How much of the Christmas origin in Yearly Harvest is factual?

Question

In the fiction story Yearly Harvest, subtitled "The True Story of Christmas", a peculiar origin which I've never heard is given for the Christmas traditions. It is quite intricate, but I'll list a few items. One thing mentioned is that many of the traditions began in ancient days(Biblical times, about) among the Gentile or pagan cultures. There is one reference given from the Bible about them cutting down trees, decorating them with silver and gold, and worshipping them. In Yearly Harvest's background, the tree was meant to protect them from a demon called Balac, a servant of Molech. Molech was a god who demanded his followers to burn their babies/children in fire as a sacrifice. Balac, apparently, was one of his servants who went and gathered the children once a year on a certain day. Sounds WEIRD, I know, lol, but has anyone heard of this stuff before? There's no info on the website that I can find.
http://yearlyharvest.tripod.com
Either way, I hope it's not true, lol!

Answer 1

The answer above is right. Nearly all the major festivities originate from pagan fests and also their symbolic and the way they are celebrated.
Jesus wasn't born anytime near the winter solstice, but let me explain to you why exactly did the early christians change the celebration to suit this tradition.
As you know, christmas nowadays is celebrated as the birth of god, right?

Now old pagans, you see, worshipped what they saw - nature, plants... and they realised that without sun, nothing grew. So logically, they thought Sun was the most important god. They loved it and feared it would go away. So winter was a sad time, little light, cold, nature seemed dead, little food, hunger.. and because they couldn't explain to themselves the astronomy, there was always also some fear that when the days grew shorter, and their Sun god weaker... that it might die and never come back.
So on the day of winter solstice, they made a huge celebration with bonfires, which symbolise light, shiny golden ornaments and evergreen plants, which symbolise life and rebirth, because then the sun was at its weakest. They lit the fires to "help" it. It was the darkest, shortest day of the year, the symbolic death of their sun god. From that day on, the day would grow steadily longer as their reborn new sun god gained new strength.
That's how they celebrated the birth of the new god. Christian conquerors found this holiday very handy and just gave it another name - but they couldn't get rid of the pagan rites like bringing in the house the greenery (pine, holly) and decorating it. The candles and yule log are of course the fires.

Just another little tidbit of interesting trivia: in slavic languages, originating before christianity, christmas is called božič. Bog means god and the ending -žič means small, baby, child of.
So božič is the celebration of young god, baby god who was reborn.

Answer 2

Yes, I have heard about this, many of the holidays christians and catholics celebrate are based on pagan traditions. The decorating of the tree, halloween, easter, all are pagan traditions.

When christians tried to convert the pagans, they would sort of make a fussion of traditions from both cultures to make the transition a little easier. I have even heard Jesus was not born on December but on March or April...

As a side note, to clear things, the word pagan has been grossly twisted and taken out of context. Christians and catholics use that word to refer to someone who adores "false gods or idols". The word pagan actually means "from the fields", referring to people who work on the field and hence believe in things related to the fields, such as nature. Not such a threatening word after all, huh?

PS: English is not my native language, so if someone has a more exact translation to the word pagan, please do tell.

PS again: Very very interesting, Ymmo, thank you for the enlightening.

Answer 3

As you said, the "Yearly Harvest", subtitled "The True Story of Christmas" is just a fiction story, a product of one's fertile imagination.

In your other question, I have mentioned that the true birth date of Jesus is May 23, 33 BC. May 23 date is the date that the Holy Spirit revealed to us (plural) which I found to be true and correct. The results of that study is found in the website below.

Hopefully, one day, this will be the date when all Christians will celebrate Christmas. One cause of our division could be brought down by being united in its celebration.

Answer 4

well, do you think Jesus had a lot to do with christmas trees?