Christmas Sucks and Here’s The Proof

This paper was written by a friend who was in Bible college last semester. I know some of you Christmas-lovers are going to freak out but if the information is true then what can you say? Personally I have decided to stop trying to pretend that Christmas is all about Jesus (per discussions with the great Paul Sprague) and am basically done with it. I would love to argue with some of you Christmas nuts about this one. I think most people get amped up about this idea because of all the nostalgia surrounding the season. I have a ton of fond memories surrounding Christmas too – family, holiday, eating etc. However I am trying to not let my life run off of fond memories. Anyhow, read it for yourself-Megan DuVarney
Genesis Paper
December 1, 2005
The Real Reason for the SeasonChristmas trees, mistletoe, trips to the mall to take pictures with Santa Claus, stockings full of goodies, plates of milk and cookies, wishing for a snowy December 25th—these are all images that come to mind when we think of Christmastime. Christian celebrators might also think of singing carols at church by candlelight, setting up a Nativity scene on the mantle, smiling as they drive past a fellow Christian’s shop window that has “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” painted on it, or reading the Christmas story to all the kids while sitting in front of a roaring fire. Christmas is a holiday thick with traditions and memories, and one that most do associate at least partly with Christianity and Jesus’ birth. While it seems like an innocent and joyful holiday, Christmas actually has some very dark origins, and as Christians, it is important to be aware of this so-called holiday’s true heritage.

One would assume that in order to understand Christmas’ origins we would go back to the stories of Jesus’ birth in Luke or Matthew, but we actually need to go all the way back to Genesis 10:8-9. Here we have the account of the descendents of Noah. When “Cush begot Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one on the earth. He was a might hunter before the Lord.” Cush was the son of Ham, who’s descendents were cursed by Noah in Genesis 9:25. There are differences of opinion as to what the phrase “before the Lord” actually means. Some scholars say that it means that Nimrod was in opposition to the Lord, or that he put himself in front of the Lord as a priest, or simply that he was on the earth where the Lord saw him, but either way, Nimrod was cursed and he was an enemy of the Lord, as we can see from his life.
It is true that Nimrod was mighty, and he conquered many cities and peoples in his lifetime. He knew he was cursed to be a slave (Genesis 9:25-26), so he did everything in his power to conquer other nations and make them his slaves. He founded Ninevah, a city full of evil people, but is most famous for ruling Babylon. Babylon, located in present-day southern Iraq, is believed to have existed from 2700 BC to 500 BC and was one of the most influential pagan religious capitols in the ancient world. Nimrod was the self-appointed high priest there and oversaw the building of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. The people of Babylon worshipped the sun and believed Nimrod to be a sun god.
He was ambushed and murdered on one of his hunting trips, and his wife Semiramis (also called Ishtar or Easter) took the throne. She called herself the “queen of heaven” and the people of Babylon worshipped her, a practice that is loathed by the Lord and worthy of harsh punishment as we can see from Jeremiah 44:15-30. In this passage the rebellious Israelites tell Jeremiah the prophet, “We will not listen to you! But we will certainly do whatever has gone out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her” (Jeremiah 44:16-17). (It is noteworthy that the Roman Catholic Church refers to Mary, the mother of Jesus, as the queen of heaven and practices several rituals that suggest unjustified worship in her honor). Semiramis was involved in rampant harlotry, but when she became pregnant she claimed that Nimrod had come down in the form of a sunbeam (for it was believed that he was now the sun) and had impregnated her—a virgin birth in a sense. Her son Tammuz was born on December 25th and the people celebrated. In his book “The Two Babylons” Alexander Hislop printed a picture of a statue that the Babylonians worshipped of Semiramis holding the infant Tammuz (which looks eerily similar to paintings and statues found in many Catholic churches portraying Mary and Jesus).
The Babylonians began to worship Tammuz. They would cross themselves in the shape of a “t” for good luck in honor of Tammuz. The pagan priests began wearing “t’s” on their official garments and on chains around their necks. Tammuz was not the hunter that his father was, but was referred to as a shepherd. One day he was killed by a wild boar, so every year on his birthday the people would roast a wild boar in his honor, a practice we still see today in the form of a traditional Christmas dinner of a roasting pig with an apple in its mouth. The people wept for his death, even the Israelites when they fell into paganism. Ezekiel is horrified when the Lord tells him to look through a gate of the temple and “to [his] dismay, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz” (8:14). The Bible specifically condemns being involved in Tammuz worship.
Just from this summarized bit of background information, we can already begin to see the stage being set for some of our most common Christmas traditions to spring from. Let’s start with the origin of the day itself, December 25th.
December had always been the month of orgies and feasts to the gods in ancient pagan cultures, possibly as a way to escape from the cold weather and dreary atmosphere. Traditionally, slaves had time off during this month and they would exchange presents and have parties. As mentioned before, the Babylonians began celebrating December 25th in particular because it was Tammuz’s birthday. In general, it was just an excuse to indulge, get drunk, have orgies and get presents. This doesn’t sound too drastically different from how people celebrate it today.
It really makes no sense whatsoever to assume that Jesus was born on December 25th,though. The book of Luke records the most thorough account of Jesus’ birth, and he specifically mentions the story of shepherds “living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night” (Luke 2:8). It is common knowledge among shepherds of that area that all sheep are brought in out of the fields by mid-October because it is too cold for people to be out there watching them. This point was made on every website that I visited. Also, when Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph were on their way to Bethlehem because Caesar Augustus had required a census, so “all went to be registered, everyone to his own city” (Luke 2;3). Traveling conditions would be at their absolute worst in the winter, so why would Caesar purposely require everyone in his empire to travel during the single most inconvenient time of the year? It doesn’t make sense. In addition to this evidence, when John’s birth (Luke 1) is taken into account and the months are calculated, Jesus’ birth is placed somewhere in mid-September. It is not at all biblical to assume that Jesus was born on December 25th. Max Mitchell, contributor to The Nazarine Site would go so far as to say, “If there is one day that the Messiah was not born, it is December 25th.”
Is it biblical to celebrate Christmas at all? Nowhere in the Bible do we have any account of anyone celebrating Jesus birth, in December or otherwise. The first official Christmas was not celebrated until December 25, 324, under Constantine’s rule. Constantine established Christianity as the state religion. A former sun-worshipper himself, he tried to slowly introduce pagans to Christianity by replacing their existing traditions and celebrations with Christian rituals. But this strategy did not result in destroying paganism; Christianity just adopted it. Since everyone already celebrated December 25th anyway, he tried to change the meaning to that of Jesus’ birth—a mass in honor of Christ, thus, Christmas. An article on messianiccommunity.com called “Mystery Babylon Revealed” articulates the situation this way: “Pagan rites absorbed by a stroke of tactical genius by the Church, while intolerant of pagan beliefs, were able to harness powerful emotions generated by pagan worship.”
It seems as though it was fairly common knowledge that Christmas was a pagan holiday at the time that North America was settled, because it was illegal to celebrate Christmas until 1679 on this charge. Today, though, it would never occur to us that Christmas would have ever been outlawed.
Many symbols of Christmas are explicitly pagan in origin. I have heard that Christmas trees are derived from a German holiday tradition, but this is simply not true. God lays out a list of abominable offenses against the Israelites all the way back in the book of Jeremiah and included is the charge, “For one cuts a tree from the forest, the work of the hands of the workman with the ax. They decorate it with silver and gold, they fasten it with nails and hammers so that it will not topple” (10:3-4). This is the exact description of a Christmas tree. The Israelites were copying a Babylonian custom that celebrated with trees, which represented Nimrod. Max Mitchell states rather bluntly that “the tree was erect, representing Nimrod’s erect masculinity, evergreen and full of life year round like Nimrod’s penis, had a pointed end like Nimrod’s pecker, and had big red balls that dangled off the tree…” (www.nazarite.net). In light of their original purpose, Christmas trees somehow seem a little less festive.
The traditions regarding Santa Claus have especially dark histories. The myths surrounding St. Nicolas are very vague and most contradict each other. There is no actual evidence that a St. Nicolas even existed. Rather, Santa can be traced back to Saturn, a Carthaginian deity. His statue depicted a seated, large, round man with a big lap and arms resting on his legs, palms facing up. People would bring their infants to him, place them in his lap, and then burn them as child sacrifices. What an evil contrast to the jolly old man that we lie to our children about today. Whenever a parent brings their child to visit Santa and sit on his lap, they are, in effect, reenacting a scene of child sacrifice.
Even setting out milk and cookies for Santa isn’t a new concept. This was originally a way to pay homage to Semiramis. Jeremiah 7:18 describes a scene where “the women knead the dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven, and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke [God] to anger.”
Aside from all the historical facts, there is one main reason that proves to me that Christmas is pagan: the world loves it. If it were really of God, the world would hate it. Although Christmas is a good time to get together with family and make happy memories together, or to be generous to those less fortunate, many people, like the Babylonians, use it as an excuse to throw drunken parties, kiss strangers under mistletoe (also of pagan origin), eat until they make themselves sick, and become ridiculously materialistic. We’ve all heard stories of full-grown adults pushing each other out of the way and fighting over the last most-popular-toy-of-the-season. Does this sound like a holiday that a holy God would endorse?
Nevertheless, the Christmas season is when people get time off from school and work and when families and friends plan time to spend together. Christians remember Jesus’ birth, and many people’s spirits are lifted by the festive atmosphere. Celebration in itself is not wrong. However, Jesus can be honored on any day and we shouldn’t put it off until December every year. But the Bible does condemn celebrating in pagan ways—that we cannot deny. As Christians it seems difficult to reconcile wanting to celebrate a joyful time of year with not acting in contradiction to God’s word. I leave this balance up to the individual Christian to find. Merry Christmas!Bibliography
Capoccia, Tony. Bible Bulletin Board. 16 Nov 2005. .
Hislop, Alexander. The Two Babylons. Southampton, Great Britain: Camelot Press, Ltd., 1989.
Mitchell, Max. The Nazarite Website. 17 Jan 2004. 16 Nov 2005. .
“Mystery Babylon Revealed.” 16 Nov 2005. .