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    239
    Are You Still a Sun-Worshipper?
    Christmas Celebration is
    a Sign of Paganism

    NCW 64, November 1999

    Another Christmas is about to come along and already the merchants are advertising their wares in anticipation of huge profits. And all kinds of people, including professing Christians, are about to stretch their budgets to the limits and indulge in an orgy of licentious spending and partying.

    About a week ago I received a letter from a pagan and this is what he wrote:

      I came across your article on the origin of Christmas and how it celibrates the birth of Christ. Well, if you knew any better, you wouldn't sound so angry at us Pagans! It was the midieval christians who decided to take some of the partying and come up with their own holiday....300 years later officially. So, not only was Christ born before September, when there actually WERE flocks of sheep in the pastures, but THERE IS NO RECORD OF HIS BIRTH! Funny how God treats his "son". Second of all, you got your EASTER and "Satan" from the Pagan religion also!! Easter is originally a fertility festival from Egypt, with animals like the rabbit and egg to symbolize fertility. Eostre was an egyptian fertility godds. Satan was derived when some christians saw druids worshipping the god of the hunt, represented by a buck and accused them (how nice) of worshipping a demon. So, not only does ignorance play a huge part in all of these misconceptions, but it's even more appaling that blame be put on the people who were worshipping tens of thousands of years before your religion was even thought up! Pagans didn't asked to be ridiculed for what we believe in, especially after SOMEONE else takes our festivals, manipulates them and then turns around to point fingers. "Judge not lest ye be judged.." Maybe you should stick to the bible if that's all you are motivated to believe in.

    Now this pagan was absolutely right - Christians did borrow Christmas from them. Is it any wonder that they call us hypocrites? And do we, as Christians, have a right to throw a stumbling block before them to receiving Christ? I had to write back to him and admit that he was perfectly right, that Christians were hypocrites but not all of them. His challenge should be listened to all

    Bible-believing Christians who still celebrate Christmas: "Judge not lest ye be judged.." Well, this pagan judged the self-same Christians who practice pagan festivals using Yahshua's (Jesus') own words: and the only defence a Christmas-observer has is by denying the Word of God. I repeat: the only defence someone who celebrates Christmas has to this sort of accusation is by denying the Word of God, thus denying Christ, thus becoming antichrist. There is simply no other conclusion.

    Now I have been a part of two churches that celebrated Christmas and they both knew it was a pagan tradition. Their excuses were typical - "we're celebrating the birth of Christ, not the pagan elements" (whilst indulging in all the pagan ceremonies - lighting yule logs, decorating their homes with holly, setting up a pine tree in their living room, decorating it with balls and other trinkets associated with sun worship, exchanging gifts, kissing under misseltoe, having a big party, telling the Santa Claus lie, etc.) - or "we do this to keep fellowship with the rest of Christendom", etc.. You've heard all the excuses. But what does God say about all this? For some reason, known only to the fleshy nature, people just don't want to know, but I suspect it's largely because they don't want to "make waves", or appear "different". For those of us who have broken with paganism, we know the kinds of reaction that we receieved from the sun-worshippers who did NOT want to lose "one of their own". Like Pilgrim in John Bunyon's Prilgrim's Progess, we renounced evil and were mocked and condemned for it, and then did the only thing we could - we fled from the City of Destruction and into the New Jerusalem, to follow the ways of the Living God and not he who is doomed to destruction.

    I have a good friend who celebrates Christmas and has done so all his life. He is a very active Christian apologist - a Baptist - and has written some of the finest essays in defence of the faith that I have ever read. He is still stuck in the pagan groove but it beginning to reject the more blatant paganism. This is what he wrote to me last October, beginning with some humour:

    Santa Claus: An Engineer's Perspective

    • I. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population ReferenceBureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per house hold, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

    • II. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second --- 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

    • III. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them --- Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting theweight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

    • IV. 600,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance --- this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop of 650 m.p.s. in 0.001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

    • V. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

    My friend continues:

      Now listen, all you grown-up children out there, breathe deeply. Don't panic. Your world may have been shaken, but there's more to life than Santa. And as for you Christian Dads who've cheated your kids by telling them they should believe in Santa, how can you expect them to do that and then believe that you're telling them the truth about Jesus? I'm all for childhood innocence, but it ceases to be innocence when it is at the expense of truth!

      So let's get real about Santa when December comes. Remember that in many department store Santas are paedophiles in disguise who get a kick out of having kids sit on their knee. Remember also how last year I told you of a book entitled "When Santa was a Shaman: The Ancient Origins of Santa Claus and the Christmas Tree" by Tony van Renterghem, (Llewellyn Publica tions, St.Paul, MN 55164-0383, USA), 1995, 185pp, ISBN: 1-56718-765-X (available from W. Foulsham in the U.K.)? Buy a copy for your child's stocking this Christmasssss. His/her mind will boggle as he/she discovers the intimate connections between Santa and the Horned Shaman, the god Pan, the Norse god Wodan, etc.

      I guess most people's idea of "God" is rather like that of Santa -- a nice old man with a nice white beard who gives us nice things when we want them, and who would never punish us or do anything horrible to us. That is probably what accounts for his popularity.

      Am I a killjoy? No way! But I do say "HUMBUG!" to humbuggery of all kinds! I love every mysterious aspect of the Incarnation of the Son of God. I just don't want pagan fantasies to get in the way of that -- especially at THIS coming Christmas season, when the Pyramid of Cheops will take center-stage alongside an Interfaith Bethlehem; and a New Age Christ will be loudly proclaimed by all religious leaders, along with his value-system (Beast-liness disguised as love-liness).

      The angels of light will be singing their hearts of stone out on December 25th this year. But they will be singing: "Glory to Man in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward Men". (And in the background will be Joni Mitchell and every grownup Woodstockian singing "We are stardust, we are golden, and we've got to get OURSELVES back to the Garden").

      I wonder how many will notice?

    My friend is right an every single point but why can't he see that he still a part of the New Age-pagan hocus-pocus when he celebrates the birth of Christ on 25 December? Doesn't he realise that 25 December is going to be one of the chief public holidays of the One World-One Religion New Age Antichrist Dictatorship? Unfortunately for many, many pastors who know the truth, were they to announce it from their pulpits, their congregations would for the most part throw them out and they would lose their salaries. So they must tap-dance to the world in order to keep feeding their families.

    This, however, is no way for a Bible-believing Christian to react. So what if he loses his pastorship? If he is doing what is right, doesn't he have the Lord's promise that He will look after him? And so it boils down to a lack of faith and a lack of obedience. In short, he is not properly submitted to Christ.

    The Historical Roots of the Problem

    The chances are that you, the reader, know that 25 December Christmas celebration is completely pagan. If this is so, then why, as a Bible-believing Christian, do you continue to imitate the ways of the heathen? Why have you allowed the purity of the Gospel of Yahshua (Jesus) to be fastened onto a demon-inspired celebration of things antichrist? Why?

      "The traditional customs connected with Christmas have developed from several sources as a result of the coincidence of the celebration of the birth of Christ with the pagan agricultural and solar observations at midwinter. In the Roman world the Saturnalia (17 December) was a time or merrymaking and exchanging of gifts. December 25 was also regarded as the birth of the Iranian mystery god Mithra, the Sun of Righteousness" (Encyclopedia Britannica)

      "After the triumph of Constantine, the church at Rome assigned December 25 as the date for the celebration of the feast, possibly about AD 320 or 353. By the end of the fourth century the whole Christian world was celebrating Christmas on that day, with the exception of the Eastern (Orthodox) Churches, where it was celebrated on January 6 (following another pagan tradition). The choice of December 25 was probably influenced by the fact that on this day the Romans celebrated the Mithraic feast of the Sun-god (natalis solis invicti), and that the Saturnalia also came at this time" (Collier's Encyclopedia).

    ALL scholars agree that December 25 is a pagan festival day. It was the birthday of the pagan god, Mithra. Mark it well, a pagan god, not Christ. So whose birthday is on December 25? Not Yahshua's (Jesus'), but an idol's.

    When you celebrate the birth of Christ on December 25 you are celebrating the imaginary birth of a demon. You become a demon-worshipper. Hard to believe? Then let's look a little deeper.

    Saturnalia (17-24 December) was the observation of the winter solstice at pagan Rome. The winter solstice was the shortest day of the year.

    Sun-worshippers of antiquity, fearful that the sun would continue to decline in the sky, and not return, observed Brumalia, 25 December, as the birth of the new sun when the sun began to rise in the sky.

    The basis of the celebration can be traced back to the kingdom of Nimrod, Babel. After the death of Nimrod, who seems to have been considered the sun god, Ninus was born to Beltis and considered to be the reincarnation of Nimrod (god incarnate). This is the origin of the worship of "Mother and Child". Because of this, Beltis, the wife of Nimrod and mother of Ninus, became known as "the mother's husband - the mother of god - queen of heaven." This fable has been the basis of pagan worship throughout history.

    The celebration was also known in Egypt. The only difference was that in Egypt the names had changed: Osiris was the sun god, Isis was the "queen of heaven", and Horus was the son, born on 25 December. Sun worshippers since the time of Babel recognised this time of year in honor of their gods. (Richard M. Rives, Too Long in the Sun, Partakers Publications, Box 23031, Charlotte, NC 28227, USA, 1998).

    When you celebrate the birth of Christ on 25 December you are joining in an age-old pagan tradition of worshipping the demon-gods.

    For more information on Christmas customs, see the many articles we have published on this theme and our homepage at:

    http://www.nccg.org/christmas.html

      In a conversation with a leading theologian, I was expressing my concern about Christmas being called a Christian celebration. He stated that there was no biblical authority for the celebration and that in the second century, believers were reprimanded for trying to choose dates for the birth of Christ. He said that in 354 AD, December 25 was listed as a pagan holiday on a calendar of time and that it was only in the fifth century that it was accepted as a "Christian" observance.

      When I asked him who authorised the celebration of December 25th in honour of Christ, he laughed and said, "The Church".

      As he had already stated that early believers, who had walked and walked with Christ did not observe December 25th, I knew he was referring to a different "church": the "church" of man's tradition.

      I mentioned the fact that God never allowed nor accepted the blending of pagan practices with His worship. I quoted Exodus 32 where the golden calf was built and the celebration declared a "feast of the Lord". I went on to cite how God wanted to destroy those people. If Moses had not pleaded with God, He would have destroyed His "chosen people" for their transgressions. After hearing God's voice thundering "thou shat have no other gods before Me" they were doing what they thought was right: declaring that pagan practices were in honour of God. (Richard M. Rives, ibid.)

    Now at this juncture you might softly laugh and say that observing Christmas is not the same as golden calf worship but you would be missing the point entirely. For not only had the Israelites built the calf but they had declared it a feast to the Lord. The people had declared a celebration to honour Yahweh which Yahweh did NOT recognise as being in His honour. Far from it, He was about to KILL THEM!!!!!!

    Now do you see how serious a matter this is? What happened at Mt. Sinai is a very good analogy to contemporary Christmas celebration. It is true, people don't bow down to worship the sun as the Israelites bowed down to the golden calf but they have declared a FEAST OF THE LORD which He DOES NOT RECOGNISE. And how do we know He has not recognised it? Because he has already given us His Feast Days in the Bible!

    Now many of our readers may not know that the golden calf worshipped by the Israelies in the wilderness was a known Egyptian deity. The Egyptians worshipped Hathor the cow and Aphis the bull, the latter of which had a sun disk between its horns. These gods were a part of the Egyptian sun- worshipping tradition, proving that the Israelite apostacy was sun-worship, the same idolatry as Christmas celebration.

    Friend, if you are still observing Christmas as a Christian you are caught up in pagan sun-worship. Your observation of Christmas is both honouring Christ AND the sun-deity of the heathen. This dual combination of two religious practices is called syncretism, the same sin as the Israelies at Sinai, and is regarded by Yahweh, the Creator-God of the Universe, and the Father of our Lord and Saviour Yahshua hamashiach (Jesus Christ) as blasphemy worthy of death and in violation of one of the Ten Commandments.

    Now that you have this knowledge which is incontrovertible you stand under a spiritual death sentence if you continue in your observance of Christmas. If you continue this pagan-Christian syncretic festival you place yourself spiritually in the same position as the Israelites who followed Aaron and made a golden Aphis bull with sun-disk between its horns.

    Consider: the Christians in the first century did not, as far as we know, celebrate Christ's birthday. The second century theologians condemned the thought, and only after severe persecution, destruction and inaccessibility of biblical scripture and the blending of pagan doctrine with the worship of Yahweh was the Mithraic celebration of December 25th (and the parallel January 6 tradition in the Eastern Orthodox Church) proclaimed to be "Christian" in nature.

    We know from the historical records that the only reason December 25 was adopted by the apostate Church at Rome was because sun-worshippers who became nominal Christians sought political advantage in being a part of the then State Church and brought with them their sun-worshipping festival. The official adoption of the festival was an act of appeasement by a corrupt Church which viewed political power as being of more importance than the truth.

    We don't know when Christ was born from the biblical record and no extra-biblical sources tell us either. Though there are many Messianic Jews who believe He was born in the autumn during the Feast of Tabernacles (Succoth), having been conceived during the Festival of Lights (Hanukkah), and though many New Covenant Christians and some others believe He was born on 6 April, it cannot be proved one way or the other. New Covenant Christians have observed 6 April as the beginning of the Church Year but we have never received a commandment to celebrate the birth of Christ on that date (NC&C 82:5). We are therefore no longer celebtaing His birth.

    Conclusion

    We can be left in no doubt as to what Yahweh-God thinks about Christmas celebration once we have considered the historical data and the biblical injunctions. All true Bible-believing Christians must reject it completely.

    If you would like further information on Christmas and other pagan festivals like Easter, and want to obey the Word, feel free to contact us for further help.

    This page was created on 24 October 1999
    Last updated on 24 October 1999

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