These days, anyone who spends time in the Christian sector of the internet is bound to find them. With a new inexpensive means of distributing their delusional meanderings to a wide audience, they cannot resist the temptation to warn all of us who are spending time rejoicing in the Lord’s birth. Particularly popular are the various discussion boards with Christian themse set up at Yahoo and other services. Using these meeting places between Christians as an open invitation to warn us all of the evils of contemplating the mystery of the Incarnation, they post their screed even if it has absolutely no bearing on the topic the particular group was founded to discuss.

That is how a few years ago I came across a gem titled The Origin of Christmas. Submitted as a post in a group intended to discuss the relationship between fundamentalism and historic Christianity, it was little more that a laundry list of the usual accusations against Christmas made by those who think Christians should spend each waking hour deriving the end of the world from this morning’s headlines on CNN. I made a quick response to the letter at the time but later expanded upon my initial comments. The text is quoted below followed by my responses point by point.

The Origin Of Christmas

Christmas is a holiday shared and celebrated by many religions.

You know you’re in trouble when your opening sentence is wrong. Christmas is celebrated by one religion - the Christian religion. Other religions may have celebrated a different holiday on the same date but what they celebrate is not Christmas. The term “Christmas” means what it says. It is a combination of “Christ” and “Mass.” The word “Christ” or “annointed one” is a title given to Jesus in the New Testament. The term “mass” is from the Latin “missio” for “sending.” Thus “Christmas” means “the sending of the annointed one.” Unless they are celebrating the sending of the annointed one - our Lord Jesus Christ - then they are not celebrating Christmas.

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.

Why do I think that you are about to tell us that Christians celebrating Jesus’ birth by giving gifts and having family dinners while uniting most of Christendom is a bad idea?

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.

So is decorating homes and churches such a terrrible thing? Oh well. As for chopping down trees and taking them into your house, I imagine only those in rural areas do that anymore. Most who use real trees buy them in parking lots from resellers who bought them from tree farms. I’m not sure of the exact numbers, but I think a significant percentage of Christmas trees aren’t trees at all - they are made of aluminum and other synthetic materials. Or does it not matter if it is not a tree? Well, they often say that it’s the thought that counts.

As for the yule log, singing, and mistletoe, these are purely cultural things at this point and are not universal. In fact they are generally most common among those who live in countries whose population is descended primarily from Northern Europeans. These are the contries converted to Christianity last and retained prior traditions to a greater degree. As for the midnight mass, the emerging celbration of the birth of the Savior tended to correspond to features of the already existing celebration of His resurrection. Advent correspondes to Lent. The vigil service to move from the preparatory period of Advent to the celebration of the Christmas corresponded to the vigil service that ended the penitence of Lent and moved to the xelebration of Pascha (called Easter in Northern European countries).

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.

This is a bit of a red herring though isn’t it? After all, many customs and practices of Biblical Judaism as given in the Torah predate Moses. If you had traveled the world known to the Jews at the time you would have seen priests wearing vestments sacrificing animals on altars just as in Israel. The problem was that they worshipped false gods. Of course, the lines would be drawn at practices that were inherently sinful in and of themselves such as rites involving sexual degeneracy or human sacrifice. But even in pagan societies, this was not that common.

We see the importation of Christianization of pagan ideas and customs in more than festive practices. Most Christians exchange wedding rings at marraige. This was not a Jewish practice but a Roman one. However, this custom was elevated by the higher ideals of the Sacrament of Christian marraige. Greek philosophical ideas were imported in the defense of the Christian faith. Are we to disavow the Nicene Creed because of its use of philosophical terminology?

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.

This is where you prove yourself to have spent too much time reading Hislop’s Two Babylons. I realize you are merely repeating what you read elsewhere, but the fact remains that Hislop fabricated much of his evidence and overlooked contrary evidence in order to present historic Christianity in the least flattering light. He was right in assuming that much of his audience would never bother to check his sources. The one notable exception was Ralph Woodrow who wrote a book Babylon Mystery Religion as an updated user-friendly version of Hislop’s work. When challenged to back up his claims, he then checked the facts and found, to his horror, that it was complete nonsense. He withdrew his book and published a new work The Babylon Connection? refuting Hislop’s drivel.

Fundamentalist critics of the early Church mistakenly imagine that the Christians of the time suddenly said, “Hey, the persecution is over! Let’s become pagans now!” Remember that the end of Roman persecution did not end the internal strife caused by heretical beliefs. They would like us to believe that the same men who were refusing to compromise one iota on Christological doctrine would simultaneously embrace pagan superstition. Such claims are pure foolishness and are based in a desire by some Christians to explain why their beliefs didn’t exist for the first millennia and a half of Christian history. The whole matter of how Christmas came to be celebrated on December 25 is a far more complex issue than you would like to believe (as one can see in Dr. William Tighe’s article Celebrating Christmas.

Furthermore, the presentation of the pagan beliefs is misleading. Saturn, for whom Saturnalia is named, was not a god connected with the sun - he was the Roman god of agriculture. The Roman sun god was Titan. Other days celebrating deities were also tied to days near the winter solstice. This is not surprising. All celebrations would be governed by calendars that were marked by astronomical events of which the winter solstice is one. The Jews were commanded to celebrate harvest feasts that were marked by observation of the heavens. This is one thing to celebrate Christ’s birthday on December 25 and another to worship a pagan deity on that date.

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.

Again a rehashing of the errors of Hislop and others of his ilk. The truly sad thing is that Christians are willing to accept and repeat such libelous accusations without first verifying the truth for themselves. Any checking of a Latin/English dictionary will demonstrate that “Mass” does not mean “death.” The Latin word for death is not “mass” but “mortis” from which we derive the English word “mortal.” The word “mass” is derived from the Latin “missio” that means “sending” and is taken from the first word of the closing words to the congregation in the Western Liturgy. As for the use of “hostiall” this is neither surprising nor a reason for concern considering the Catholic Eucharistic doctrine. The Catholic Church teaches that the once for all sacrifice of Calvary is made present in the celebration of the Eucharist and, of course, in that sacrifice Christ is both victim and high priest.

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.

As pointed out above, nothing of the sort happened. It is based on the dishonest “research” of one man - Alexander Hislop. Hislop’s thinking, like many anti-Roman writers of the period, bore all the religious and racial bigotry of the “know-nothing” movement. That he would publish outright lies and base it on contrived evidence is hardly novel. What is both shocking and disappointing is that so many base their beliefs on his work without ever confirming that the evidence presented is true. All that occurs is that fundamentalists have passed these lies and cite each others’ books as support. None, save the aforementioned Ralph Woodrow, ever bothered to check out the primary sources.

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.

This little tirade just proves that even though Hislop has long since passed away, his modern followers are fully capable of demonstrating an ignorance of history that rivals their mentor. The King James Bible was commissioned by the King in his role as the head of the Church of England. The Puritans were not the primary users of the Authorized Version. Within the Church of England, the celebration of Christmas was maintained and was brought to the colonies by members of the church. Yes it is true that when the Puritans ran Massachutses they banned Christmas, but by the time of the American Revolution, they had fallen as much out of favor there as they had in England earlier. The letters of the founding fathers are full of references to Christmas and how could we forget Washington’s Christmas farewell address.

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 not dismayed at the signs of heaven. For the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain. For one cutteth a tree out of the forest. The work of the hands of the workman
with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold. They fasten it with nails and with hammers that it move not.”

The term “Yule” is of German origin and has no equivalence to Christmas anymore than Saturnalia did. Certain practices like the yule log were retained in Germany even after their conversion but they became little more than ethnic customs and no longer had any intent of pagan worship. The biblical passage about the trees is alluding to a practice among pagans of not only decorating the trees but worshipping the spirit of the tree. If someone who uses a Christmas tree as part of their tradition were to bow down and worship it then they would fall under that injunction.

So, what is wrong with Christmas? 1. To say that Jesus was born on December 25th is a lie! The true date is sometime in September according to the Scriptures.

Actually the Scriptures say nothing conclusive about the date of his birth. When you add the fact that different calendars are used by the Jews and Romans and niether is the same as the calendar used today then all sorts of problems arise. Some are desperate to make it coincide with Jewish feast days and use convoluted arguments based upon unsupportable assumptions. As for it being a lie, the worse you can say is it is in error. A lie would assume intended deception. This case, like the division of the calendar into B.C. and A.D. was based upon assumptions that later proved to be faulty.

2. Trees, wreaths, holly, mistletoe and the like are strictly forbidden as pagan
and heathen! To say that these are Christian or that they can be made Christian is a lie!

Like many things, the improper use of them is forbidden. If it is used in to worship false gods, yes it is forbidden.

3. The Lord never spoke of commemorating his birth but rather commanded us
to remember the sacrifice of His suffering and death, which purchased our
salvation.

That’s funny. I seem to remember the shepherds, angels, and later the magi celebrating Christ’s birth. If they can do it, then so can we.

Think about it! Can we worship and honor God by involving ourselves with customs and traditions, which God Himself forbade as idolatry? Can we convince God to somehow Christianize these customs and the whole pretense and lie of Christmas, so we can enjoy ourselves? Can we obey through disobedience?

As mentioned earlier, the objection was the worship of false gods and not whether someone provided seasonal decorations with plants. Prior to the institution of the Law under Moses, pagans sacrificed animals in temples by priests wearing vestments and using incense. They also celebrated harvest feasts. Yet God did not find issue with Israel adopting similar practices so long as they were in the service of the true God and not false gods.

So what is right about Christmas? 1. Nothing!

What is right about Christmas? Well, we can begin with how its celebtation (along with the Advent season preceding it) calls us to contemplate for weeks when Christ entered the world and looks to His Second Coming in glory. Those churches that have done away with the Advent and Christmas seasons - Christmas is a 12 day season ending with Epiphany on January 6 - have also presumably done away with the traditional liturgy and lectionary. Thus they won’t get to hear all those passages about the Incarnation, the virgin birth, the beginnings of Jesus’ ministry, etc. A loss for them and something that is desperately needed. How much better it would be for them to be immersing themselves in the account of the Christ being born than attempting to prove that Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled in today’s headlines from CNN.

Part of me can’t help but wonder why those who followed Christ originally, as well as most of the early church fathers until the 4th century saw no reason to celebrate Christ’s birth. These were folks who were willing to die horrible deaths for the savior, but they saw no reason to create an annual celebration of his birth. If the men who new Jesus when he walked this earth did not mark his birth with special events, I wonder why we feel the need to do such.

Yet another misleading statememt. The day of Christ’s birth was noted and celebrated in parts of the Church prior to the fourth century. What was fixed at the fourth century was the December 25 date for the celebration in the Western Church. Prior to that there were numerous days used to celebrate Christ’s birth in different locales using different rationales for their selection. What was needed was a standard for the Church so all might celebrate together and the December 25 date was agreed selected.

I also find it disingenuous that fundamentalists who ignore the Church Fathers in their theology attempt to use them for polemical purposes. Before they try to point to them for proof perhaps they could first adopt their liturgical worship and weekly celebration of the Holy Eucharist as the central act of the Church. Rather than taking their witness seriously, they try to construct arguments from silence.

We are shocked to learn the truth — some, unfortunately, take offense at the
truth! But God commands His faithful pastors, “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy
voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of
Jacob their sins.” (Isaiah 58:1)