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THE ORIGINS OF PAGAN CHRISTMAS.
Jeremiah 10:1-6
1. Hear ye the word which the LORD speakethunto you, O house of Israel:
2. Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way ofthe heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen aredismayed at them.
3. For the customs of the people are vain: forone cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman,with the axe.
4. They deck it with silver and with gold;they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.
5. They are upright as the palm tree, butspeak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid ofthem; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.
6. Forasmuch as there is none like unto thee,O LORD; thou art great, and thy name is great in might.
*How Did Christmas Come to Be Celebrated onDecember 25?
Roman pagans first introduced the holiday ofSaturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictatedthat no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people duringthe weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “anenemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Romancommunity selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and otherphysical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness bybrutally murdering this innocent man or woman.
The ancient Greek writer poet and historianLucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’sobservance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions thesecustoms: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singingnaked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits(still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmasseason).
In the 4th century CE, Christianity importedthe Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christianleaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans bypromising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia asChristians.
The problem was that there was nothingintrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christianleaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’birthday.
Christians had little success, however,refining the practices of Saturnalia. As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor historyat the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuringmassive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it tothis resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holidayto be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.” The earliestChristmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singingnaked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.
The Reverend Increase Mather of Bostonobserved in 1687 that “the early Christians who first observed the Nativity onDecember 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, butbecause the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they werewilling to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”Becauseof its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and itsobservance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681.
However, Christmas was and still is celebratedby most Christians.
Some of the most depraved customs of theSaturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to racenaked through the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reports, “Beforethey were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race moredifficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators. They ran…amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stoodupon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.”
As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughoutthe 18th and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were forced towear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of thecrowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome senta petition in 1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annualSaturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune tomake any innovation.”
On December 25, 1881, Christian leaderswhipped the Polish masses into Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots acrossthe country. In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, andmany Jewish women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property wasdestroyed.
*The Origins of Christmas Customs
The Origin of Christmas Tree
Just as early Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas withthe Saturnalia, so too worshippers of the Asheira cult and its offshoots wererecruited by the Church sanctioning “Christmas Trees”.Pagans had longworshipped trees in the forest, or brought them into their homes and decoratedthem, and this observance was adopted and painted with a Christian veneer bythe Church.
*The Origin of Mistletoe
Norse mythology recounts how the god Balderwas killed using a mistletoe arrow by his rival god Hoder while fighting forthe female Nanna. Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human sacrificialvictim.The Christian custom of “kissing under the mistletoe” is a latersynthesis of the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificialcult.
*The Origin of Christmas Presents
In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelledtheir most despised citizens to bring offerings and gifts during the Saturnalia(in December) and Kalends (in January). Later, this ritual expanded to includegift-giving among the general populace. The Catholic Church gave this custom aChristian flavor by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas
*The Origin of Santa Claus
Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CEand later became Bishop of Myra. He died in 345 CE on December 6th. He was onlynamed a saint in the 19th century.
Nicholas was among the most senior bishops whoconvened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament. The textthey produced portrayed Jews as “the children of the devil”[11] who sentencedJesus to death.
In 1087, a group of sailors who idolizedNicholas moved his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy. ThereNicholas supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, orPasqua Epiphania, who used to fill the children's stockings with her gifts. TheGrandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of theNicholas cult. Members of this group gave each other gifts during a pageantthey conducted annually on the anniversary of Nicholas’ death, December 6.
The Nicholas cult spread north until it wasadopted by German and Celtic pagans. These groups worshipped a pantheon led byWoden –their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw. Woden had along, white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn.When Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew abeard, mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donnedheavy winter clothing.
In a bid for pagan adherents in NorthernEurope, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas cult and taught that he did(and they should) distribute gifts on December 25th instead of December 6th.
In 1809, the novelist Washington Irving (mostfamous his The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle) wrote a satire ofDutch culture entitled Knickerbocker History. The satire refers several timesto the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name,Santa Claus.
Dr. Clement Moore, a professor at UnionSeminary, read Knickerbocker History, and in 1822 he published a poem based onthe character Santa Claus: “Twas the night before Christmas, when all throughthe house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings werehung by the chimney with care, in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would bethere…” Moore innovated by portraying a Santa with eight reindeer who descendedthrough chimneys.
The Bavarian illustrator Thomas Nast almostcompleted the modern picture of Santa Claus. From 1862 through 1886, based onMoore’s poem, Nast drew more than 2,200 cartoon images of Santa for Harper’sWeekly. Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from astern looking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock. Nast also gave Santa ahome at the North Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of thegood and bad children of the world. All Santa was missing was his red outfit.
In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contractedthe Swedish commercial artist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa.Sundblom modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful,chubby face. The corporation insisted that Santa’s fur-trimmed suit be bright,Coca Cola red. And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god,and commercial idol.
http://www.simpletoremember.com/…/Christmas_TheRealStory.htm
Jeremiah 10:1-6
1. Hear ye the word which the LORD speakethunto you, O house of Israel:
2. Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way ofthe heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen aredismayed at them.
3. For the customs of the people are vain: forone cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman,with the axe.
4. They deck it with silver and with gold;they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.
5. They are upright as the palm tree, butspeak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid ofthem; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.
6. Forasmuch as there is none like unto thee,O LORD; thou art great, and thy name is great in might.
*How Did Christmas Come to Be Celebrated onDecember 25?
Roman pagans first introduced the holiday ofSaturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictatedthat no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people duringthe weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “anenemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Romancommunity selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and otherphysical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness bybrutally murdering this innocent man or woman.
The ancient Greek writer poet and historianLucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’sobservance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions thesecustoms: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singingnaked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits(still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmasseason).
In the 4th century CE, Christianity importedthe Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christianleaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans bypromising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia asChristians.
The problem was that there was nothingintrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christianleaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’birthday.
Christians had little success, however,refining the practices of Saturnalia. As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor historyat the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuringmassive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it tothis resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holidayto be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.” The earliestChristmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singingnaked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.
The Reverend Increase Mather of Bostonobserved in 1687 that “the early Christians who first observed the Nativity onDecember 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, butbecause the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they werewilling to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”Becauseof its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and itsobservance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681.
However, Christmas was and still is celebratedby most Christians.
Some of the most depraved customs of theSaturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to racenaked through the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reports, “Beforethey were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race moredifficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators. They ran…amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stoodupon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.”
As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughoutthe 18th and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were forced towear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of thecrowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome senta petition in 1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annualSaturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune tomake any innovation.”
On December 25, 1881, Christian leaderswhipped the Polish masses into Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots acrossthe country. In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, andmany Jewish women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property wasdestroyed.
*The Origins of Christmas Customs
The Origin of Christmas Tree
Just as early Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas withthe Saturnalia, so too worshippers of the Asheira cult and its offshoots wererecruited by the Church sanctioning “Christmas Trees”.Pagans had longworshipped trees in the forest, or brought them into their homes and decoratedthem, and this observance was adopted and painted with a Christian veneer bythe Church.
*The Origin of Mistletoe
Norse mythology recounts how the god Balderwas killed using a mistletoe arrow by his rival god Hoder while fighting forthe female Nanna. Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human sacrificialvictim.The Christian custom of “kissing under the mistletoe” is a latersynthesis of the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificialcult.
*The Origin of Christmas Presents
In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelledtheir most despised citizens to bring offerings and gifts during the Saturnalia(in December) and Kalends (in January). Later, this ritual expanded to includegift-giving among the general populace. The Catholic Church gave this custom aChristian flavor by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas
*The Origin of Santa Claus
Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CEand later became Bishop of Myra. He died in 345 CE on December 6th. He was onlynamed a saint in the 19th century.
Nicholas was among the most senior bishops whoconvened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament. The textthey produced portrayed Jews as “the children of the devil”[11] who sentencedJesus to death.
In 1087, a group of sailors who idolizedNicholas moved his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy. ThereNicholas supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, orPasqua Epiphania, who used to fill the children's stockings with her gifts. TheGrandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of theNicholas cult. Members of this group gave each other gifts during a pageantthey conducted annually on the anniversary of Nicholas’ death, December 6.
The Nicholas cult spread north until it wasadopted by German and Celtic pagans. These groups worshipped a pantheon led byWoden –their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw. Woden had along, white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn.When Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew abeard, mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donnedheavy winter clothing.
In a bid for pagan adherents in NorthernEurope, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas cult and taught that he did(and they should) distribute gifts on December 25th instead of December 6th.
In 1809, the novelist Washington Irving (mostfamous his The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle) wrote a satire ofDutch culture entitled Knickerbocker History. The satire refers several timesto the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name,Santa Claus.
Dr. Clement Moore, a professor at UnionSeminary, read Knickerbocker History, and in 1822 he published a poem based onthe character Santa Claus: “Twas the night before Christmas, when all throughthe house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings werehung by the chimney with care, in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would bethere…” Moore innovated by portraying a Santa with eight reindeer who descendedthrough chimneys.
The Bavarian illustrator Thomas Nast almostcompleted the modern picture of Santa Claus. From 1862 through 1886, based onMoore’s poem, Nast drew more than 2,200 cartoon images of Santa for Harper’sWeekly. Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from astern looking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock. Nast also gave Santa ahome at the North Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of thegood and bad children of the world. All Santa was missing was his red outfit.
In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contractedthe Swedish commercial artist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa.Sundblom modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful,chubby face. The corporation insisted that Santa’s fur-trimmed suit be bright,Coca Cola red. And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god,and commercial idol.
http://www.simpletoremember.com/…/Christmas_TheRealStory.htm
