Christmas Is Pagan Rebutted

You’re listening to Shameless Popery, with Joe Heschmeyer, a production of Catholic Answers.

Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer. Today I want to do a special Christmas edition of Shameless Popery in which I address the claim that Christmas is pagan. And I want to look specifically at a video recently put out last week by a group called Tomorrow’s World. This is a group that is… It’s a denomination called The Living Church of God, which is an offshoot of the Global Church of God, which is an offshoot of the Worldwide Church of God, which may or may not be a cult, founded by a guy named Herbert W. Armstrong. That history is going to be kind of relevant because of the distinct claims made in this video, but you’ll find plenty of videos claiming that Christmas is pagan. You may also notice this is also a special bronchitis edition of Shameless Popery. I’m recovering from a pretty bad Christmas-time cold.

So the question is, should we as Christians be celebrating Christmas at all? So I want to play most of this video, and then respond to these specific factual claims, because as you’re going to find out pretty quickly, the idea that Christmas is a pagan myth, is itself a myth, and it’s a myth that’s about 500 years old and is based on pretty poor factual information. So here’s the video.

Many people know that Christmas is pagan. The origins of this popular December holiday are not hidden. In fact, when Christmas comes around each year, we usually see magazine articles or internet blogs explaining where these traditions came from. Many people are not confused about that.

Well, let’s just pause on that idea, that the best way we can know if Christmas is or isn’t pagan is based on popular magazines like Time Magazine, or internet blogs. And I would just ask this, is there any point of Christian doctrine? You would trust those two sources over more scholarly sources? I mean, I just put that out there to say we should have some red flags already that they’re supporting evidences, just, “Oh, everybody knows this. They’ve read it in the paper.” Well, how often does the paper report accurately on Christianity? Nevertheless, that doesn’t automatically prove it’s wrong, just we should be looking a little more skeptically.

The bigger question for some is, why does it matter? Should anyone even care where Christmas traditions came from? After all, isn’t the big issue about honoring Christ? Maybe the other details are trivial. If you’ve ever wondered, what should I do about Christmas, then stay tuned.

So I got to say, I like the way it’s framed, that there’s two questions. One, does Christmas have pagan origins? And two, if Christmas does have pagan origins, what does that mean? Because plenty of things have pagan origins. We don’t automatically throw them out. The days of the week in English have pagan origins. It doesn’t automatically mean they’re wrong. So I think they’re going to answer the question badly, but I think they’re making a good distinction at the outset.

At the intro…

Welcome to Tomorrow’s World-

And then this.

… where we help you make sense of your world through the pages of the Bible. Some people don’t keep Christmas. That may not come as a shock to you. You might be one of them. You might have come to that conclusion through your own study in looking into the pagan origins of Christmas, and it might’ve caused you to think twice about keeping this popular holiday. If you have, you’re not alone.

So, I want to just say, look at the framing. Allegedly, we’re being told, “We will help make sense of your world through the pages of the Bible,” and yet right off the bat, it’s, “Let’s do some extracurricular reading about the origins of paganism.” This is not going to be a biblically based video. Now, the Bible will be brought up in the second half, but I bring this up to say this happens pretty frequently, where people who claim to be Bible alone types, almost immediately launch into these poorly sourced historical conspiracy theories about, “Oh, well, don’t you know the Romans did this in the 4th century, or the church did this in the 4th century?” And it’s like, “Where are you getting that from the Bible?” You’re not. The Bible doesn’t cover the 4th century AD. You’re not going to find any of these claims about Saturnalia, or Sol Invictus, or Mithras, or any of these in the pages of the Bible. So don’t pretend that you’re doing biblical research here. You are doing research of some kind, but it’s not actually biblical.

Now, it’s not wrong for something not to be biblical, in the sense that if I read what happened in the paper, I’m not getting that from the Bible, it’s covering a different span of time. The problem is they’re presenting this as a biblical argument and the major factual claims aren’t actually biblical at all. Let’s continue.

So after talking about how a lot of people celebrate Christmas, I think we agree on that, it says this…

… just a few countries around the world. The point is, Christmas is widely celebrated, and yet many people know that its origins are not Christian at all. You probably do as well. If you don’t, or if you’re not sure, just pick up virtually any encyclopedia or look online.

Okay, again, just notice the sources. It’s not, “Look at your Bible,” or, “Look at a qualified source on church history.” It’s, “Look online or in an encyclopedia.” So, fair enough. Let’s go there.

Here’s a quote from the online Encyclopedia Britannica, under the heading, Does Christmas have Pagan Roots? In ancient Rome, December 25th was a celebration of the unconquered sun, marking the return of longer days. It followed Saturnalia, a festival where people feasted and exchanged gifts. The church in Rome began celebrating Christmas on December 25th in the 4th century during the reign of Constantine, the first Christian emperor.

So it’s true that there is a page on Encyclopedia Britannica’s website that says that, but it’s not actually their article about Christmas. It’s in the question section, which is a more popular section. So for instance, in addition to the question, does Christmas have pagan roots, it also asks the question, is it possible to meet Santa Claus? And says, “While it is tough to catch Santa Claus on Christmas Eve when he is said to come down the chimney, it is possible to spot Santa in shopping malls and other places in the United States and elsewhere around Christmas-time.”

My point is, this is not the scholarly part of Encyclopedia Britannica. This is the popular internet, get some clicks, part of the website. It does, however, link to the article on Christmas in the question section that he quoted from. And unlike the question section, the article’s from an actual scholar, and here’s what he has to say.

So this is Christmas. This is Hans J. Hillerbrand who is professor emeritus of history and religion at Duke. “The precise origin of assigning December 25th as the birthdate of Jesus is unclear. The New Testament provides no clues in this regard. December 25 was first identified as the date of Jesus’s birth by Sextus Julius Africanus in 221, and later became the universally accepted date.”

Notice already, this is not Constantine. This is 100 years before Christianity is legalized basically, and so it’s very hard to claim this is in response to some Roman pagan religious custom, because as we’re going to see, the alleged customs didn’t even exist yet. So December 25th isn’t from Constantine, it’s from Sextus Julius Africanus. And we’re going to see two other people, but this is Hillerbrand in Encyclopedia Britannica, the source that they told us to read.

Goes on, “One widespread explanation of the origin of this date, is that December 25th was the Christianizing of the dies solis invicti nati, day of the birth of the unconquered sun. A popular holiday in the Roman Empire, that celebrated the winter solstice as a symbol of the resurgence of the sun. This is the idea. Like, oh, well, one popular theory is that this was papering over a pagan holiday, as you just heard, but he explains that isn’t right. He says, “One of the difficulties with this view is that it suggests a nonchalant willingness on the part of the Christian Church to appropriate a pagan festival, when the early church was so intent on distinguishing itself categorically from pagan beliefs and practices.”

So it’s easy to say, “Oh, yeah, don’t you know in the 300s that Christians just took all this pagan stuff?” And then you go back and read what the Christians of the 1, 2, 300s had to say, and they were really emphatic on how they were unlike the pagans and differentiated themselves in a variety of ways. So Hillerbrand explains, “A second view suggests that December 25 became the date of Jesus’s birth by a priori reasoning that identified the spring equinox as the date of the creation of the world, and the fourth day of creation when the light was created as the day of Jesus’s conception, i.e., March 25th. December 25th, nine months later, then became the date of Jesus’ birth.”

Now, we’re going to get into that a little more later because we’re going to see there’s plenty of historical evidence that that theory is actually the right one, but basically, this is what you need to know. The early Christians believed the world began on March 25th, the spring equinox, and that Jesus was also conceived on March 25th, the spring equinox, and that he died on that day. Now, you don’t have to agree with those beliefs, but the significant thing is those are not based on anything in paganism. Those are based on a Christian conception of cosmology of the days of creation, and of the importance of Jesus as the light and as the new dawn of the world. All of this stuff. So the early Christians in the 200s, not the 300s, were making this argument and saying, “Okay, well if Jesus was conceived on March 25th, do the math, nine months later, December 25th. That’s his birthday.”

Hilderbrand also adds that for a long time the celebration of Jesus’ birth was observed in conjunction with his baptism, celebrated January 6th. This is called Epiphany or Theophany, depending on if you’re the West or the East. But that’s pretty significant, because if the idea is the celebration of Jesus’ birth was to steal attention from one of the December pagan feasts, why celebrate it in January? And Hilderbrand is not alone. Andrew McGowan, in How December 25th Became Christmas for Biblical Archaeology Society, says most significantly, the first mention of a date for Christians, circa 200, and the earliest celebrations that we know about, circa 250 to 300, come in a period where Christians were not borrowing heavily from pagan traditions of such an obvious character.

So, the idea that this is just papered over paganism might be something everybody “knows” in quotation mark, but like so many things in the popular imagination or from the internet, it turns out not to really be true when you dig in. But this video just presupposes the truth of it and makes several similarly unfounded claims. Let’s continue.

December 25th, feasting, exchanging gifts. That’s describing pagan holidays observed under the Roman Empire. And this date was only adopted by the mainstream Christian Church in the 4th century.

So these are the things that he says are just these pagan things. December 25th, feasting and exchanging gifts. Now, I want to point out the last two of those are very clearly not of pagan origin. That even if you don’t know anything about the history of religious celebrations on December 25th, you should know enough from the Bible, which is allegedly what this video is going to be about, to know that there’s plenty of feasting and exchanging of gifts and it’s not being borrowed from paganism.

Let’s give a few examples. In John 2, we have the wedding feast of Cana, in which, of course, there’s a massive feast. So much so that the wine fails and Jesus has to turn water into wine. It sounds like they have feasting. In John 10, we even see a feast at winter time. John 10:22-23 says, “It was the Feast of the Dedication at Jerusalem.” That’s the feast we now call Hanukkah, and it specifies it was winter. So, when you see a winter Christmas or winter Christian feast and you say, “Oh, that must have come from paganism,” I can only assume you don’t know your Bible.

Then in Matthew 2, we see gift giving at Christmas, namely the arrival of the Magi, who open their treasures and offer gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. So you don’t need to know anything about Roman paganism, you just need to know about the Bible to know feasting festivals in the winter and exchanging gifts in honor of the birth of our Lord is something that seems like it has a pretty clear biblical warrant.

Jesus in Matthew 7 says, “If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children…” Notice he doesn’t say, “You need to go learn from the pagans about gift giving.” No, everybody knows how to eat a good meal and give gifts to one another. This is not something that requires the invention of a pagan explanation.

What about that other piece? The idea that sure, you might have gift giving, you might have feasting, but the placement of December 25th is significant because of the Feast of Saturnalia. That was the feast mentioned in that Encyclopedia Britannica, not exactly article, but sidebar. Well, in history today, Matt Salisbury quotes Dr. David Gwyn, a lecturer in ancient and late antique history at Royal Holloway in the University of London, as saying, “The majority of modern scholars would be reluctant to accept any close connection between the Saturnalia and the emergence of the Christian Christmas.”

Why is that? Well, several reasons. First, the placement. It wasn’t on December 25th. We’re supposed to believe December 25th is this important feast day because of Saturnalia, but Saturnalia happened on December 17th. It’s not even the closest pagan feast day to Christmas. H.S. Vernal points out in Saturn and the Saturnalia, the question of origin. The Saturnalia occupies a position exactly between two other feasts, one on December 15th and one on December 19th. And this should also be a good reminder to us. Look, the Romans had a lot of gods and a lot of celebrations, and so anywhere you were to put a Christian feast day, anywhere where you were to celebrate Christmas, you’re probably going to be within a couple weeks or a couple days or on the day of some important Roman pagan feast because they’re all over the calendar.

For instance, many Christians believe that Jesus wouldn’t have really been born in December 25th because the shepherds are out at night, so they say maybe he was born in the spring. We’ll get into that claim in a minute. But just know that if the Christians hadn’t said, “Okay, we’re going to put it not December 25th, but mid-April,” well, they would be smack dab in the middle of another Roman feast, the Fordicidia, which involved the sacrifice of a cow, and was connected in the late stages of pregnancy, was connected with Jupiter, and took place on the third day after the Ides of April, that is April 18th.

So you would imagine that they would say, “Oh, look. Here’s this one about birth, just like you’ve got a pregnant cow, and it’s got the god of the universe.” Jupiter means God the Father, Deus Pater, Jupiter. And so isn’t it so clear that Christmas is celebrated on April 15th, or whatever day they would choose, because they’re copying the Roman holiday? The point is, you could do this anywhere on the calendar. Christmas ended up saying, “Here’s some pagan festivity that’s kind of close, and if you squint real tight, it kind of looks the same.” It’s not a good argument.

So, Saturnalia, not actually on December 25th, it’s on the 17th. Now it’s true, the longest form of the Saturnalia lasted a week, but that still only gets you to December 23rd. It also didn’t really look that much like Christmas. We’re told the very glamorized version that was feasting and gift giving. But here’s how Lucian of Samosata, who is an actual pagan from the 2nd century AD, describes it in his works Saturnalia. He quotes… Well, it’s a drama. So he presents a priest of Saturn as asking for the usual thing, wealth, plenty of gold, landed proprietorship, a train of slaves, gay soft raiment, silver ivory. In fact, everything that is worth anything. And Saturn says he can’t give those things because he’s a minor God, and so to ask Zeus instead. And he says his festival only lasts for a week. After that, he’s just a private person, a man in the street.

Here’s how he describes what happens during that time. It says, “During my week, the serious is barred. No business allowed. Drinking and being drunk, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping of tremulous hands, and occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water, such are the functions over which I preside.” Now, whatever you may think of Christmas, I think we can hopefully agree, that doesn’t sound very much like Christmas. If someone said, “Hey, what’s that holiday you guys have where the lowest person is declared king and the highest person is declared a slave, and then you get really drunk and you sing around naked and you dunk somebody in the icy cold water?” You would look at that person and say, “You’re out of your mind. We don’t have a holiday… anything like that. And that holiday sounds absolutely insane.” Well, that’s the Saturnalia.

So if you heard that and thought, yeah, that doesn’t really sound anything like Christmas, you’re right. The only things it has in common are the things that basically everything has in common. You eat some good food and you might give each other some presents. But the Encyclopedia Britannica article mentioned another possible candidate, Sol Invictus. Now, the advantage of Sol Invictus over the Saturnalia is, well, it does fall on December 25th. The downside is, Christmas isn’t copied from Sol Invictus. Sol Invictus appears to be copied from Christmas. Steven Hijmans, in his work, Sol Invictus, the Winter Solstice, and the Origins of Christmas, points this out. That all the scholars who are arguing that Christmas was instituted to counteract the pagan feast of December in honor of Sol, first, strongly emphasized the pagan nature of that feast, and second, the great importance and popularity of Sol Invictus in late antiquity.

What’s the problem? We don’t actually have any evidence that there is a major devotion to Sol Invictus. So he says, “Little evidence is offered for the former contention beyond reference to the 30 chariot races in honor of Sol recorded for December in the calendar of 354.” Let’s unpack that. In the year 354, which you may notice is after Constantine, after the legalization of Christianity, well after Christians are arguing for Christmas being on December 25th, you have for the first time, in 354, a reference to a holiday for the Birth of the Invincible Sun. And that’s it. That’s the evidence of some major Roman feast. One mention in the year 354. Nothing before that.

Now, Hijmans goes on to say that Julio-Claudian fasti then gave direct evidence for significant festivals of Sol on other days. August 8th, August 9th, August 28th, December 11th, and perhaps October 19th. There’s no evidence whatsoever that the chariot races held on December 25th were instituted by Aurelian. Far less that this celebration honor of Sol had older roots as a public festival. One must conclude that in the early 4th century, anyone surveying the festivities in honor of Sol would identify the period from October 19th to October 22nd as far more important than December 25th, and the festival of August 28th as far older.

So even when we’re looking at 354, this is neither the most important holiday dedicated to Sol Invictus, this is also not the oldest. Now elsewhere, Hijmans points out that it’s unwarranted to take this one reference in the calendar of 354 as evidence that Christians are stealing from the pagans, because there’s no evidence here that the pagan holiday is actually older. On the evidence available we can’t show that the pagan festival actually is older. In fact, it seems that the Christian festival’s older, and he points to the 1990 work by Bowersock, that we often underestimate that pagans borrowed from Christians. It wasn’t just Christians taking something from paganism. No, no, no. Pagans would copy and imitate Christianity.

So hopefully it’s clear then that Sol Invictus is a weak candidate to say, here’s this minor holiday on the Roman calendar that doesn’t appear prior to 354, that Christians were so threatened by that they put the birth of their Lord and Savior to rival it because that was going to be the key to getting people to convert to Christianity. The idea is ludicrous. It’s ridiculous.

But why? Why Was December 25th chosen as a date to celebrate Christmas? Note this CBS News article from 2018 for the answer. “Though December 25th is the day Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the date itself and several of the customs we’ve come to associate with Christmas actually evolved from pagan traditions celebrating the winter solstice. Christmas is really about bringing out your inner pagan,” historian Kenneth C. Davis told CBS this morning. According to Davis, Christmas was celebrated as early as the 4th century, suggesting that it had almost nothing to do with Jesus Christ. Christmas is about bringing out your inner pagan, and Christmas has almost nothing to do with Jesus Christ? These are remarkable quotes, and again, this probably doesn’t-

Now, they’re remarkable quotes, but they’re also demonstrably false quotes. I feel like that should factor into how remarkable we find them.

… surprise you, especially if you’re a regular viewer of Tomorrow’s World. You’ve probably seen articles and videos explaining the pagan origins of the Christmas traditions before, and not just from our material at Tomorrow’s World. It’s out there in the world at large, such as this article from the CBS News website. It’s not a secret.

Now, again, this is allegedly a video about the Bible. Remember, they say, “We help you make sense of your world through the pages of the Bible,” and they’re just saying, “Hey, go listen to anything you find on the internet about the pagan origins of Christmas.” They’re totally unreliable. So you can give as many as you want of these videos that are poorly sourced and somebody just making the claim. They’re not quoting any pagan saying, “Here’s our major festival on December 25th.” They’re not quoting any Christian saying, “We’re going to steal December 25th to convert the pagans.” It’s not there. The evidence doesn’t exist. We have a good deal of evidence to the contrary. Let’s continue.

That raises another question. What do we do with this information? Should it matter at all? You see, most people who know the origins of Christmas have somehow rationalized themselves why they should still keep it. Perhaps they think, well, it’s not really religious observance. It’s just a fun, relaxed time to be with friends and family. It’s a social event. That’s what a lot of people think.

Okay. Needless to say, I’m not defending the idea that we should celebrate Christmas as a social event. That’s not religious. So we’ll skip this argument.

On the other hand, for those who are religious, many of them also know the origins are pagan, but some of them convince themselves that it’s not a problem, arguing, “Well, as long as I do it for Christ, it’s okay.” But is it okay? Should we stop and think if this line of reasoning even makes sense? As one source says, “Christmas makes no sense. The basic facts of the annual ritual just seem to defy logic and meaning. What do brightly lit trees and mistletoe have to do with the birth of a prophet in Bethlehem thousands of years ago? What does a jolly, portly man in red and white garb have to do with Christianity?”

Okay. This is going to be a recurring problem in the video. Half of the video argues that the origins of Christmas are pagan. The other half is arguing about modern things like Santa Claus being ridiculous. Now, I’m fine with saying modern things like Santa Claus are ridiculous. We don’t do Santa Claus in our house really. That doesn’t have anything to do with whether we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.

But they keep it anyway. What should you do about Christmas? To help you answer that, let’s consider our first fundamental question. Number one, does God condone lies?

So you can probably see where this is going. This is an anti-Santa argument, that parents shouldn’t lie to their kids about Santa. And I’m totally okay with that. Parents should not lie to their kids about Santa. If you want to play Santa with your kids, that’s great. If you want to tell them the story of the original St. Nicholas, which is all Santa Claus means, Santa, Saint Claus Nicholas, great. It’s clearly not pagan. It’s clearly coming from a true story of a holy bishop named St. Nicholas, but it’s been morphed in the popular imagination into a magical guy who brings gifts. Not pagan, but you’d still don’t want to lie to your kids, because lying is wrong independently of any of the discussion of paganism.

But it’s not just the Santa myth. In addition, there’s no proof that December 25th was the date of the birth of Christ. In fact, Luke 2:8 records that the shepherds were out in the fields at his birth, and that would’ve never happened in the rainy cold winter months.

So do the shepherds disprove December 25th? The answer is no, they don’t. Now I understand why people think they do. S. Kent Brown, he’s, I assume, a Mormon, because the BYU New Testament Commentary in an entry called why were the shepherds in the field at night when the angel came? says this. “At first glance, the scene pictured in Luke 2:8 seems unusual. Shepherds abiding in the field keeping watch over their flock by night.” But he notices there’s actually two things unusual, not just that they’re watching the flock by night, but also that it says shepherds doing it. Why? Because he says, “Usually an older child or young teenager in the family stays with the sheep through the night rather than an adult.” And then he gives two examples from scripture, 1 Samuel 16:11, 1 Samuel 17:15, where the Hebrew text reads, “Young David watches over his father’s sheep.”

“Even today,” Brown says, “children of Middle Eastern shepherds mind the sheep through the night, whereas the adults spend night out of doors only during the birthing period or during a crisis.” So Brown concludes, Luke’s description features adult shepherds who are with the sheep, therefore, the nighttime scene points to the lambing season in the springtime. That reasoning seems solid enough if you assume American sheep, but of course, that’s not what you would have in the Middle East. What would you have? Well, most likely Awassi sheep.

M.H Fahmy, in Encyclopedia of Dairy Sciences Third Edition, points out these are the most widespread sheep breed of non-European origin, and they’re popular in the Middle East. And what do we know about Awassi sheep? Well, Helmut Epstein, who is at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem at the time, this is in 1982, I think he’s retired now or maybe deceased, says that during the lambing season, lambs born in the field and still too weak to follow their dams are carried by the shepherd to the tents or villages where they remain for a few days until strong enough to join their dams at pasture.

In other words, the reason the shepherd stays in the field during lambing season is because the newborn lambs aren’t strong enough to fend for themselves and you don’t want to trust the kid. You want the adult shepherd there to do the hard work of the lambing process and making sure the lambs survive. And what else do we know? Well, as he explains, Awassi sheep, the principal lambing season is in November in Iraq, but in Lebanon, Syrian Arab Republic in Israel, it’s December to January. In other words, it’s not surprising at all that adult shepherds would be watching their sheep at night in December. Now, that doesn’t automatically prove December 25th is the right date, but this common argument that it couldn’t have been December 25th because the shepherds are keeping watch at night is just wrong about the nature of the agricultural landscape.

What about the three kings from the East visiting the baby Jesus in the manger? That didn’t happen. At least not in the way the Christmas story tells it. The Book of Matthew says they were wise men, not kings, and it doesn’t mention how many were there. It says when they had come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary, his mother. That’s in Matthew 2:11. The Christmas traditions are riddled with errors, misspeaks, and outright lies. The context shows he was upwards to two years old here, and in a house, not a manger. Now with an open-

So why do we call them Magi, the three kings, sometimes? And why do we believe there were three of them? Well, we’re not really committed to either of those things, but those are both biblically based. So 1 Psalm 72, the Lord declares, “May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles render him tribute, may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts.” So you have visitors from the East who are kings bringing gifts, and specifically, we’re told in verse 15, “Long may he live, may gold of Sheba be given to him.” So it’s not a stretch to see this as a prophecy of Christ, the king who will be honored by these Gentile kings who bring him gifts of gold.

As for the three, well, it’s quite simply because they offer three gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. Now, it’s true, Matthew 2 doesn’t tell us there are only three. There may be many more people than that. Most likely if it is a royal retinue, you would have a bunch more people, and in many popular paintings, you actually see a lot more people. But the three symbolically represent the gold, the frankincense, and the myrrh, which is all biblically based.

Now, it’s also true that this is not immediately upon the birth of Christ, but it is connected to Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. Matthew 2:1 says, “When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is He who has been born King of the Jews?” We don’t know how long it took them to get there. Verse 16, in the Massacre of the Innocents, they go after those who are two years old or under. Now, I think it’s a mistake to say therefore Jesus is two, because if Jesus is two, he looks slightly older for his age. Obviously, if you’re going after a 2-year-old, you’re going to say three and under, four and under, so you don’t miss the large toddlers.

In the same way, look, if you’re carding for people underage drinking, you don’t card everyone who looks 21 or under, you card everyone who looks 30 or under. So likewise, it’s true that he’s probably not a newborn, but it’s also true that he’s probably not two. Now, significantly, the traditional feast isn’t December 25th. If you know anything about the 12 days of Christmas, we actually acknowledge the fact that the Magi don’t get there the day of his birth because we have a separate feast day for that, Epiphany. The 12 days of Christmas go from December 25th when Jesus is born, to January 6th when we celebrate the arrival of the Magi. Both of these are ancient feasts celebrating Jesus’ coming in his infancy.

… open mind, ask yourself, would God really be behind such a convoluted tradition? Notice what Titus 1:2 says. “In hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began.” God cannot lie. God will not lie. God never lies. And yet we’re made to believe He condones millions of parents telling their children outright lies and convoluted myths supposedly about His son?

But it’s this video that’s convoluted, because it’s combining two totally separate different ideas. One, Christmas is of pagan origins, which as we’ve seen is completely untrue. And two, parents shouldn’t lie to their kids about Santa, which is completely true. That’s the convoluted part, like, “Well, you can’t celebrate Christmas on December 25th because you can’t lie to your kids.” You don’t have to lie to your kids to celebrate Christmas. You can focus on the birth of Jesus rather than the imaginary version of St. Nicholas coming to give presents to your kids. If you remember the actual reason for Christmas, you focus on the Jesus part, not the Santa part.

… know that the origins of Christmas are not Christian at all, but what should we do about it? Well, let’s let the Bible speak for itself. You won’t ever find a word of the Bible where God tells you to do something deceitful, or dishonest, or promoting error, and that should give us guidance on how we judge what to do about Christmas.

So notice he’s still convoluting two points. He’s saying Christmas is of pagan origin, not Christian origin, and it’s wrong to lie to your kids. And since it’s wrong to lie to your kids, therefore we can’t celebrate Christmas. But of course you can celebrate Christmas without the lies, and Christmas is not of pagan origin. Let’s continue.

Let’s move on to our second fundamental question. Does God ever say, “Keep any day as long as you honor Christ?” This is a reason some use to explain their holding on to Christmas, in spite of its error. Well, the reason, as long as we honor Christ in it, it’s okay. But is it okay?

Good news is yes, you can and should honor Christ anytime. 1 Thessalonians 5:15-18, “Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God and Christ Jesus for you.” Now, this is why it matters that this video is put out by the Living Church of God, which is an offshoot of the Global Church of God, which is an offshoot of the Worldwide Church of God, which is founded by Herbert Armstrong and may be a cult. They don’t believe in the Trinity, and they’re Sabbatarians, believing that Christians are still bound to obey the Seventh-day Sabbath, and they want to keep all the old Jewish festivals.

The New Testament says the opposite. So, going back to the Old Testament, when it’s describing the Levitical duties of the priests and Levites, the Tribe of Levi. 1 Chronicles 23:30-31 says, “They,” the Levites, “shall stand every morning thanking and praising the Lord, and likewise at evening, and whenever burnt offerings are offered to the Lord on Sabbaths, New Moons, and feast days.”

Now, okay, that’s the structure you want to pay attention to. In addition to the daily prayers, morning and evening prayer, they have weekly celebrations, the Sabbath, monthly celebrations, the New Moons, and annual feast days, like Passover, that sort of thing. Well, flash forward to the New Testament, and the question is, is this still binding for Christians? If you’re a Gentile convert to Christianity, do you need to learn the whole Jewish liturgical calendar? The answer is no. St. Paul, in his writings to the Colossians in Colossians 2, makes this very clear, beginning in verse 11. He says, “In Him,” Christ, “you were circumcised with the circumcision made without hands. By putting off the body of flesh and the circumcision of Christ, and you were buried with him in baptism.” In other words, you were not incorporated into the Jewish old covenant through circumcision. You were incorporated in this new circumcision, baptism, and it has different rules.

One of those rules, beginning in verse 13, that, “While you were dead in trespasses in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made it alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, having canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” All of that liturgical calendar that was obligatory for the Tribe of Levi is from this old set of legal demands that Christ has now fulfilled. Why? Because the entire reason all of those feasts existed was this preparation for the coming of Christ. So the Jewish Pentecost prefigures, obviously, the Christian Pentecost. The Jewish Passover prefigures the Last Supper, and on and on and on it goes.

So now that we have the fulfillment, we don’t need those things anymore. And so Paul, writing to Gentile Christians, knowing the flak they’re going to get from Jewish Christians, says, “Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink.” In other words, whether or not you keep kosher, or with regard to a festival or a New Moon or a Sabbath. You don’t have to keep the annual, the monthly, or the weekly Jewish calendar. Why? “These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” We have a new fulfillment. We have a new covenant, and with it we celebrate new and different days.

Now, remarkably, they’re going to use that passage I just quoted to you in a really bizarre and convoluted way, but we’re going to get to that. But you’re going to hear those words again with a strange new twist on them, taken totally out of their context. But let’s continue the video.

We find some powerful principles in the Bible that give us the guidance we need. One is found in the history of Israel. The ancient nation of Israel was led by God out of enslavement from Egypt about 3,400 years ago. But before they went into what was called the Promised Land, God gave them a serious warning. He said, “Don’t mix worship of me with the worship of the nations around you.” We’ll pick it up in Deuteronomy 12:30. “Take heed that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods?’ I also will do likewise. You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way.” Notice the principle is not just, don’t worship idols. It’s don’t worship the true God with idolatrous practices. Can you see the difference? But in the history of the Christian Church, that is what exactly happened. Worship of Christ was mixed with traditions of the pagans.

Well, okay, two things to note there. First, notice that he bashes the history of the Christian Church. This is going to be important later when he tells us we should celebrate based on what the church says. Second, this is just completely wrong. Now, leaving aside all of the stuff that he got wrong about Saturnalia and Sol Invictus, none of the practices are pagan practices. In other words, you can have a feast, that doesn’t make it pagan. You can give gifts, it doesn’t make it pagan. You can celebrate on a day that used to be a pagan feast day, that doesn’t make it pagan.

I’ll give you an example. May the first is May Day. So in the 20th century, communists had it as a big day for labor. The Catholic Church responded by creating the feast of St. Joseph the Worker. They weren’t endorsing communism. They weren’t worshiping God in a communist way. This was a rival to communism saying Christianity has something good to say about the dignity of the worker.

Well, likewise, even if it were true, which it isn’t, that Christianity put Christmas on December 25th to rival paganism, that’s the opposite of worshiping God in a pagan way. There’s no idolatrous practice by worshiping God on December 25th. That’s just not what idolatry is. We’re not making some idol of God that we’re worshiping. We’re not offering our children as human sacrifices to God, the kind of things that God is actually warning about in Exodus. No. The fact that pagans have a day on the same day doesn’t make it a pagan day. They don’t own that part of the calendar, and it’s bizarre to think that they do. But let’s continue.

Worship of Christ was mixed with traditions of the pagans. In the book The Battle For Christmas, author Stephen Nissenbaum writes this. “It was only in the 4th century that the church officially decided to observe Christmas on December 25th, and this date was chosen not for religious reasons, but simply because it happened to mark the approximate arrival of the winter solstice, an event that was celebrated long before the advent of Christianity. The Puritans were correct when they point out, and they point it out often, that Christmas was nothing but a pagan festival covered with a Christian veneer.” He then refers to Puritan Minister Increase Mather from the early days of colonial America. Increase Mather accurately observed in 1687 that the early Christians who first observed the nativity on December 25th, did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that month, but because the heathens Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those pagan holidays metamorphose into Christian ones.

So Christmas was not put on December 25th to reflect the birth of Christ. It was put there to absorb the worshipers of Saturnalia and easily bring them into the church. Precisely the opposite of God’s instructions back in Deuteronomy. How did the expanding visible church deal with the traditions of the pagans around them? Well, it accommodated them. Notice this statement from the book The Pageantry of Christmas. Most of the Christian missionaries who moved into Central and Western Europe as the Roman Empire crumbled, followed the advice of Pope Gregory the Great. He wrote in 597, that they should not try to put down pagan customs upon the sudden, but adapt them to the praise of God. Adapt the pagan customs? But that is exactly what happened, and that’s why we have the strange mix of pagan rituals with the mention of Christ in Christmas today.

Now it should be really clear. It’s two things. Number one, 597 is way too late to even be relevant to this conversation. His claim is that Christmas, which we now see was being celebrated on the 25th, was believed to be started on the 25th, in the 200s. He said, “Well, in 597.” Why are you bringing 597 into this? You’re 350 years too late. In 597, the pope told missionaries to find what’s good and true and beautiful in the culture and adapt it to the worship of God. And that’s good advice, but that has nothing to do with how December 25th was chosen.

I’ll explain why it’s good advice, because it’s not endorsing paganism or anything like that. It regularly gets misunderstood in this way. It’s like this. My wife’s family, largely Czech, and so kolache are a big part of any holiday celebration, their dessert. If you’re Slovenian, you might celebrate with povatica. If you’re Polish, or if you’re Japanese, or if you’re, fill in the blank, you might have some cultural aspect to, this is what we normally do when we’re having a big celebration. That is great, that’s good, that’s beautiful. And really, importantly, that is not idolatry.

If you eat povatica, you’re not saying, “I believe in the old Gods the Slovenians believed in before Christianity.” Nothing like that. So there’s nothing wrong with adapting the good festive elements of a culture to the worship of God rather than the worship of demons. And of course, even if as a Christian you talk about Good Friday, you should know that in old English, Friday meant Frigga’s day, in honor of the ancient Germanic goddess of married love, which was itself an adaptation of the fact that in Latin the day had been dedicated to Venus, and in Greek it had been dedicated to Aphrodite.

So when you say Good Friday, you are not actually endorsing paganism, even though you’re using a pagan word. Because here’s the thing. If you can’t adapt pagan things to the worship of God, we’re all in trouble because we’re worshiping God in English, which we got from the pagans. We’ve adapted it to the worship of God. And a lot of the English vocabulary for the worship of God comes from these old pre-Christian words, and that’s not a problem. So we need to be really clear between adapting a culture’s practices versus worshiping God with idolatry. Using English is not idolatrous. Worshiping the old Gods the Angles prayed to would be idolatrous.

But is that what God wanted? No. Notice God’s instruction in Jeremiah 10:1. “Hear the word, which the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel. Thus says the Lord, do not learn the way of the Gentiles, for the customs of the peoples are futile. For one cuts a tree from the forest, the work of the hands of the workmen, with the ax. They decorate it with silver and gold. They fasten it with nails and hammers so that it will not topple. They are upright like a palm tree.”

Remarkable parallels with the customs of Christmas that jump right off the page. God told ancient Israel through Jeremiah, “Don’t learn how to worship me by watching how the nations around you do it.” But in the Christian era, that’s exactly what some did. They transformed the worship of Christ into a mix of the true God with the worship of Saturn, Mithra, and others.

Okay. There’s a couple things to unpack there. First, let’s talk about that Christmas tree stuff. There’s a couple of things to notice if you look at the actual context of Jeremiah 10. First, it’s talking about a tree being cut down, sure, but then it’s worked with an ax by the hands of a craftsman. He’s building an idol. And this becomes very clear because it’s decked with silver and gold, not that they’re putting tinsel on the tree, they’re making an idol, and we’re told they’re idols, and [inaudible 00:47:44] it just says they are like scarecrows in a cucumber field. They cannot speak. They have to be carried for they cannot walk.

Who’s carrying Christmas trees? Who’s trying to make Christmas trees talk to them? What are you talking about? So it’s insane to believe this is a passage about how God doesn’t want wood in the worship of him, because that doesn’t follow… It’s a weirdly legalistic vision of God. But moreover, you have passages like Isaiah 60:13, in which God says, “The glory of Lebanon shall come to you, the cypress, the plane, and the pine, to beautify the place of my sanctuary.” So we know pine trees are in the sanctuary, and the Jews were not like, “Wait, we’re not allowed to have pine trees because those could be turned into idols.”

The point there, is that is a radically out of context allegation, like, “Oh, well, because some people turn trees into wooden idols, therefore, it’s wrong to have a Christmas tree.” Now, notice there is no mention of Christmas trees for about 1,500 years after the beginning of Christianity. The Christmas tree is believed to date back to Lutherans. Has nothing to do with paganism. It’s a relatively recent holiday tradition, and no one who’s actually looked at this believes, “Oh yeah, the Lutherans are actually worshiping some tree gods.” No. That’s crazy. That’s not what’s going on at all. There’s no historical basis for tying the Christmas tree into paganism or idolatry, because it’s over 1,000 years removed from the latest kind of expressions of paganism. So what are you talking about? What pagans were around in the 1500s that might’ve even been using Christmas trees in their worship?

Then the next thing is, you might notice just at the end, that claim of several different possible gods, he just throws out without giving any basis for it. That, in addition to Saturn, which is where you get Saturnalia, that maybe Christmas also comes from Demeter, Mithras, Dionysus and Thor. No explanation whatsoever. Doesn’t say, “Here’s some historical basis on which we could believe that Thor was somehow influential,” even though he’s a Norse God, that the Christians in the 200s and the 300s chose December 25th because of Thor.

But the one on there that is sometimes quoted as being a possible source for Christianity or for Christmas, is Mithra, or Mithras. Now, I put both versions for a reason. Tom O’Neill, who’s an atheist, acknowledges in History for Atheists that this is a really bad argument atheists raise, when they say, “Oh yeah, this comes from Mithra or Mithras.” He says, “The first problem is it’s not clear which God they’re even talking about, because the claims about the God in Christmas usually refer to them as a Roman God, which means we should be talking about Mithras. But sometimes they’ll say Mithra, which was the name of a Persian God. And to confuse things further, we also have Mitra, who is a minor God in the Indic pantheon. So which is the god that is supposed to have been born to a virgin on December 25th in a cave with attendant shepherds? People who make these claims tend not to know, or more importantly, seem not to care.

O’Neill goes on to show that none of this stuff is true. He says, very bluntly, “The claim that December 25th was a festival of the birth of Mithras is garbage.” Mithraic scholar Roger Beck, calls the idea that Mithras’ birth was associated with December 25th, “the hoariest of facts” in quotation marks, “but it keeps getting repeated despite it having no foundation.” So he’s just repeating these outright falsehoods, these outright lies. After talking about how much we don’t want to honor God by lying, he’s just repeating these flagrant falsehoods about the history of Christmas and about Christian history. We owe one another a higher degree of respect because we owe the truth a higher degree of respect than to repeat these ridiculous, long debunked claims about where Christmas comes from.

Okay. For the last couple bits, he talks about how we need to worship God in spirit and truth, which is true, but then says…

When we show honor to God, we have to do it His way. We have to honor Him on the days He wants us to honor Him.

Again, God wants us to honor him every day. Pray always. So don’t let anybody tell you not to honor God certain days.

So what should we do about Christmas? Simple. God offers something better. We don’t have to settle for a festival steeped in pagan traditions. We can be different. God outlines His days, His biblical holy days, which teach us about Him and His plan of salvation. You might’ve heard of them, Passover, Pentecost, the Feast of Tabernacles, the day of Atonement. These are just a few.

Again, this is why I mentioned that this is from this kind of sect, that may or may not be a cult, that thinks that it is required that you continue to honor the Jewish liturgical calendar, even though St. Paul says the exact opposite. That they’re going to say, “No, don’t celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Instead, celebrate all of these feast days that we’re anticipating the coming of Christ.” It’s like, why would we do that? He’s here already.

The Apostle Paul took the gospel message primarily to a Gentile world, meaning the brethren he worked with and wrote to were coming out of pagan practices. He worked in the Roman world of the first century, and the people in that world were keeping the Saturnalia. Many of them were worshiping Mithra and other false gods, and they had to come out of that to become part of the body of Christ, the church of God. But he had to encourage them to not fall back into their former practices. He had to tell them, “Don’t get discouraged if people don’t understand what you’re doing, even if that means friends, neighbors, or family.”

Okay. I just want to say something real quick. Colossians 2, which is what he’s about to introduce here, is not written about that, and that’s very clear from the context. It is written about what was called the Judaizer controversy, the idea that Gentile Christians needed to keep the Jewish law with all of its liturgical parts and everything else, like circumcision. That’s the thing Paul is arguing against and that this group is arguing for, and has nothing to do with Gentile Christians thinking they need to be keeping the Saturnalia or some kind of pagan calendar. That is completely absent from Colossians 2. And if you don’t believe me, go read Colossians 2, and you’ll see the juxtaposition is not Christianity versus paganism. It’s Christian law versus Jewish law. It’s what is a Christian bound by, compared to what was a Jew bound by, before Christianity.

Notice what he said in the Book of Colossians to the church at Colossae. Colossians 2:16, and I’m reading from the King James Version. “Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of a holy day, or of the New Moon or of the Sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ.” The word is, is in italics. It’s not in the original text. It should read, “But the body of Christ.” The church is the body. We are to let the church teach us, to guide us, and to show us how to keep the Holy days, as outlined in the Bible.

I think that’s a great place to end it because he’s absolutely right on that one point, even though he got basically everything else wrong. Yeah, look to the church, and as he’s already acknowledged, the church celebrates Christmas, and so stop thinking that you know more than the body of Christ. Stop thinking that you have a better way of honoring God than the way that His body honors Him. And so don’t listen to weird fringe groups from the internet or debunked popular theories from the 17th century to find out how to honor God. They may claim they’re just giving you the Bible, but they’re giving you bad, outdated scholarship that has been thoroughly debunked.

So hopefully that’s clear enough. Christmas is not of pagan origin. Christmas is of Christian origin. None of the feasts of Saturnalia, or Sol Invictus, or anything like that involved worshiping the incarnate God coming to the world. There is no equivalent. Christmas doesn’t look anything like those pagan festivals. Those pagan festivals don’t look anything like Christmas, except in the most generic ways of, well, people are celebrating and doing the things people do when they celebrate.

I hope this has been helpful. I hope it’s been clear. Don’t believe people who feed you the lie that Christmas is of pagan origin. If you want to worship God in spirit and truth, stop believing those kind of myths, those kind of lies, and instead, worship in the way that the body of Christ, the church, shows you how to worship. For Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.

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