What's that all about?
Merry Christmas, it's what the season is really about, isn't it?
Jesus wasn't even born in December. It was around the end of Sept. Early Christians didn't even celebrate the day of Christ's birth. I've read some early references to suggest they would have been against such a celebration. It wasn't until the 3rd to 5th century that Christmas started and there's reference to show they intentially chose pagan celebrations for the dates of Christian celebrations created for the purpose of appeasing pagan tradition over to Christian.
Even under the primitive discipline, and before the conversion of Rome, while the church was cautious of admitting into her worship any thing that had a relation to the old idolatry: yet even in this period,
Gregory Thaumaturgus, is commended by his namesake of Nyssa, for changing the Pagan festivals into Christian holidays, the better to draw the heathens to the religion of Christ.--THE DIEGESIS; Rev. Robert Taylor A.B. & M.R.C.S.
"Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church...the first evidence of the feast is from Egypt." "Pagan customs centering around the January calendars gravitated to Christmas."
"...In the Scriptures, no one is recorded to have kept a feast or held a great banquet on his [Jesus] birthday. It is only sinners who make great rejoicings over the day in which they were born into this world" -Catholic Encyclopedia, 1911 Edition, published by the Roman Catholic Church
"A broad element of English Christianity still considered
Christmas celebration a pagan blasphemy.
The Puritans, Baptists, Quakers, Presbyterians, Calvinists and other denominations brought this opposition to early New England and strong opposition to the holiday lasted in America until the middle of the 18th century." -The Origins of Christmas," Rick Meisel, Dec. 19, 1993, p. 4.
Some Christians today still consider it a Pagan blasphemy.
http://www.thercg.org/books/ttooc.htmlThe learned and ingenious historian of the Celtic Druids, of whose labours I have greatly availed myself, maintains that "the Essenes were descended from the prophet Elijah, and the Carmelite monks from the Essenes, [p.210] whose monasteries were established before the Christian era; that these monks, finding that from time immemorial, a certain day had been held sacred to the god SOL, the Sun, as his birth-day, and that this god was distinguished by the epithet THE LORD, persuaded themselves that this LORD could be no other than their Lord God: whereupon they adopted the religious rites of this Lord, and his supposed birth-day, December the 25th, became a Christian festival, Paganism being thus spliced and amalgamated into Christianity." I only take the liberty of differing from this good Christian writer so far as to deny that there could be any splicing or amalgamation, where it was all one piece. The great sophism of Christianity consists in the pretence of a distinction where there was no difference..--THE DIEGESIS; Rev. Robert Taylor A.B. & M.R.C.S.
"there could be found no other difference between Paganish and Popish worship before images, but only this, that names and titles are changed."—Ludovicus Vivus (Catholic) Quoted in Blount’s Philostratus, p. 113, 114.
"When Gregory perceived that the simple and unskilled multitude persisted in their worship of images, on account of the pleasures and sensual gratifications which they enjoyed at the Pagan festivals, he granted them a permission to indulge themselves in the like pleasures, in celebrating the memory of the holy martyrs, hoping, that in process of time, they would return, of their own accord, to a more virtuous and regular course of life." The historian remarks, that there is no sort of doubt, that by this permission, Gregory allowed the Christians to dance, sport, and feast at the tombs of the martyrs, upon their respective festivals, and to do every thing which the Pagans were accustomed to do in their temples, during the feasts celebrated in honour of their gods."—Mosheim, vol. 1. Cent. 2. p. 202.
Paulinus declares the object of these images and pictures to have been, "to draw the heathens the more easily to the faith of Christ, since by flocking in crowds to gaze at the finery of these paintings, and by explaining to each other the stories there represented, they would gradually acquire a reverence for that religion, which inspired so much virtue and piety into its professors..." But these compliances, as
Bishop Stillingfleet observes, were attended with very bad consequences; since Christianity became at last, by that means, to be nothing else but reformed Paganism, as to its divine worship.--THE DIEGESIS; Rev. Robert Taylor A.B. & M.R.C.S.
The learned Christian advocate, M. Turretin, in describing the state of Christianity in the fourth century, has a well turned rhetoricism, the point of which is, "that it was not so much the empire that was brought over to the faith, as the faith that was brought over to the empire:
not the Pagans who were converted to Christianity, but Christianity that was converted to Paganism.".--THE DIEGESIS; Rev. Robert Taylor A.B. & M.R.C.S.
It should never be forgotten, that the sign of the cross, for ages anterior to the Augustan era, was in common use among the Gentiles. It was the most sacred symbol of Egyptian idolatry. It is on most of the Egyptian obelisks, and was believed to possess all the devil-expelling virtues which have since been ascribed to it by Christians. The monogram, or symbol of the god Saturn, was the sign of the cross, together with a ram’s horn, in indication of the Lamb of God. Jupiter also bore a cross with a horn, Venus a cross with a circle. The famous Crux ansata is to be seen in all the buildings of Egypt; and the most celebrated temples of the idol Chrishna in India, like our Gothic cathedrals, were built in the form of crosses.
The sign of the cross is the very mark which in Ezekiel, ix. 4, the Lord commands his messenger to "go through the midst of Jerusalem, and set upon the foreheads of the men that sigh, and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof." But here, as in a thousand other places, our English rendering protestantizes, for the purpose of disguising the papistical sense, just as their immediate predecessors, the paptists, had set them the example of [p.202]
christianizing whatever came in their way, for the purpose of concealing the Pagan origination.
On a Phoenician medal found in the ruins of Citium, and engraved in Dr. Clarke’s Travels, and proved by him to be Phoenician, are inscribed not only the cross, but the rosary, or string of beads, attached to it, together with the identical Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world.--THE DIEGESIS; Rev. Robert Taylor A.B. & M.R.C.S.
Poll
