The Pagan Origins Myth About Christmas

[Running Gator]

38 minutes ago, eileenhat said:

If a child steals, we educate.

If an adult steals we incarnate.

If a Christian sins, they ask for forgiveness.

If a Christian sins unknowingly, then there is the question did they realize they were sinning at any time?

I can attest that as I have grown in the Lord's presence, the laws that govern my behavior shift to a sin free state.

In other words, you have now been told that one person did receive direct guidance, now, about the ramifications of celebrating Nimrod's day.

What happens now, will be that the debating stage is in effect.

On-line many channels are indicating the sinful nature of celebrating Satan (aka Nimrod) in the form of Tree cutting, bring the Tree into the house etc.

Eventually it will be a well formed topic.

It is heading in that direction.

I do not have to hedge about it any longer.  I'm clear on it.

 

Not to be too blunt, but your "direct guidance" is irrelevant to me as a believer.  What is relevant is what the Bible tells me.  

This is what the Bible tells me...

² One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. ³ The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. ⁴ Who are you to judge someone else’s servant?To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

⁵ One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. ⁶ Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord.

[LadyKay]

6 hours ago, eileenhat said:

God reached down then and told me to take a vow to never ever give gifts again and to not partake of any feast, regarding this pagan day of worship.

God really told you that? God has never said anything like that to me. You know you could just use a fake tree. That is what we have this year since moving I have no ideal where they sale real trees around here. But if God told you not to do something then you shouldn't do it. But as for me I never had an issue with Christmas. It seems the things we do to celebrate it are a combination of many different cultures. The tree from one culture, gifts from another. Candy cans and Santa Claus from another. At church we see this as a time of reflection. We have Christmas Eve service and also a candle light service.  Many people think about reaching out to those in need. Our church has a toy drive and for the whole year we pack shoe boxes for  "Operation Christmas Child" for Samaritans Purse. An Christian based organization that delivers Christmas boxes full of goodies to needy children of the world    along with  teachings about Christ. Stories have been told of how many of the children who have been given a Christmas box later on came to know Christ. Our church spends all year packing them boxes then in November they get sent off to where ever they go. I am not telling you you are wrong. By all means do has God has called you to do. For maybe there was some reason for his direction to you. But God has not told me to stop having Christmas and I see a lot of good that comes out of the holiday. We all have our own path we must follow. 

Link for Samaritans Purse  https://www.samaritanspurse.org/what-we-do/operation-christmas-child/

Edited December 7, 2016 by LadyKay

[Guest shiloh357]

1 hour ago, eileenhat said:

On-line many channels are indicating the sinful nature of celebrating Satan (aka Nimrod) in the form of Tree cutting, bring the Tree into the house etc.

Those sources are full of misinformation and sloppy history.  Bring a tree into the house was never a pagan custom surrounding Christmas and the Christmas tree did not originate from such a custom.

[other one]

When you gather around the Christmas tree or stuff goodies into a stocking, you're taking part in traditions that stretch back thousands of years — long before Christianity entered the mix.

Pagan, or non-Christian, traditions show up in this beloved winter holiday, a consequence of early church leaders melding Jesus' nativity celebration with pre-existing midwinter festivals. Since then, Christmas traditions have warped over time, arriving at their current state a little more than a century ago.

Read on for some of the surprising origins of Christmas cheer, and find out why Christmas was once banned in New England.

1. Early Christians had a soft spot for pagans

It's a mistake to say that our modern Christmas traditions come directly from pre-Christian paganism, said Ronald Hutton, a historian at Bristol University in the United Kingdom. However, he said, you'd be equally wrong to believe that Christmas is a modern phenomenon. As Christians spread their religion into Europe in the first centuries A.D., they ran into people living by a variety of local and regional religious creeds.

Christian missionaries lumped all of these people together under the umbrella term "pagan," said Philip Shaw, who researches early Germanic languages and Old English at Leicester University in the U.K. The term is related to the Latin word meaning "field," Shaw told LiveScience. The lingual link makes sense, he said, because early European Christianity was an urban phenomenon, while paganism persisted longer in rustic areas.

Early Christians wanted to convert pagans, Shaw said, but they were also fascinated by their traditions.

"Christians of that period are quite interested in paganism," he said. "It's obviously something they think is a bad thing, but it's also something they think is worth remembering. It's what their ancestors did." [In Photos: Early Christian Rome]

Perhaps that's why pagan traditions remained even as Christianity took hold. The Christmas tree is a 17th-century German invention, University of Bristol's Hutton told LiveScience, but it clearly derives from the pagan practice of bringing greenery indoors to decorate in midwinter. The modern Santa Claus is a direct descendent of England's Father Christmas, who was not originally a gift-giver. However, Father Christmas and his other European variations are modern incarnations of old pagan ideas about spirits who traveled the sky in midwinter, Hutton said.

2. We all want that warm Christmas glow

But why this fixation on partying in midwinter, anyway? According to historians, it's a natural time for a feast. In an agricultural society, the harvest work is done for the year, and there's nothing left to be done in the fields.

"It's a time when you have some time to devote to your religious life," said Shaw. "But also it's a period when, frankly, everyone needs cheering up."

The dark days that culminate with the shortest day of the year ­— the winter solstice — could be lightened with feasts and decorations, Hutton said.

"If you happen to live in a region in which midwinter brings striking darkness and cold and hunger, then the urge to have a celebration at the very heart of it to avoid going mad or falling into deep depression is very, very strong," he said.

Stephen Nissenbaum, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist "The Battle for Christmas" (Vintage, 1997), agreed.

"Even now when solstice means not all that much because you can get rid of the darkness with the flick of an electric light switch, even now, it's a very powerful season," he told LIveScience.

3. The Church was slow to embrace Christmas

Despite the spread of Christianity, midwinter festivals did not become Christmas for hundreds of years. The Bible gives no reference to when Jesus was born, which wasn't a problem for early Christians, Nissenbaum said.

"It never occurred to them that they needed to celebrate his birthday," he said.

With no Biblical directive to do so and no mention in the Gospels of the correct date, it wasn't until the fourth century that church leaders in Rome embraced the holiday. At this time, Nissenbaum said, many people had turned to a belief the Church found heretical: That Jesus had never existed as a man, but as a sort of spiritual entity.

"If you want to show that Jesus was a real human being just like every other human being, not just somebody who appeared like a hologram, then what better way to think of him being born in a normal, humble human way than to celebrate his birth?" Nissenbaum said. [Religious Mysteries: 8 Alleged Relics of Jesus]

Midwinter festivals, with their pagan roots, were already widely celebrated, Nissenbaum said. And the date had a pleasing philosophical fit with festivals celebrating the lengthening days after the winter solstice (which fell on Dec. 21 this year). "O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which that Sun was born … Christ should be born," one Cyprian text read.

4. The Puritans hated the holiday

But if the Catholic Church gradually came to embrace Christmas, the Protestant Reformation gave the holiday a good knock on the chin. In the 16th century, Christmas became a casualty of this church schism, with reformist-minded Protestants considering it little better than paganism, Nissenbaum said. This likely had something to do with the "raucous, rowdy and sometimes bawdy fashion" in which Christmas was celebrated, he added.

In England under Oliver Cromwell, Christmas and other saints' days were banned, and in New England it was illegal to celebrate Christmas for about 25 years in the 1600s, Nissenbaum said. Forget people saying, "Happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas," he said.

"If you want to look at a real 'War on Christmas,' you've got to look at the Puritans," he said. "They banned it!"

5. Gifts are a new (and surprisingly controversial) tradition

While gift-giving may seem inextricably tied to Christmas, it used to be that people looked forward to opening presents on New Year's Day.

"They were a blessing for people to make them feel good as the year ends," Hutton said. It wasn't until the Victorian era of the 1800s that gift-giving shifted to Christmas. According to the Royal Collection, Queen Victoria's children got Christmas Eve gifts in 1850, including a sword and armor. In 1841, Victoria gave her husband, Prince Albert, a miniature portrait of her as a 7-year-old; in 1859, she gave him a book of poetry by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

All of this gift-giving, along with the secular embrace of Christmas, now has some religious groups steamed, Nissenbaum said. The consumerism of Christmas shopping seems, to some, to contradict the religious goal of celebrating Jesus Christ's birth. In some ways, Nissenbaum said, excessive spending is the modern equivalent of the revelry and drunkenness that made the Puritans frown.

"There's always been a push and pull, and it's taken different forms," he said. "It might have been alcohol then, and now it's these glittering toys."

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas or LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

[nebula]

1 hour ago, Out of the Shadows said:

Not to be too blunt, but your "direct guidance" is irrelevant to me as a believer.  What is relevant is what the Bible tells me.  

This is what the Bible tells me...

Please consider being careful about this.

The Bible is full of people following "direct guidance" that went against what people interpreted the Scriptures to say.

The worst part about "the Christmas debate," and all other such debates, is that we tend to either be or sound pushy about our beliefs and convictions.

The meat sacrificed to idols is a good example. Some people believed it meant nothing since the gods are nothing. Some people believed it to be demon-worship. Paul recommended following your conscious but not doing something that would cause another to stumble. Jesus condemned those who encouraged others to eat meat sacrificed to idols.

Thus, stating how your study of Scripture contradicts someone's experience is one thing; belittling someone's convictions with "is irrelevant to me" is another.

Yes, the person you responded to was harsh in her words, but she wasn't directing it at anyone in particular, just stating her belief.

[nebula]

5 hours ago, shiloh357 said:

The whole "pagan origins of Christmas"  really is a myth.  

Maybe not Babylonian and all that, but what about Druidism and and the like?

[Running Gator]

1 hour ago, nebula said:

Please consider being careful about this.

The Bible is full of people following "direct guidance" that went against what people interpreted the Scriptures to say.

The worst part about "the Christmas debate," and all other such debates, is that we tend to either be or sound pushy about our beliefs and convictions.

The meat sacrificed to idols is a good example. Some people believed it meant nothing since the gods are nothing. Some people believed it to be demon-worship. Paul recommended following your conscious but not doing something that would cause another to stumble. Jesus condemned those who encouraged others to eat meat sacrificed to idols.

Thus, stating how your study of Scripture contradicts someone's experience is one thing; belittling someone's convictions with "is irrelevant to me" is another.

Yes, the person you responded to was harsh in her words, but she wasn't directing it at anyone in particular, just stating her belief.

I am sorry if I was harsh, but it is reality.  History is full of people who got direct guidance that was indeed not really direct guidance at all.  30 years ago there was a pastor in my city that got direct guidance that his church should sell their building and land and buy new land, take out a huge loan and build a church that would hold 5 times as many people as they had now.  He was "told" that God would fill it if the people did it.   Needless to say it didnt happen, the church went under and the congregation was scattered to the winds because of the infighting and finger pointing. 

Direct guidance cannot be verified, thus the direct guidance anyone claims on any issue is irrelevant to anyone but the one that received it. Call me a skeptic or what have you, but I am never going to base my choices on the direct guidance someone else claims to have received. 

[Guest Teditis]

Where did the coal in the stocking stuff come from anyway?

[Guest shiloh357]

3 hours ago, nebula said:

Maybe not Babylonian and all that, but what about Druidism and and the like?

There are some Druid customs that have been added to the secular celebration, but Christmas did not come  from Druidism.  I am thinking of the mistletoe tradition as one of them.  It was believed by the Druids to be an aphrodisiac.

I think we need to be careful to separate pagan winter customs from Christmas.  The fact that some pagan customs have infiltrated the secular aspects of Christmas doesn't make Christmas pagan or having it roots in paganism.

[Guest shiloh357]

1 minute ago, eileenhat said:

The only place I have located sloppy history was in my school text books.

I see that you have your ideas.

I did my homework and it soothes me when I realize I am spot on.

Men lie, God tells the truth.

And yet you're trusting in men and the sloppy history they present as the basis for being against Christmas.   It isn't a pagan holiday and never was.