I expect you may be just as surprised as I was to learn the truth about the pagan origin of this supposed "Christian" holiday. Few people realize that not very much has changed in the way Christmas is celebrated from the way pagans observed December 25th centuries before the birth of Christ. Obviously they didn't call it "Christmas"—they called this mid-winter festival by its original heathen or pagan name - the Saturnalia.
In ancient times the winter solstice was celebrated in Babylon as the birthday of Tammuz (Dumuzi), the god of vegetation. This was the shortest day of the year, in the latter part of December. According to the pagans, the god Nimrod would visit the evergreen tree and leave gifts upon it. This festival became known as the Saturnalia, and friends and family would exchange gifts. Roman worshippers of Mithra, the Persian sun god, also celebrated the winter solstice as the "nativity" or "birth" of the sun. When the feast was celebrated in Rome, it was called the festival of Saturn and lasted for five days. In ancient Rome and Babylon, this festival involved wild parties and orgies that might have begun with an "innocent kiss" underneath the mistletoe leading to justification of all sorts of perverted behavior.
Why did the Roman Church fix upon December 25 as the day to honor the birth of Christ? Prior to the adoption of Christianity as the official state religion of the Roman Empire both Christians and Jews were persecuted. Christianity, then known as "the way", was seen by the pagan world as a Jewish sect. The persecution of the Jews continued after the adoption of the Roman Empire's version of Christianity as the official state religion. Efforts were made to separate their form of Christianity from Judaism by the officials, who assumed control of the religion. Note that the truly Christ-like action would have been to show love for (and offer protection to) the Jews instead of divorcing themselves from any association with (and increasing persecution of) Jews, regardless of whether or not they were Christians. The Jewish Christians were opposed to the adoption of pagan Roman, Hellenist, or Babylonian practices that were in conflict with Scripture and thereby challenged the authority of the state. Official replacement theologies evolved to accommodate the traditional pagan practices and to remove the Hebraic foundations of faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Both early Believers in Christ and traditional Jews observed Hanukkah. This feast of rededication is observed on the 25th of Kislev by the Hebraic calendar. The Roman solar (a.k.a. secular or Julian) calendar date of Hanukkah changes every year, usually falling between late November and late December. Various pagan holidays were also observed in late December, so by adopting Christmas, the Roman Catholic Church was provided with a way to draw pagans who were worshipping the sun god into the church that was worshipping the Son of God.
MacMillan Compact Encyclopedia says: "In the West it [Christmas] has been celebrated on 25 Dec since 336 AD, partly in order to replace the non-Christian sun worship on the same date." The New Encyclopædia Britannica, states: "December 25, the birthday of Mithra, the Iranian god of light and . . . the day devoted to the invincible sun, as well as the day after Saturnalia, was adopted by the [Roman Catholic] church as Christmas, the nativity of Christ, to counteract the effects of these festivals."
Frank and Jamie Muir tell us in their book A Treasury of Christmas: "25 December was a particularly good date for a Christian festival celebrating new life, because there were several pagan festivals all doing much the same thing. The Romans honoured their god Saturn between 17 and 23 December. Saturnalia was a festival in celebration of Rome's Golden Age, which all hoped one day would return. Many of its festivities became part of the traditional Christmas . . .
When Christianity became the official religion of the Emperor Constantine, in the early part of the fourth century AD, the pagan celebrations of the 25th stayed to become part of Christmas." The concept of the Mass is embedded in the English term Christmas, its etymology being traced to the Old English words Christes maesse, meaning the mass or festival of Christ.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia says: "the birth of Christ was assigned the date of the winter solstice (December 25 in the Julian calendar, January 6 in the Egyptian) because on this day, as the sun began its return to the northern skies, the pagan devotees of Mithra celebrated the dies natalis Solis Invicti (birthday of the invincible sun)." Christmas is a compromise with pagan idolatry. Christianity thus replaced a pagan holiday with a "Christian" one, while keeping the same symbolism. The birthday of Christ corresponds to the birth of a pagan new year. Many of the pagan customs became part of the Christmas celebrations. In Christmas and Its Customs, Christina Holes tells us: "It was the policy of the early [Roman Catholic] Church to transform pagan festivals wherever possible instead of trying to abolish them, and by giving ancient practices a Christian significance, to purify and preserve for the new faith whatever was innocent and deeply-loved in the old. In the yet-unconverted world of the fourth century, December 25 was already a sacred day for thousands of people throughout the Roman Empire. It was Dies Invicti Solis, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun." Gyles Brandreth writes in The Christmas Book: "Practically every country in the world, from China to India, from South America to the Middle East, held celebrations at this time of year . . . It was not until the fourth century that Pope Julius I declared that December 25 should be celebrated as the birthday of Jesus Christ, and Christmas as we know it began. We now celebrate Christmas every year, with a little bit of pagan superstition, a Norse Yule log, Druid candles, a drop of wine from Saturnalia, and a feast from the winter solstice."
The preceding article was gleaned from a printout of a website I was on years earlier... I would love to acknowledge the author but that information is lost to me. If
anyone knows the author Please e-mail me with his/her name.