What Christians Should Know About Christmas?

 

Men are likened to sheep. And sheep have a tendency to follow the crowd without questioning. Jesus however came and taught us to examine everything by God's word. The Pharisees exalted human traditions. Jesus exalted God's word. Man was to live by every word that proceeded from God's mouth (Matthew 4:4).

⁴ But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

 

The battle that Jesus was constantly engaged in with the Pharisees was the age-long battle of God's Word versus the traditions of men. In the church, we are engaged in the same battle today. God's word is the only light that we have on earth. And when God created light initially, He immediately separated it from the darkness. The darkness is both sin as well as human traditions. We also are called to separate both these from the pure word of God so that there is no mixture in the church. 

Christmas

Consider Christmas, which is celebrated by many as the birthday of Jesus Christ. Shopkeepers of all religions look forward to Christmas, for it is a time when they can make much profit. It is a commercial festival, not a spiritual one. Millions of rupees are spent on Christmas cards and gifts. Sales of alcoholic drinks go up at this time. And the traffic police around the world are kept on their toes, for there are never so many accidents on the roads as during the Christmas season. More people go to hell through road accidents at this time, than any other time of the year.

Is this really then the birthday of the Son of God, or of another 'Jesus'?

 Let us look at God's Word first of all. The Bible tells us that there were shepherds with their sheep out in the fields of Judea, on the night that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. The shepherds in Palestine did not keep their flocks out in the open fields at night after October and until February - the weather being both rainy and cold. So the real Jesus must have been born sometime between March and September. December 25 then must be the birthday of another 'Jesus' that has been foisted on an unsuspecting Christendom by Satan!

Further, even if we did know the exact date of Jesus' birth, the question would still be whether God intended His church to celebrate it. Mary, the mother of Jesus, would certainly have known the exact date of birth of Jesus. And she was with the apostles for many years after the day of Pentecost. Yet there is no mention anywhere of Jesus' date of birth. What does this show? Just this - that God deliberately hid the date of Jesus' birth, because He did not want the church to celebrate it.

In the Bible we read of earthly kings celebrating their birthdays publicly - Pharaoh (Gen. 40:20) and Herod (Mk. 6:21). God never intended Jesus to be in that category.

An understanding of the difference between the old and the new covenants will also enable us to understand why God does not want His children to celebrate any special holy days now. Under the old covenant, Israel had been commanded to celebrate certain days as specially holy days. But that was only a shadow. Now that we have Christ, the will of God is that every day of our lives be equally holy. Even the weekly sabbath has been done away with under the new covenant. This is why no holy days are mentioned anywhere in the New Testament (Colossians 2:16,17).

How then did Christmas and Easter make their entry into Christendom? The answer is: in the same way that infant baptism, priestcraft and a host of other human traditions have made their entry - by the subtle working of Satan.

When the emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion of Rome in the 4th century, multitudes became Christian 'in name', without any change of heart. But they did not want to give up their two great annual festivals - both connected with their worship of the sun. One was the birthday of the sun-god on December 25, when the sun which had gone down to the southern hemisphere began its return journey (the winter solstice). The other was the spring festival in March/April, when they celebrated the death of the winter and the birth of the warm summer that their sun-god had brought. They renamed their sun-god 'Jesus' and continued to celebrate their two great festivals, now as Christian festivals and called them Christmas and Easter.

The Encyclopedia Britannica (an authority in secular history) has the following to state about the origin of Christmas:

"December 25 was the Mithraic feast of the unconquered sun of Philocalus. Christmas customs are an evolution from times that long antedated the Christian period - a descent from seasonal, pagan, religious and national practices, hedged about with legend and tradition. The exact date and year of Christ's birth have never been satisfactorily settled, but when the fathers of the church in A.D. 440 (Fathers of the Church were ancient and influential Christian theologians and writers who established the intellectual and doctrinal foundations of Christianity. The historical period in which they worked became known as the Patristic Era and spans approximately from the late 1st to mid-8th centuries,^[a] flourishing in particular during the 4th and 5th centuries, when Christianity was in the process of establishing itself as the state church of the Roman Empire).; decided upon a date to celebrate the event, they wisely (?) chose the day of the winter solstice which was firmly fixed in the minds of the people and which was their most important festival. As Christianity spread among the people of pagan lands, many of the practices of the winter solstice were blended with those of Christianity" - (1953 edition, Vol. 5, Pages 642A, 643).

These pagan customs originated with the Babylonian religion begun by Nimrod (Genesis 10:8-10). After he died, his wife Semiramis had an illegitimate child, which she claimed was Nimrod come back to life again. Thus began the worship of the mother and child, which the Roman Catholics took over centuries later and transferred to 'Mary and Jesus'.

⁸ And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. ⁹ He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. ¹⁰ And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

The birthday of this child-god was celebrated by the ancient Babylonians on December 25. Semiramis was the queen of heaven (Jeremiah 44:19), worshipped centuries later in Ephesus as Diana or Artemis (Acts 19:28).

¹⁹ And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our men?

²⁸ And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians.

Semiramis claimed that a full grown evergreen tree grew overnight from a dead tree stump. This symbolised Nimrod's coming back to life, and bringing heaven's gifts to mankind. Thus began the practice of cutting down a fir tree and hanging gifts on it. That is the origin of today's Christmas tree!

Thus says the Lord, "Do not learn the way of the heathen. The customs of the people are futile. One cuts a tree from the forest with the axe. They decorate it with silver and gold; they fasten it with nails so that it will not topple!" (Jeremiah 10:2-4).

God's Word Or Man's Tradition?

Behind the celebration of Christmas and Easter lies the far more deadly principle of following the traditions of men even when they have no foundation in God's Word. So strong is this power of tradition that many believers who follow the Scriptures in other areas still find it difficult to give up celebrating Christmas and Easter.

It is amazing that many believers are not willing to accept what even secular writers (like the authors of Encyclopaedia Brittanica) have understood clearly - that Christmas and Easter are basically pagan festivals. You can call an ass a lion, but it is still an ass. Changing the names has not made these festivals Christian! There is no difference between Christmas and Easter and Ganesh Puja and Dussera.

It becomes clear from what we have seen that what Christians are celebrating on Christmas day is the birthday of another 'Jesus' - Nimrod of Babylon. And at Easter time they are actually celebrating the resurrection of another 'Jesus' too - the sun-god that has brought summer to the northern hemisphere! Behind Nimrod and the sun-god stand Satan who actually receives that worship. The Israelites called their golden calf 'Jehovah', but it was Satan who received that worship (Exodus 32:4, 5). Let all those who celebrate Christmas and Easter remember that and beware!

⁴ And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. ⁵ And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the Lord.

As we said at the beginning, Jesus was engaged in a constant battle with the Pharisees over this very issue - man's traditions versus God's Word. He faced more opposition for opposing the empty traditions of 'the fathers' than for preaching against sin. We shall find our experience to be the same, if we are just as faithful as He was.

It is the calling of the church today to expose these empty Babylonian celebrations that Satan has promoted in Christendom and to refuse everything (however innocent looking) that has no foundation in God's Word.

Some may quote Romans 14:5, 6, about those who keep a day as unto the Lord. This is referring to the sabbath-day, which some converted Jews still did not have light on to give up. Paul exhorted those who had the light of the new covenant to bear with these weaker Jewish brethren. But this certainly cannot be applied to the celebration of Ganesh Puja or Christmas or Diwali or Easter by Christians today!

⁵ One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. ⁶ He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks.

God's Word alone is our guide and not the example of even godly men in those areas where they do not follow the Word of God. "Let God be found true even though every man be found a liar" (Romans 3:4). "Check (their) words against the Word of God, says the Lord. If their messages (teachings) are different from Mine, it is because they have no light" (Isaiah 8:20 LB). The Bereans searched the Scriptures to check up even on Paul's teaching, and the Holy Spirit commends them for it (Acts 17:11). That is a good example for all of us to follow.

 

⁴ May it never be! But let God be true but every human being a liar, just as it is written, “In order that you may be justified in your words, and may prevail when you are judged.”

²⁰ To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

¹¹ These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.

David was a man after God's own heart. Yet, for forty years, he permitted the Israelites to worship Moses' bronze serpent without realising that this was an abomination to God. He did not have light even on such obvious idolatry. It was a much lesser king, Hezekiah, who was given light to expose and destroy this idolatrous practice (2 Kings 18:1-4). We can follow godly men in the saintliness of their lives and not in their lack of light on human traditions. Our safety lies in simply following the teaching of God's Word and not in adding to or subtracting from it.

18:1-4, Now it came to pass in the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, that Hezekiah the son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign. ² Twenty and five years old was he when he began to reign; and he reigned twenty and nine years in Jerusalem. His mother's name also was Abi, the daughter of Zachariah. ³ And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David his father did. ⁴ He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.

True spirituality is to follow Y’shua (Jesus) in all aspects of life. This involves primarily a taking up of the cross and obeying God's word in the power of the Holy Spirit in daily life. It also involves a forsaking of all human traditions that are not found in the New Testament. God desires a pure testimony in every place - a church that is not only free from all sin, but also free from Babylonian traditions.