Historians do not hide the fact that Christmas was an invention of the Roman church, designed to compete with the heathen Roman feast of Saturnalia in honor of the sun deity Mithras. Mithras bore remarkable similarity to the Biblical Messiah. The Mithraic feast, like Christmas, was celebrated to commemorate his birth.
Christmas as a pagan holiday traces back thousands of years to a man named Nimrod, founder of ancient pagan Babylon. Forefather to Mithras, Nimrod began a counterfeit religion in the Book of Genesis that was to compete with the True Faith of the Bible in every conceivable way down through the centuries. The Bible refers to it as the religion of Mystery Babylon the mother of false religion that will be destroyed when the Savior Yahshua comes to set up His throne on earth, Revelation 18.
Babylons false worship is found today in some aspect in nearly all religions, including churchianity. After Nimrods death (2167 BCE), Semiramis, Nimrods mother-wife, declared that Nimrod was a god. She claimed that she saw a full-grown evergreen tree spring out of the roots of a dead tree stump, symbolizing the springing forth of new life for Nimrod. On the anniversary of his rebirth (the winter solstice, December 25), she proclaimed that Nimrod would visit the evergreen tree and leave gifts under it.
If Christmas is not in the Bible, where did it come from? The answer is found in every encyclopedia and in many newspapers or magazines appearing around December 25. What they say about the roots of Christmas should shock every honest Bible believer into taking a serious look at the annual observance and what it REALLY celebrates.
Historians do not hide the fact that Christmas was an invention of the Roman church, designed to compete with the heathen Roman feast of Saturnalia in honor of the sun deity Mithras. Mithras bore remarkable similarity to the Biblical Messiah. The Mithraic feast, like Christmas, was celebrated to commemorate his birth.
Notice the remarkable parallels, as detailed by Joscelyn Godwin, professor at Colgate University. He writes that Mithras was the creator and orderer of the universe, hence a manifestation of the creative Logos or Word. Seeing mankind afflicted by Ahriman, the cosmic power of darkness, he incarnated on earth. His birth on 25 December was witnessed by shepherds. After many deeds he held a last supper with his disciples and returned to heaven. At the end of the world he will come again to judge resurrected mankind and after the last battle, victorious over evil, he will lead the chosen ones through a river of fire to a blessed immortality, Mystery Religions in the Ancient World, p. 99. Godwin remarks, No wonder the early Christians were disturbed by a deity who bore so close a resemblance to their own, and no wonder they considered him a mockery of [the Messiah] invented by Satan.
These two popular movements were vying for dominance in the Roman Empire one being pagan sun worship, the other Christian. Historian and archaeologist Ernest Renan once wrote, If Christianity had been halted in its growth by some mortal illness, the world would have been Mithraist (Marc Aurele, p. 597). Caught in the middle were the Roman emperors, who wanted to unify and solidify their diverse empire. They didnt need divisive religious factions. For political reasons, the Roman rulership saw great advantage in synchronizing and harmonizing these religious beliefs into one.
So today, much of what is accepted as Bible-based tradition is the direct result of compromising and mixing with heathen religion. Roman Emperor Constantine, a former pagan himself, gave the most significant push to the Christian-pagan blending of teachings like Christmas. Among other things, he would decree that worship for Christianity switch from the seventh day Sabbath to the first day of the week Sun-day the day superstitious heathens worshiped the sun. "On the venerable day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed" (Codex Justinianus lib. 3, tit. 12, 3; trans. in Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 3, p. 380, note 1).
This tendency on the part of Christians to meet Paganism half-way was very early developed, says Alexander Hislop in The Two Babylons, p. 93. Interestingly, Hislop notes that the pagans gave up precious little of their own beliefs and practices. And we find Tertullian, even in his day, about the year 230, bitterly lamenting the inconsistency of the disciples of [Messiah] in this respect, and contrasting it with the strict fidelity of the Pagans to their own superstition. Hislop quotes Tertullian, the most ancient of the Latin church fathers whose works are extant, as he decries the early church observances: By us who are strangers to Sabbaths and new moons, and festivals, once acceptable to [Yahweh], the Saturnalia, the feasts of January, the Brumalia, and Matronalia are now frequented; gifts are carried to and fro, new years day presents are made with din, and sports and banquets are celebrated with uproar.
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