From what I understand, Christmas is a mixture of Pagan holidays or tradtions... can someone tell me about it?

Question

I am not a Christian and I've heard recently how Christmas traditions were stolen or copied from Pagan rituals, holidays, etc... Could someone tell me about that? I'm really interested in this.

Sorry, I spelled traditions wrong..

Answer 1

"The vestiges of pagan religion in Christian symbology are undeniable. Egyptian sun disks became the halos of Catholic saints. Pictograms of Isis nursing her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus. And virtually all the elements of the Catholic ritual - the miter, the altar, the doxology, and communion, the act of "God-eating" - were taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions."

"Nothing in Christianity is original. The pre-Christian God Mithras - called the Son of God and the Light of the World - was born on December 25, died, was buried in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in three days. By the way, December 25 is also the birthday or Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysus. The newborn Krishna was presented with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Even Christianity's weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans."

Answer 2

"In the third century various dates, from December to April, were celebrated by Christians as Christmas. January 6 was the most favoured day because it was thought to be Jesus' baptismal day (in the Greek Orthodox Church this continues to be the day to celebrate Christmas). Around 350, December 25 was adopted in Rome and gradually almost the entire Christian Church agreed to that date, which coincided with Winter Solstice, the Yule and the Saturnalia. The merry side of Saturnalia was adopted to the observance of Christmas. By 1100 Christmas was the peak celebration of the year for all of Europe. During the 16th century, under the influence of the Reformation, many of the old customs were suppressed and the Church forbade processions, colourful ceremonies, and plays. "

The link to that website, where more info can be found, is
http://www.shambhala.org/arts/fest/unconquered.html


I hope this helps !!

Answer 3

It's true; December 25 is pretty close to the time of the Winter Solstice, so it's reasonable to assume that Christmas happens in December because of that. Jesus' actual birth was in April. During the Roman empire, Romans tried to make Christianity more palatable to their pagan subjects by incorporating Christian ideas into pagan holidays. Christmas is probably one of these. Nevertheless, I think it's appropriate to celebrate Jesus at all times of year, so I don't have a problem with talking about him at Christmastime.

Answer 4

It is a pagan ritual introduced into Christianity three hundred or more years after Jesus.
When alive on the earth, Jesus never mentioned his birthday. But he did ask us to remember his death.
(Luke 22:19) Also, he took a loaf, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them, saying: “This means my body which is to be given in YOUR behalf. Keep doing this in remembrance of me.”

Jesus was ' about 30' when he began his preaching. He preached for three and a half years. He died on the Jewish date of NISAN 14, about March or April. If you go back 3 1/2 years from March/April you get the month f October. This is the month he was born in. Not December 25.

Answer 5

Christmas is a celebration of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ and it is also partly a day of giving and family togetherness. It has become more fabricated as years go on. God Bless! Merry Christmas and a Happy Holidays!!!

Answer 6

http://www.inglewoodcarecentre.com/history/christmas_history.htm

Some good info here

Answer 7

Traditionally, this is the time of year when most Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Over time, Christmas came to incorporate numerous pagan symbols. And of course, the tentacles of American consumerism have woven their way around the holiday ever since the introduction of the first commercial Christmas card in 1846. For these reasons, some Christians believe we should not observe many of the traditional Christmas customs; others think we should not celebrate Christmas at all.

How can I, when made fully aware of the pagan origins of many of our treasured Christmas symbols and rituals, still continue to celebrate the holiday, to delight in all it has to offer, and even to post a Christmas issue on the website of Ancient Paths? Some Christians have e-mailed me, clearly concerned by my continued persistence in celebrating this holiday.

When Christianity spread forth among the gentile nations, it inevitably encountered pagan religion. Rather than entirely eradicating the symbols and holidays of these religions, Christians incorporated and redefined them. There is a danger to this sort of incorporation; Christianity can become watered-down or even tainted. It can begin to exchange mere numbers (of converts) for true discipleship. But it is not wholly unbiblical to incorporate and redefine pagan symbols for the purpose of spreading the gospel. Paul himself did not tear down the altar "To the Unknown God" nor claim that it was meaningless; instead, he gave it a new Christian symbolism, and used it to reveal God to the pagans in terms that they could understand. This new interpretation destroyed the old meaning of the altar, and drew on what truth the pagans already knew to reveal to them the Truth in its totality.

Christmas long ago supplanted the old pagan festivals, and those religions (except where resurrected in bits and pieces to be stewed in a New Age melting pot) are effectively dead. Setting the nativity on December 25 was an anti-pagan movement. It was meant to make men focus on the Incarnation of Jesus Christ rather than on pagan gods and accompanying sexual escapades, and it largely succeeded. Saturnalia is a thing of the past. Christmas endures.

The radical rejection of the celebration of Christmas is probably well-intended. Religious men and women, in their fervor, sometimes seek to stamp out anything that they fear may detract from the true meaning of Christ and His birth, death, and resurrection. But in doing so, they sometimes, so to speak, throw out the baby with the bathwater. This is the time of year, perhaps more than any other, when men's minds are open to the possibility of God. This is the time of year when loneliness, for some, becomes an almost unbearable weight. This is the time of year when every loss seems somehow greater, but when every kind word means so much more. Christmas symbols can move men and women; Christmas songs can inspire them; and Christmas literature can open their hearts and minds to new possibilities. The window is open, the door is ajar, and we in our fanaticism risk slamming both shut.

The human creature was given a capacity for creativity by its Creator, and it was given senses to be moved by art and literature, by colors and music and smells. The human spirit is not often well fed on what is spartan; the complex human mind is not wholly satisfied by subjects that have no nuance. If we Christians focus our energies on tearing down dead idols, which quite clearly no longer represent the pagan themes for which they once stood, we risk fighting a futile war against straw men, while the real enemy marches on unengaged

holiday symbols-
Holly:

Holly has been used in Christmas tradition for almost sixteen hundred years. It was also used, long before, in pagan traditions. In ancient Rome, holly was associated with Saturn, the god of the harvest. In Druidic and other related pagan traditions, holly leaves were placed around homes in the winter to proivde shelter for fairiesd. Early Christians, in what later became Great Britain, probably adopted this tradition in order to avoid persecution, but holly was eventually reinterpreted with Christian symbolism. Danielle Wagner tells us that she heard about the Christian symbolism of holly during a sermon. The pointy edges represent the crown of thorns that Christ wore during His crucifixion. The red berries represent Christ's blood which He shed during His torture and death.

In Scandinavia and Germany, holly is called "Christ's thorn."

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The 25th:

The first surviving reference to the Christmas celberation comes in 200 A.D., but the December 25th date was not fixed until 354 A.D., by Bishop Liberus of Rome. The date remains the standard in the Western tradition, although Christmas, or "The Feast of Nativity," is celebrated on January 6th by Armenian Orthodox Church and on the 7th by the Ethiopian, Russian, and Ukrainian Orthodox.

The Bible, of course, tells us neither the date nor time of year when Christ was born. But, as Alexander Hislop points out, it was unlikely to have been winter, for the shepherds were tending their flocks by night. "The cold of the night," writes Hislop, from December to February, is very piercing, and it was not the custom for the shepherds of Judea to watch their flocks in the open fields later than about the end of October."

So why did the Western Church chose December 25th? The decision may have been aimed at displacing pagan worship. Throughout history, many pagan celebrations have fallen on (or near) the December 25th date. Sol Invictus, the "unconquered sun god," was one of the central gods worshipped by the Romans in the 3rd century. Under the Emperor Aurelian, this god was elevated, and December 25th was celebrated as his birthday.

The Roman winter festival of Saturnalia, focused on the god of harvest, and replete with licentious behaviour, was held from December 17th through 24th. Around this time of year, the Babylonians had celberated the birth of the son of the Babylonian queen of heaven, and the Egyptians, the birth of the son of Isis. On the 24th of December, the Arabs celebrated the birth of the moon, which they worshiped. The Anglo-Saxons, according to Hislop, observed what they called "Yule-day" on the 25th of December, "long before they came in contact with Christianity." Before the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, December 25th was the first day of the Anglo-Saxon year. "Far and wide in the realms of paganism," writes Hislop, "was this birth-day observed."

Pagans for centuries had been celebrating, in December, the birthday of some son or sun. Why? Why was the whole diverse realm of pagandom focused on a son/sun? Could they have been unkowingly thirsting for Christ himself, who was sent to show light unto the gentiles?

Christians probably adopted this date to take the focus off the SUN and put the spotlight on THE SON. This may have enabled them to more easily the pagans and to offer new Christians an alternative to the temptations of the raucous pagan festivals. This is not an unusal practice. Today, some modern Protestants often celebrate the harvest or the Reformation on October 31, in order to offer children an alternative to Halloween. The Jewish Feast of Tabernacles also shared the date of a pagan festival--that of the Canaanite Vintage festival. Instead of venerating Canaanite gods, therefore, the Jews praised the one true God for liberating them from bondage in Egypt.

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Christmas Tree:

The practice of decorating Christmas trees did not reach England until Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840. By then, of course, any pagan connotations the practice may have once had were entirely lost. The Romans apparently decorated fir trees much earlier. Trees were in ancient times used as pagan religious symbol. As Hislop writes:

In Egypt that tree was the palm-tree; in Rome it was the fir; the palm-tree denoting the Pagan Messiah, as Baal-Tamar, the fir referring to him as Baal-Berith. The mother of Adonis, the Sun-God and great mediatorial divinity, was mystically said to have been changed into a tree, and when in that state to have brought forth her divine son. If the mother was a tree, the son must have been recognized as "Man of the branch."

Here again we see a shard of truth, however distorted. The pagans understood, on some level, that there was a divine son, a "man of the branch." But what they did not know was that Christ was THE Branch, the root of Jesse, the only Son of the only God.

In her short story "The Christmas Wreath," Michelle Mitchell Weall gives us a Christian interpretation of the Christmas tree symbol:

Peggy leaned down and explained, "The tree points in two ways: To Heaven, where Christ is with His Father, and to Earth to show us the way."

Here is one visitor's argument against the practice of keeping Christmas trees, along with my response.

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Mistletoe:

According to Hilsop, in Druid tradition, "the mistletoe was regarded as a divine branch - a branch that came from heaven, and grew upon a tree that sprang out of the earth. Thus by the engrafting of the celestial branch into the earthly tree, heaven and earth, that sin had severed, were joined together, and thus the mistletoe bough became the token of Divine reconciliation to man, the kiss being the well-known token of pardon and reconciliation."

This symbolism is easily appropriated and redefined in a Christian context, since the Christian story is one of a divine Branch, a root of Jesse, who died to reconcile heaven and earth, God and man, and since the early Church greeted one another with "a holy kiss."

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The Manger Scene:

Most of our manger scenes and pictures depict the following: shepherds, three wise men, Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus in swaddling clothes, animals lowering near Him, and the bright star. How much of this is in the Bible account?

Here is the account from Luke chapter 2:

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed . . . And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into . . . Bethlehem . . . To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child . . . And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.

This is the only account of the manger scene in the four gospels. Notice what is absent from our traditional scenes: the three wise men, the star, and the animals. We can probably assume there were animals at the manger. The star may have been in the sky, but the shepherds are not said to have noticed it. Here, the light the shepherds see is from "the glory of the Lord" which "shone about them," not from a star. As for the wise men, they are not part of the scene at all. Click here to find out where the wise men (and the star they follow) figure into the biblical narrative.

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The Three Wise Men

In Christian tradition, we place the three wise men and the star they followed at the manger scene. We have even given the wise men traditional names--Melchior, Kaspar, and Baltazar. However, the Bible does not tell us the names of the wise men; it does not even tell us how many there were. The presence of the star does serve to announce Christ's birth, but when the wise men finally complete their journey and offer their gifts to Jesus, he is no longer a baby in the manger, but a young child in a house. The biblical account, found only in Matthew, follows:

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we saw his star in the east, and are come to worship him. When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled [ . . . ] Then, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, God and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me words again, that I may come and worship him also. When they had heard the king, they departed; and lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.

The number "three" probably arises from the three gifts. The scene in tradition is simply merged with the manger scene. As for the names . . . well, I don't know where they came from. Traditional names have been given to nameless figures in the Bible on more than one occasion. The nameless rich man in the story of Lazarus the Beggar, for instance, has come to be called Davies.

Our tradition of giving gifts at Christmas may arise from the event described in Matthew. In Mexico, it is the three wise men, and not Santa Claus, who are said to bring gifts to children. The holiday is also celebrate in January, not on December 25th.

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The Candy Cane

It may be a "preacher's story," but legend says that a candy maker invented the candy cane as a witness to Christ. He chose a hard candy rather than a soft one because Christ is the Rock. It is shaped to resemble either a "J" for Jesus or a shepherd's staff, depending on how you look at it. (Christ is the Good Shepherd.) The candy is white to represent the purity of Christ, and the red stripes represent His blood. As Isaiah prophesied, "By his stripes we are healed."

The flavor of the cane is peppermint which is similar to hyssop. Hyssop is in the mint family and was used in the Old Testament for purification and sacrifice. "Purge me with hyssop," writes the Psalmist, "and I will be clean. Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow."

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The Wreath

According to website visitor Petite Oiseau, in pagan tradition, the wreath is a symbol of eternal life, or more accurately the cycle of death and rebirth. Many Christians, however, this visitor observes, see the wreath as a symbol of the crown of thorns on Jesus's head when He was crucified.

The wreath symbolism can, I believe, be easily re-interpreted this way. That, however, would make the wreath a more likely Easter symbol than a Christmas one, but it is perhaps fitting for the Christian to mentally link Christ's birth with His death and his resurrection (a circle in itself), for without that resurrection His birth has little meaning.

Birth does not exist alone
It dwells with Death and Loss
As in the humble manger looms
The Shadow of the Cross.
-- Skylar Burris

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Santa Claus

The Santa Claus story arose from legends surrounding the Catholic patron saint of storm-tossed sailors, Nicholas. These legends in turn have their roots in still earlier pagan myths, including the Roman Befana, the Germanic Berchta and Knecht Ruprecht, and the Scandinavian Odin. Odin was said to have ridden through the sky in winter with a pack of elves, rewarding men with gifts. St. Nicholas was renowned for saving three ladies who would have been sold into slavery, had he not thrown three bags of gold thorough their window. In countries such as Holland and Germany, Santa Claus was said to ride through the sky on a horse. Pictures show him wearing a bishop's robes. He was sometimes accompanied by "Black Peter," an elf who whipped naughty children.

Traditionally, the feast day of Saint Nicholas was observed on December 6th and gifts were given. Later, however, German Protestants encouraged people to instead worship the Christkindl (or Christ child) on December 25th. The Christ Child (or an angel resembling him) was said to have visited families on Christmas Eve, leaving gifts and toys. The term Christkindl evolved into Kriss Kringle, a popular nickname for Santa Claus.