Question by oo? oo? ?u?? ?u!? ????: the origins of christmas. should christians celebrate a pagan holiday?
Christmas is a holiday shared and celebrated by many religions.
It is a day that has an effect on the entire world.
To many people, it is a favorite time of the year involving gift giving, parties and feasting. Christmas is a holiday that unifies almost all of professing Christendom.
The spirit of Christmas causes people to decorate their homes and churches, cut down trees and bring them into their homes, decking them with silver and gold.
In the light of that tree, families make merry and give gifts one to another.
When the sun goes down on December 24th, and darkness covers the land, families and churches prepare for participation in customs such as burning the yule log, singing around the decorated tree, kissing under the mistletoe and holly, and attending a late night service or midnight mass.
What is the meaning of Christmas? Where did the customs and traditions originate?
You, as a Christian, would want to worship the Lord in Spirit and in truth, discerning good from evil.
The truth is that all of the customs of Christmas pre-date the birth of Jesus Christ, and a study of this would reveal that
Christmas in our day is a collection of traditions and practices taken from many cultures and nations.
The date of December 25th comes from Rome and was a celebration of the Italic god, Saturn, and the rebirth of the sun god.
This was done long before the birth of Jesus.
It was noted by the pre-Christian Romans and other pagans, that daylight began to increase after December 22nd, when they assumed that the sun god died.
These ancients believed that the sun god rose from the dead three days later as the new-born and venerable sun.
Thus, they figured that to be the reason for increasing daylight.
This was a cause for much wild excitement and celebration. Gift giving and merriment filled the temples of ancient Rome, as sacred priests of Saturn, called dendrophori, carried wreaths of evergreen boughs in procession.
In Germany, the evergreen tree was used in worship and celebration of the yule god, also in observance of the resurrected sun god.
The evergreen tree was a symbol of the essence of life and was regarded as a phallic symbol in fertility worship.
Witches and other pagans regarded the red holly as a symbol of the menstrual blood of the queen of heaven, also known as Diana.
The holly wood was used by witches to make wands.
The white berries of mistletoe were believed by pagans to represent droplets of the semen of the sun god.
Both holly and mistletoe were hung in doorways of temples and homes to invoke powers of fertility in those who stood beneath and kissed, causing the spirits of the god and goddess to enter them.
These customs transcended the borders of Rome and Germany to the far reaches of the known world.
The question now arises: How did all of these customs find their way into contemporary Christianity, ranging from Catholicism to Protestantism to fundamentalist churches?
The word “Christmas”itself reveals who married paganism to Christianity.
The word “Christmas” is a combination of the words “Christ” and “Mass.
The word “Mass” means death and was coined originally by the Roman Catholic Church, and belongs exclusively to the church of Rome.
The ritual of the Mass involves the death of Christ, and the distribution of the “Host”, a word taken from the Latin word “hostiall” meaning victim!
In short, Christmas is strictly a Roman Catholic word.
A simple study of the tactics of the Romish Church reveals that in every case, the church absorbed the customs, traditions and general paganism of every tribe, culture and nation in their efforts to increase the number of people under their control.
In short, the Romish church told all of these pagan cultures, “Bring your gods, goddesses, rituals and rites, and we will assign Christian sounding titles and names to them.
When Martin Luther started the reformation on October 31st, 1517, and other reformers followed his lead, all of them took with them the paganism that was so firmly imbedded in Rome.
These reformers left Christmas intact.
In England, as the authorized Bible became available to the common people by the decree of King James the II in 1611, people began to discover the pagan roots of Christmas, which are clearly revealed in Scripture.
The Puritans in England, and later in Massachusetts Colony, outlawed this holiday as witchcraft.
Near the end of the nineteenth century, when other Bible versions began to appear, there was a revival of the celebration of Christmas.
We are now seeing ever-increasing celebrating of Christmas or Yule, its true name, as we draw closer to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ!
In both witchcraft circles and contemporary Christian churches, the same things are going on.
As the Bible clearly states in Jeremiah 10:2-4, “Thus saith the Lord, learn not the way of the heathen; and be n
Best answer:
Answer by poems
CHRISTmas is about the birth of Lord Jesus, so Atheists can take their pagan holiday and shove it.
Add your own answer in the comments!
Im not even going to read that novel you wrote. I have to ask though: why do you care, are you jealous that you dont have a holiday
This question has far too much evidence, logic, thinking and questions. It is too much for Christians.
What if Christmas is the festival of lights which is the invictus solis?
The Prophecy of the Sun and also the celebration of the Candelabra remaining lit.
only if it’s been commandeered by christianity
(thanks for the bible ‘lesson’)
I’d guess that Christians shouldn’t celebrate a pagan holiday.
Far as I know, what Christians are celebrating at Christmas is the incarnation of their god. The fact that they use some things that pagans also use in their holidays doesn’t make Christmas pagan.
I mean, people use festive decorations, candles, special food and drink, parties, etc for all manner of occasions. This THINGS do not dictate the intention of the heart and the focus of the soul. They are just THINGS.
I am a pagan. Though most of the traditions etc you list above don’t happen to be part of my faith and practices, some of them do…but that doesn’t mean my faith is the same as their faith, just because a few of the trappings and trimmings are the same.
As the old saying goes “a cat may have her kittens in the oven, but that doesn’t make them biscuits”
Mistletoe, holly, and decorated trees are part of the cultural heritage of many people, that is why people retain them, as part of their cultural heritage, not to honor another faith. Even though I am pagan, I observe a secular cultural Christmas with my family
No. no need to celebrate a Pagan holiday. Christmas is just fine. The Lord has come and he will come again.
((((( MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL! ))))))
With love in Christ
Fr. Joseph
Good post.
Its basically just Sun worship. On (approximately 22 December, the Sun reached the lowest spot on the horizon and sat on the Southern Crux (Southern Cross – the constellation used to be visible in teh northern hemisphere back in BCE). Metaphorically the sun was “crucified”. The sun sat at this lowest point for three days (was dead for three days) before once again moving north (reborn/resurrected) Dont forget at this time everyone thought the earth was flat and scientific knowledge wasn’t abundant.
The virgin birth relates to the suns placement in the Constellation of Virgo (latin for Virgin) when the sun is “reborn/resurrected”
The three kings are Orions belt. Between the three kings and the Dog Star (that big old bright star), they point to the place on the horizon where the sun will be “reborn/resurrected”.
As an additional piece of trivia, there is a Buddhist myth that one of the Buddhas was born of a virgin, his mothers name was Maya (similiar to Mary?) and on his birth the young Buddha announced he had come to be saviour to the world. He was also visited by the three kings.