I always find it incredible that Christians continue to celebrate Christmas. I know part of the reason is that it is considered a “tradition” and it’s often difficult to break a tradition. However once you truly understand the latent nature of what this holiday represents it seems disingenuous to perpetuate a “tradition” that is in direct opposition to Christian dogma.
The purpose of Christmas in modern times is to make money plain and simple. The people who promote the "Christmas spirit" are businessmen that don’t believe in the holiday. There are retail businesses that make over 70 percent of their projected annual profit during this holiday alone!
We already know that blacks are the largest ethnic consumer group, spending billions on consumer goods, could we, just for a moment… think of what we could accomplish if only a small percentage of what we spend at Christmas was applied to more useful purposes.
Why is Christmas celebrated on December 25th? Most people assume that it has always been a Christian holiday and that it is a celebration of the birth of Jesus. But it turns out that Jesus was not born on December 25th. However, a whole bunch of pagan gods were born on that day. In fact, pagans celebrated a festival involving a heroic supernatural figure that visits an evergreen tree and leaves gifts on December 25th long before Jesus was ever born. you see, the winter solstice occurs a few days before December 25th each year. The winter solstice is the day of the year when daylight is the shortest. In ancient times, December 25th was the day each year when the day started to become noticeably longer. Thus it was fitting for the early pagans (sun worshippers) to designate December 25th as the date of the birth or the "rebirth" of the sun.
Before there was a "Santa Claus", there was another supernatural figure that would supposedly visit a tree and leave gifts every December 25th. His name was Nimrod.
The celebration of December 25th goes all the way back to ancient Babylon. According to ancient Babylonian tradition, the goddess Semiramis claimed that after the death of her son/husband Nimrod (yes she was married to her own son), a full grown evergreen tree sprang up overnight from a dead tree stump(fertility). Semiramis claimed that Nimrod would visit that evergreen tree and leave gifts each year on the anniversary of his birth, which was on December 25th.
This is the true origin of the Christmas tree
From this original fable peddled by Semiramis (the "Queen of Heaven") came the tradition for pagans to go out to the holy "groves" and leave gifts for Nimrod (who later came to be worshipped as "Baal") at an evergreen tree. Does that sound like a "Christian" holiday to you?
In fact, in his classic work "The Two Babylons", Alexander Hislop describes the Babylonian origins of Christmas on page 93...
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 fairly be presumed that, in order to conciliate the heathen, and to swell the number of the nominal converts to Christianity(a recruitment drive). This tendency on the part of Romans to meet Paganism halfway was very early developed;
So where did Christmas come from?
Well, the truth is that the word "Christmas" is not a word found anywhere in the entire Bible. In fact, the word "Christmas" was not even invented until about a thousand years after Jesus left this earth. The Catholic Encyclopedia even admits this....
"The word for Christmas in late Old English is Cristes Maesse, the Mass of Christ, first found in 1038." Christ Mass means Christ Death. When you celebrate Christmas you celebrate his death, not birth. Jesus was not even born on December 25th. The reality is that it would have simply been far too cold for shepherds to be out with their sheep at night in Israel on December 25th.
So how did December 25th come to be celebrated by Christians?
Well, by the time the Roman Empire legalized Christianity in the 4th century, most of the other religions in the empire were celebrating the birth of their gods on December 25th.
Leading up to December 25th in ancient Rome, a festival known as Saturnalia was one of the biggest celebrations of the year. Saturnalia was a festival during which the Romans commemorated the dedication of the temple of their god Saturn, god of the harvest. This holiday began on the 17th of December and it would last for an entire week until the 23rd of December.
Saturnalia was typically characterized by gift-giving, feasting, singing and lots and lots of debauchery. The priests of Saturn would carry wreaths of evergreen boughs in procession throughout the pagan Roman temples.
Later on, the Romans also started holding a festival on December 25th called Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, which means "the birthday of the unconquered sun." Basically it was a way for the empire to consolidate all of the December 25th "sun god" birthdays throughout the empire into one holiday.
In the year 350 A.D., Pope Julius I declared that the birth of Jesus would be celebrated on December 25th. There appears to be little doubt that Pope Julius was trying to make it as painless as possible for pagan Romans to convert to Catholicism.As we discussed earlier, the celebration of December 25th goes all the way back to Nimrod (who eventually came to be worshipped as Baal).
The following are just some of the pagan gods that had "birthdays" on December 25th....
Mithras
Horus
Attis
Dionysus the son of Zeus
Tammuz
Hercules
Perseus
Helios
Bacchus
Apollo
Jupiter
Sol Invictus - (The "Unconquered Sun")
When the Roman Catholics decided to make December 25th a "Christian holiday" in the fourth century, they simply adopted a long standing pagan holiday and kept most of the same pagan traditions.
I've heard people say, "Lets put Christ back in Christmas". The fact of the matter is that he was never in it from the beginning.
The information in this article was obtained from various sources. Please feel free to substantiate the claims made here yourself.
This should be a time for enjoying the comfort of family and friends, not frivolous spending. Take the time to challenge the things you've been told. Dare to form you own individual opinion of what is true, righteous and what you have been programmed to believe.
Peace
