly in accord with the dim traditions of Saturn as the hero of the Saturnalia.

This is according to Wash on page 70 of his book. Now, back when we were homeschooling our children, we got a publication from Rod and Staff Publishers entitled, Santa Claus, Another God. It shows that Santa Claus is a mythical being who is elevated and is thought to possess supernatural powers like the gods. This god sees all and knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good. You know, only a god can know all that stuff. Right, kids? I mean, you can get away with certain things when it comes to human beings, but only a god really knows if you've been bad or good.

The true god knows whether you've been bad or good. And these other gods are basically Satan as their origin. And Santa Claus is just another lie that's been foisted upon the earth and the world. I'd like to read from the Encyclopedia Britannica, the 15th edition, entitled Christmas. On the Roman New Year, January 1, houses were decorated with greenery and lights, and gifts were given to children and the poor. To these observances were added the German and Celtic Ewell rights. Miriam Webster's dictionary says that Ewell is a pagan midwinter festival, and that it showed a link to Christmas.

Food and good fellowship. So a pagan midwinter festival, and then it links it to Christmas. Well, you know, they're pretty blatant about the origins of Christmas. You can go to any encyclopedia and you can read about the true origins of Christmas. It's not from the Bible. So the yule log, yule cakes, greenery and fir trees, gifts and greetings all commemorated different aspects of this festive season.

Fires and lights, symbols of warmth and lasting life, have always been associated with the winter festival, both pagan and Christian. I'd like to quote from the Christmas almanac, In midwinter the idea of rebirth and fertility was tremendously important. In the snows of winter, the evergreen was a symbol of life that would return in the spring, so evergreens were used for decoration. Light was important in dispelling the growing darkness of the solstice, so a yule log was lighted with the remains of the previous year's log.

As many customs lost their religious reasons for being, they passed into the realm of superstition, becoming good luck traditions and eventually merely customs without rationale. Thus, the mistletoe was no longer worshipped, but became eventually an excuse for rather non-religious activities. A lot of kissing going on under the mistletoe.

From the book by Wash on page 67, Christmas gifts themselves remind us of the presents that were exchanged in Rome during the Saturnalia. In Rome, it might be added, the presents usually took the form of wax tapers and dolls, the latter being in their turn a survival of the human sacrifices once offered to Saturn. It is a queer thought that in our Christmas presents, we are preserving under another form one of the most savage customs of our barbarian ancestors.

That was from Wash's book on page 67. When we see these customs perpetuated today in Christmas observance, we can have no doubt of this holiday's origin. Christmas is a diverse collection of pagan forms of worship overlaid with a veneer of Christianity. Just a thin veneer. How, we should ask, did these pagan customs become a widely accepted part of Christianity? William Wash describes how and why unchristian religious rites and practices were assimilated into the Christmas celebration. Quoting from his book, This was no mere accident.

It was a necessary measure at a time when the new religion, Christianity, was forcing itself upon a deeply superstitious people. In order to reconcile fresh converse to the new faith, and to make the breaking of old ties as painless as possible, these relics of paganism were retained under modified forms.

Thus, we find that when Pope Gregory, who lived 540-604 AD, he sent St. Augustine as a missionary to convert Anglo-Saxon England, he directed that so far as possible, the saint should accommodate the new and strange Christian rites to the heathen ones with which the natives had been familiar from their birth for many hundreds of years. For example, he advised St. Augustine to allow his converts on certain festivals to eat and kill a great number of oxen to the glory of God the Father, as formerly they had done this in honor of their gods, their pagan gods.

On the very Christmas after his arrival in England, St. Augustine baptized many thousands of converts and permitted their usual December celebration under the new name and with the new meaning, Christmas. Pope Gregory permitted such importing of pagan religious practices on the grounds that when dealing with obdurate minds, it is impossible to cut off everything all at once. So it had to be a gradual syncretizing, bringing those pagan customs, making them look Christian, or trying to dress them up as Christian. Tragically, Christianity never accomplished the task of cutting off everything pagan.

They may have given lip service to that, but they were steeped in it themselves. They weren't true Christians, none of them at that point. According to Owen Chadwick, former professor of history at Cambridge University, the Romans kept the winter solstice with a feast of drunkenness and riot. The Christians thought that they could bring a better meaning into that feast. They tried to persuade their flocks not to drink or eat too much, and to keep the feast more austerely, but with little success. That was from A History of Christianity, written in 1995, page 24.

In the beginning, Christians were opposed to Christmas. That's a fact. Some of the earliest controversy erupted over whether Jesus' birthday should be celebrated at all. From the Christmas almanac, as early as AD 245, the church father, Origen, was proclaiming it heathenish, a heathen practice to celebrate Christ's birthday, as if he were merely a temporal ruler when his spiritual nature should be the main concern. This view was echoed throughout the centuries, but found strong widespread advocacy, only with the rise of Protestantism.

To these serious-minded, sober clerics, the celebration of Christmas grew in the face of all they believed. Drunken revelry on Christmas, the day was not even known to be Christ's birthday. It was merely an excuse to continue the customs of pagan Saturnalia.

There are many, many facts that are given in many, many, many different books. Encyclopedia Britannica adds this, the fathers of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Epiphanias, contended that Christmas was a copy of a pagan celebration. That's from the 15th edition. The Macropedia, this was the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Macropedia, Volume 4, page 499, Article Christianity. The decision to celebrate Christ's birth on December 25th was far from universally accepted. Christians of Armenia and Syria accused the Christians of Rome of sun worship for celebrating Christmas on December 25th.

Pope Leo the Great, in the 5th century, tried to remove certain practices at Christmas, which he considered in no way different from sun worship. That's from Robert Meyer's Celebrations, the Complete Book of American Holidays. Indeed, of all times of the year suggested as the birth of Christ, December 25th could not have been the date. It clearly was not the date that Christ was born. From Tom Flynn, The Trouble with Christmas, he says, To the early Christians, the idea of celebrating the birthday of a religious figure would have seemed at best peculiar. At worst blasphemous, being born into this world was nothing to celebrate.

What mattered was leaving this world and entering the next in a condition pleasing to God. When early Christians associated a feast day with a specific person, such as a bishop or martyr, it was usually the date of the person's death. If you wanted to search the New Testament world for peoples who attached significance to birthdays, your search would quickly narrow to pagans. The Romans celebrated the birthdays of the Caesars, and most unchristian Mediterranean religions attached importance to the natal feasts, the natal feasts of a pantheon of supernatural figures.

If Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem and His purpose in coming was anything like what it is supposed, then in celebrating His birthday each year, Christians do violence, not honor to His memory. For in celebrating a birthday at all, we sustain exactly the kind of tradition His coming is thought to have been designed to cast down. This is from Tom Flynn, The Trouble with Christmas, on page 42.

Christmas was actually a band celebration by some Protestants. In England, the Protestants found their own quieter ways of celebrating, in common meditation while the strict Puritans refused to celebrate Christmas at all, saying that no celebration should be more important than the Sabbath, even though they weren't keeping the proper Sabbath. The pilgrims in Massachusetts made a point of working on Christmas as on any other day. On June 3, 1647, Parliament established punishments for observing Christmas and certain other holidays. This policy was reaffirmed in 1652, according to the Christmas Almanac, on page 20.

Even Colonial America considered Christmas more of a raucous revelry than a religious occasion. So tarnished, in fact, was its reputation in Colonial America that celebrating Christmas was banned in Puritan New England, where the noted minister Cotton Mather described Yuletide Merrymaking as an affront unto the grace of God. So it hasn't been universally accepted, even though it has been accepted by many, many, many, many thousands and thousands, millions of people, billions of people, but not everyone has bought into this.

That was actually from U.S. News & World Report in search of Christmas, December 23, 1996. The reason Christmas has survived and grown into such a popular holiday is that it is observed by 96% of Americans, and almost all nations, even atheistic ones, is because of economic factors. That's the main reason why so many people observe it—economic factors. Last night we had a Bible study up north, and someone was mentioning that, according to what he had read recently, 67% of Jewish people keep Christmas. They don't believe in Christ, but they keep Christmas. 67%. Originally envisioned as a way to ease converts, transition from heathen worship to Christianity, the holiday's observance in more recent years has been driven by economic forces.

That's no surprise to any of us. Encyclopedia Britannica observes that the traditional Christian holidays have undergone a process of striking desacralization, in other words, not that sacred, and especially Christmas commercialization. The Christological foundation of Christmas was replaced by the myth of Santa Claus, by all the gift-giving and exchanging of gifts, and so forth. That's from the 15th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica on Christianity. Even with its failings, Christmas remains an entrenched tradition. Although some recognize the intrinsic paganism of the holiday, they believe they are free to establish their own days of worship.

Others cling to the naïve and biblical, insupportable belief that paganism's most popular celebrations have been won over by Christianity, and therefore are acceptable to God. But let's go to James 3 and consider this concept from God's word. Does this make any sense? After everything that I've said already about Christmas and its origins, the heathen practices, the idol worship, let's go to James 3, verse 11.

Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh. No holy day, or even acceptable day, can spring forth from that which is ungodly and unholy. Those are the origins of Christmas celebration. They are ungodly, they are unholy, and there's no way to make them holy. There's no way to make them sacred. There's no way to give credibility. I don't care how pretty the houses are. I don't care how beautiful the lights are, the flashing lights.

I don't care how many different stuff, or not stuff, but all those big figures they put out there, like snowmen and Santa Clauses, and they pump them up every morning, or whenever they're flat by morning. It doesn't matter. No matter how beautiful it all looks, it's still pagan to the court. Matthew chapter 59 says, In vain do they worship me. This is what Christ said, In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrine the commandments of men.

These are commandments of men. That's why these days are being observed, not because God directed them to be observed, because mankind has bought into all these reasons why it's a good thing to do. All this superstition and paganism and idol worship all rolled into one and mixed together. God says, How be it in vain do they worship me? They call it Christmas, Christ's Mass. A time to worship Christ.

To some, not observing Christmas is akin to blasphemy. That's how they look at it, isn't it? To some religious people, if you don't keep Christmas, you're about the lowest of the low.

As true Christians, we must not be deceived by Satan and this world regarding the celebration of Christmas. Jesus Christ was born roughly 2,000 years ago, but a pagan celebration in the wintertime, around December 25th, has been kept for at least 4,000 years, and I'm sure quite a bit longer than that.

Will you continue to wonder about this day? Is it really all that bad? Is it not such a big deal? Maybe I can exchange gifts with a few people this year. I don't really think you should get involved, frankly. I think you should pull away from anything that has anything at all to do with the observance of Christmas. It's just way too pagan. It's just way too abominable. It's not a good thing. It's a very evil thing to be a part of. God clearly says, do not learn the way of the heathen. This is the way of the heathen. It is not the ways of God. The Christmas celebration of today is very, very deceptive. It can draw you in. It can draw especially younger people that maybe aren't as grounded in their faith. You can think that, ah, it's not that big a deal. I'm going to go to a Christmas party. Well, it's up to you. It's your choice. But it ought to be pretty clear that God isn't going to be happy with that choice. It is very, very deceptive. Satan has indeed deceived nearly the whole world when it comes to Christmas observance. Brethren, Christmas is not for Christians.