Christian And XMAS by Daniel Parks

    No day like Christmas can be found in all the world. It is marked as a holiday, complete with the closing of stores, feasts, gift exchanges, special liturgies and other religious festivities, revelry, drunkenness, and paganism. Religious observances are marked with religious plays depicting the birth of the Christ in Bethlehem, along with the visits of the shepherds and magi (usually unbiblically portrayed as one group of men) and the animals around which the scene took place, a stable. Many times presents are prepared to be taken to families that are needy, bands and singing groups go caroling through the neighborhoods, special sermons are preached with the so-called “Christmas Story” as the topic, and special Christmas hymns are sung.
    Profane observances, parties, festivals, etc. cause this holiday to cause the biggest month of the year for the sale and use of alcoholic beverages, party favors, and the other things that go with such festivities. In these circles Christmas brings revelry, drunkenness, debauchery, and a host of other sins. Stores enjoy their most productive month during December, the Christmas month. Usually, the people within these two groups are one and the same.
    Its popularity is not to be questioned, it is here, and seemingly here to stay. But there is one question that needs to be answered: Is the Christian to observe it? In order to decide this issue, the background of Christmas must be analyzed. Ample information is available to the student, and some of that information will appear in this work. This work is by no means complete, but it is sufficient.

FACTS    The name, Christmas, is of Roman Catholic origin. It is made of two words, Christ’s Mass.
    The mass is a special service conducted by the Papists for the purpose of worshipping their gods, of which Christ is but one (Mariolatry and some select saints are also worshipped). The name has become to be so universally known that its form has been shortened to Christmas since the sixteenth century. Many folk today refer to it as simply Xmas, since in the Greek language the first letter in Christ is ‘X’, and many make reference to Christ in writing by that mark. Any child of God should revolt at the mere insinuation that he observe anything with a mass, especially the Christ Mass. The word does not appear in the Bible, since it is of such recent origin.
    The date, December 25, has a direct tie in to the idolatrous worship of the sun, and that date is universally known as the birthday of the sun. Prior to that day, the days are getting shorter and the nights longer. But, on December 25, the sun is born, and the days begin to get longer again. In Babylon and other lands where such worship existed, much prayer was given to the sun-god, and the birthday of the sun was a day of joy, laughter, and reveling. Some of the gods worshipped on this day were Mithra, Osiris, Horus, Hercules, Bacchus, Adonis, Jupiter, and Tammuz of Babylon. In Rome, the day was known as Saturnalia, ‘the feast of Saturn’, and was celebrated much like the modern Christmas with much ungodliness.
    The reason for the date, December 25, is because of the emergence of papalism with the other religions of this world. As papalism began to grow, it acquired riches, armies, lands, worldly honor, and strength. With these it began to expand its borders into the lands of pagans. Many of these pagans were quite unwilling to give up the worshipping of their gods, but since the papists demanded that they must, either annihilation of the conquered or a good compromise, satisfactory to both parties was needed. That compromise was found by simply adopting the parts of the pagan worship the pagans refused to abandon, and incorporating them into the papal system.
    Since December 25 was worshipped as the birthday of the sun-god (and is not Christ the ‘light of the world’), that day was set apart as the Christ Mass, the birth of Jesus. In this way, both pagan and papist could worship together, and though both were directing their adoration to the same image, each had a different god in mind. This was done by Pope Liberius in 354. All people celebrating Christmas celebrate on this day with but very few exceptions, among them the Armenians, who still observe January 6 (known as the Epiphany, or, the day of the visit by the magi according to Westerners, or the day of Christ’s baptism according to Easterners). Christmas used to be celebrated to some extent on this day, and many folk still refer to it as “Little Christmas.”
    Was Christ born on December 25? The odds are against it, but as surely as it cannot be proven that He was, it cannot be proven that He was not. There are reasons that seem to show that He was not, and none to show that He was. Among those that show He could not have been born on this day is the fact that there were shepherds in the fields watching their flocks on this night, and this was a most unlikely occurrence for December 25. John Gill in his commentary makes the following note on Luke 2:8, “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night”:
    “There are two sorts of cattle with the Jews ... there are the cattle of the house that lie in the city; the cattle of the wilderness are they that lie in the pastures. On which one of the commentators (Maimonides, in MISN, BETZA, cap. 5, sect. 7), observes, ‘These lie in the pastures which are in the villages, all the days of the cold and heat, and do not go into the cities until the rains descend.’ The first rain falls in the month Marchesvan, which answers to the latter part of our October and the former part of November ... From which it appears that Christ must be born before the middle of October, since the first rain was not yet come.”
    It also stands to reason that the Romans would not schedule a tax collection during the roughest part of the year, for the men were making trips across the country and back to their hometowns. If any should wonder as to the severity of the weather in the Judean winter, let him remember that Jesus Christ said when speaking of the travail of the latter days, “But pray yet that your flight be not in the winter” (Matthew 24:20), for winter is quite severe.
    Furthermore, the apostolic churches did not celebrate it, for Chrysostom (Monitum in Hom. de Natal. Christi), writing in Antioch about A.D. 380 says: “It is not yet ten years since this day was made known to us.”
    Can the date be ascertained? No, but some claim that they can pinpoint the time of the year (see Ralph Woodrow’s BABYLON MYSTERY RELIGION, pages 161-162). It was more than likely in the fall of the year, since taxes were usually collected after the harvests and since Jerusalem was so crowded at the time of His birth, the Feast of Tabernacles was probably taking place. This would explain why Mary went with Joseph, since only the men were compelled to go to the taxing. But, no reliable evidence points to His birth as late as December 25. Therefore, the evidence points to these facts: the date is of pagan origin, the papists incorporated it into their religion, and most Christians go along with the idea.
    The Christmas tree, another pagan God, is also a part of many Christian’s Christmas ritual, even though God’s Word expressly forbids it. “Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen ... 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. They (the tree gods - ed.) are upright as the palm tree, but speak not; they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.” (Jeremiah 10:2-5).
    The worship of tree gods is common to many lands. It is said that Adonis, the Sun-god, had a mother that became a tree and while in that state, Adonis grew out of her (does that qualify him as “the branch”, a name for Jesus Christ?). The Bible ofttimes mentions the prophets of the groves, where trees were worshipped. The Scandinavians were ardent tree worshippers. A legend tells us that Boniface (Winfred), an English missionary, came upon a group of heathen near an oak tree about to sacrifice a child at it. But, Boniface cut the oak down, and then an evergreen appeared. Winfred convinced the pagans the evergreen stood for Christ, so they all worshipped the evergreen tree.
    In fact, almost every group of people worshipped trees in some fashion, but the practice of the Christmas tree goes back to the origin of idolatry. Babylon, where it was believed that Semiramis, the mother of Tammuz, claimed that overnight an evergreen tree sprang up from a dead tree stump. The dead stump supposedly symbolized her dead husband Nimrod; the new evergreen tree was the symbol that Nimrod had come to life again in the person of Tammuz! This belief and tree worship spread to other lands, and the Papists incorporated it also into their system.
    Do Christians worship the trees? They say they do not, but the act of approaching the tree, kneeling and putting gifts under it must appear very familiar to the pagans that have been doing thus for centuries. And, what is the difference in having a Christmas tree and observing the accompanying ritual and having a statue of Buddha or some other pagan god and observing a like ritual? There is none whatsoever, except they may feel that the Christmas tree is now “Christianized.”
    Gift exchanging is likewise of pagan origin, deeply a part of the Roman Saturnalia, who borrowed it from the Greeks (along with the giving of freedom to slaves for a period, wax candles, and others). This pagan practice was easily incorporated into papalism when it was observed that the magi brought gifts to the Christ child. But, in almost every Christmas play, the Biblical account is misconstrued so as to have the shepherds represented as bearing the gifts. Actually, the magi did not arrive to see the child until some time after His birth. By that time, Jesus was living in a house, not a stable (Matthew 2:9-11), and there they presented (not exchanged) their gifts. Our modern practice of exchanging gifts comes from the papal incorporation of a pagan practice, which permitted the pagans to continue as they had, and introduced the practice to the papist subjects as being the Biblical thing to do. There is nothing wrong with the exchanging of gifts, but when it is done in this manner it is simply the continuation of a pagan form.
    Santa Claus is yet another pagan form, though probably one of the most recent. Santa Claus and St. Nicholas are usually taken to be the same person, but of different lands. The Norwegian counterpart is Kris Kringle, whose name is a corruption of Kristkindlein, the “Christ Child” (“corruption” is putting it mildly).
    Santa Claus is an anti-Christ in the flesh, complete with the attributes of the Almighty Jehovah. As Jehovah’s foremost attribute and demand is holiness (“Be ye holy for I am holy”), so is Santa Claus, because a popular song about him says:

“You better watch out, you better not cry,
You better not pout, I’m telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town.”