The Origin Of Christmas
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Christmas is a holiday shared and celebrated by many
religions.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Taken from
http://www.lasttrumpetministries.org/tracts/tract3.html
See also this other site...
http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/Christmas_TheRealStory.htm
in fact, just do a simple google search on the origins of Christmas
and read for yourself.
