Thought for the Christmas time: A sense of history

In a few days lots of people shall come to gather in the family. For many of them it is supposedly to celebrate the birth of their god.

They should remember that the real God, Who is an unseen eternal Spirit Being has no beginning at all (otherwise he would not have been eternal, meaning to have no beginning or birth and no end or death). God was not born and can not die. Though for the majority of Christians their god died on the cross. (Even when a cross was not yet the torture or killing tool at that time of Roman oppression.)

“ And he said, Thou canst not see my face; for man shall not see me and live.” (Ex 33:20 ASV)

“ No man hath seen God at any time; {1 } the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. {1) Many very ancient authorities read God only begotten } (Joh 1:18 ASV)

“ That they may know that {1 } thou alone, whose name is Jehovah, Art the Most High over all the earth. {1) Or thou, whose name alone is Jehovah, art etc } (Ps 83:18 ASV)

“ Jehovah is great in Zion; And he is high above all the peoples.” (Ps 99:2 ASV)

“ But Jehovah is {1 } the true God; he is the living God, and an everlasting King: at his wrath the earth trembleth, and the nations are not able to abide his indignation. {1) Or God in truth } (Jer 10:10 ASV)

“ Now unto the King {1 } eternal, {2 } immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory {3 } for ever and ever. Amen. {1) Gr of the ages; Compare Heb 1:2; Re 15:3. 2) Gr incorruptible 3) Gr unto the ages of the ages } (1Ti 1:17 ASV)

“ Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” (2Co 3:17 ASV)

“ and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.” (Ro 1:23 ASV)

A sense of history

The apostle Luke in his gospel attempts to give some bearings in world history. From the gospel we should know that a Roman census was mentioned, for example.

In the past, as today, several leaders wanted to know how many people there were in their empire or kingdom. At different times they organized countings of the population. The procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population, gave them some idea for whom they had to bring out rules and regulations and how they had to address them. They wanted to have enough details of individuals residents and information about the household structure and the housing in the reign which was also used for tax gathering and to determine fitness for military services.

In the late Middle Kingdom of Egypt we can already find the practice of conducting a periodic census. Later in history we also can hear about an ‘Unauthorized Census’ by king David.

Under the Ptolemies and the Romans several censuses were conducted in ancient Egypt by government official. From later cenci we come to know that Roman censuses in Egypt estimated the population at 4.5 million inhabitants in the year 14 CE and 5 million in 164 CE.

From the many historical writings from earlier times we know that after the banishment of the son and principal heir of Herod I the Great as king of Judaea, deposed by Rome because of his unpopularity with the Jews, the ethnarch Herod Archelaus (22BCE — c. 18 CE) went to Rome (4 BCE) to defend his title against the claims of his brothers Philip and Antipas before the emperor Augustus. Augustus confirmed him in possession of the largest portion but did not recognize him as king, giving him instead the lesser title of ethnarch (referring generally to political leadership over a common ethnic group or homogeneous kingdom) to emphasize his dependence on Rome.
Being appointed legate governor of Syria, to which the province of Judaea had been added for the purpose of a census. Quirinius conducted that census in Palestine in 6–7 CE. People should see that this is too late for the birth of Jesus, also because Jesus was born while Herod the Great was still alive — and Herod is to believed by many to have died some ten years earlier, in 4 bce (Herodes Magnus, born 73 BCE — died 4 BCE).

An early Christian writer, Tertullian (196–212 CE), mentions a census at the time of Jesus’ birth, but gives the governor’s name as Saturninus. The Roman senator and military officer Gaius Sentius Saturninus served as the proconsular governor of Africa, and later as imperial governor of Syria. He then served several times as a senior military officer working with the future second Roman emperor Tiberius (reigning from 42 BCE – 37 CE) in campaigns against the Marcomanni (6 BCE), gaining the distinction of being awarded triumphal ornaments.

From 12 to 1 BCE, the legate governor of Syria Publius Sulpicius Quirinius led a campaign against the Homanades (Homonadenses), a tribe based in the mountainous region of Galatia and Cilicia, around 5–3 BCE, probably as legate of Galatia. He won the campaign by reducing their strongholds and starving out the defenders.

A special birth taking place at a special time

Under Jewish law censuses were forbidden, but the Roman rulers wished to have a good overview of their population and of who was staying where and who they could call for military service.

In the Gospel of Luke chapter 2, which links the birth of Jesus to the time of the Census of Quirinius, although this appears to contradict the time of Jesus birth given in the Gospel of Matthew, except when it would have been the census of October 4 BCE, when there took place also several special natural wonders in heaven, having several special remarkable falling stars, which can explain the falling star followed by the wise astrologers.

We always should put two and two together and find the different puzzle pieces in all the available books. From the Book of books we do know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, because the young woman Miriam (Mir-yām, better known as Mary or Maria) and Joseph had to make the journey south — some eighty miles — because they had to follow up the Roman emperor his orders to partake to the official census which took place in Tishri 3758 (October 4 BCE). Bethlehem is King David’s birthplace, and the registration point for his descendants. From the Hebrew Scriptures we also do know that it would be from the tribe of David that a Messiah would be born. So that Saviour would only come into existence after king David.

Fully booked

It would not have been easy to do such a long trip on foot. And because so many people had to move around to go to their ancestors home base, there were many travellers looking for accommodation, making many inns or hostels fully booked. When they arrived in Bethlehem there were no places to sleep in the available inns. Having compassion with the state of the young woman someone offered the couple their stall to sleep in. This means that at time the stalls would have been clean and empty. Therefore, it also could not be in Winter time.

The apostle Matthew tells us that the son of David (or seed of David), the son of Abraham, from Abraham unto David fourteen generations, got born from Joseph, also a son of David. (Matthew 1:1,17,18-21)

“16 and Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. 17 So all the generations from Abraham unto David are fourteen generations; and from David unto the carrying away to Babylon fourteen generations; and from the carrying away to Babylon unto the Christ fourteen generations.

18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. 19 And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. 20 But when he thought on these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. 21 And she shall bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name JESUS; for it is he that shall save his people from their sins. 22 Now all this is come to pass, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, 23 Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, And they shall call his name Immanuel; which is, being interpreted, God with us. 24 And Joseph arose from his sleep, and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took unto him his wife; 25 and knew her not till she had brought forth a son: and he called his name JESUS.” (Mt 1:16-25 ASV)

When Jesus was born — with a manger as a makeshift cradle in the crowded town – the first people to hear the news were some shepherds, which means again they were out shepherding, which they would not do in Kislev (November-December) nor in Tevet (December-January) and as such the birth of Jesus could not have been taken place in December.

Why celebrating a birth on someone others birthday

Constant Referring to Catholic writers to support Christmasday

The majority of the Christians prefer to partake at the pagan Winter festival and enjoy a lot of Christmas festivities. We also may find Christians who do know that Chrysostom’s calculation is wrong (probably a month or two months too late if the census was after harvest) but consider the date or the feast not “pagan,” as we and several others claim. Stangely several of those defenders to celebrate Christmas always keep referring to only Roman Catholic theologians. To apologise themselves taking part in the whole Christmas circus, they even go so far to write about one of the many mentioned articles from the Catholic Touchstone magazine in 2003: “Calculating Christmas – The Story Behind December 25 – by William J. Tighe”

While the writer, William Tighe, is Catholic, the sources he cites are independent scholars.

Paganizations of Christianity

Whilst forgetting to look for their religious background the Christmas supporters base their and subsequent articles on the same scholars. As such several Christians state that

Modern scholarship on early Christiantity, such as the chronologists Paul L. Meier (1989) and Susan K. Roll (1995) identify John Chrysostom as the earliest proponent of December 25 as the date for Christ’s birth. {Is Christmas pagan?}

William J. Tighe writes:

Mosaic of Jesus as Christus Sol (Christ the Sun) in Mausoleum M in the pre-fourth-century necropolis under St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.[Kelly, Joseph F., The Origins of Christmas, Liturgical Press, 2004, pp. 67–69.]
The idea that the date was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many “paganizations” of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many “degenerations” that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the gospel.

In the Julian calendar, created in 45 B.C. under Julius Caesar, the winter solstice fell on December 25th, and it therefore seemed obvious to Jablonski and Hardouin that the day must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one. But in fact, the date had no religious significance in the Roman pagan festal calendar before Aurelian’s time, nor did the cult of the sun play a prominent role in Rome before him.

Though we can find lots of worshiptemples for the sun as well come to know from ancient writings that people gathered especially on that period, we now call Christmaseve and Christmasday (“mass on Christ’s day”).
There was already a veneration of the sun or a representation of the sun as a deity, as in Atonism in Egypt in the 14th century BCE.

William J. Tighe continues

There were two temples of the sun in Rome, one of which (maintained by the clan into which Aurelian was born or adopted) celebrated its dedication festival on August 9th, the other of which celebrated its dedication festival on August 28th. But both of these cults fell into neglect in the second century, when eastern cults of the sun, such as Mithraism, began to win a following in Rome. And in any case, none of these cults, old or new, had festivals associated with solstices or equinoxes.

Mesopotamian king made into a sun god by his mother and wife to be worshipped and to be celebrated on December 25

We may not forget that already in the time of Nimrod, grandson of Ham the son of Noah, went astray from God’s teachings and looked at the sun as the source of life. As a king in the land of Shinar (Mesopotamia), being a wicked, ruthless dictator, he can be called responsible for the great organized worldly apostasy from God that continues to this day. In contempt for God and all decency Nimrod married his own mother, Semiramis. After his untimely death, his mother-wife, Semiramis, taught the lie that her husband-son was a spirit god. She claimed a full-grown evergreen tree sprang overnight from a dead tree stump, which symbolized the springing forth to new life of the dead Nimrod. She taught that on the anniversary of his birth, which was December 25, Nimrod would visit the evergreen tree and leave gifts upon it. The Free Church of Scotland minister and historian, professor Alexander Hislop initially published a pamphlet that was revised, expanded and released as a book in 1858 wherin he wrote

“Now the Yule Log is the dead stock of Nimrod, deified as the sun-god, but cut down by his enemies; the Christmas-tree is Nimrod redivivus—the slain god come to life again.”—The Two Babylons, pages 97, 98.

Yule tide, evergreen tree and birthday celebration

Already in that time after Nimrod’s death, the roots where placed for the Christmas traditions we still can find today, having there already the origin of the yule log, the Christmas tree, the celebrating of birthdays, the spirit of exchanging gifts, the spirit of feasting and merrymaking, visits and salutations, jocularity, revelry and drunkenness.

The tradition grew and in many other regions than Mesopotania. But also in the darker regions of the North of Europe the sun was considered to be a special force for which on the darkest and shortest day one wanted to call her up. By singing and with a lot of luster and by making luminous fires, people wanted to summon the celestial light to appear again quickly.

Semiramis was not the only one who believed in her ‘spirit god’ which could bring light to the world. With her proclamation a wild celebration began on Nimrod his birthday that has stuck down through the centuries to our day. In.the Western world it is called Christmas.

Mother and child worship

Furthermore we also should remember that Nimrod became worshiped as the “divine son of heaven,” “the Messiah, son of Baal the sun-god.” Devil-worshiping pagans believed that life and immortality proceeded from Nimrod, and so they worshiped the never-dying sun in the heavens as the personification and representation of Nimrod’s “divinity.” Mother and child, Semiramis and Nimrod, became chief objects of worship. The pagan world idolized this combination.

In Egypt they were worshiped as Isis and Osiris, in Asia as Cybele and Doius, in pagan Rome as Fortuna and Jupiter-Puer. Even in China, Japan, Tibet and in other non-Christian lands is to be found the counterpart of the Madonna, held sacred in Christendom. Pagans adored these symbols long before the birth of Christ, yet Christendom hails these as Christian and adoringly speaks of them as

“the beautiful spirit of Christmas.”

Birthday of Christ not on December 25

Several supporters for Christmas do know like what William J. Tighe wrote

In contrast, second-century Latin Christians in Rome and North Africa appear to have desired to establish the historical date on which the Lord Jesus died. By the time of Tertullian they had concluded that he died on Friday, 25 March 29. (As an aside, I will note that this is impossible: 25 March 29 was not a Friday, and Passover Eve in A.D. 29 did not fall on a Friday and was not on March 25th, or in March at all.)

So in the East we have April 6th, in the West, March 25th. At this point, we have to introduce a belief that seems to have been widespread in Judaism at the time of Christ, but which, as it is nowhere taught in the Bible, has completely fallen from the awareness of Christians. The idea is that of the “integral age” of the great Jewish prophets: the idea that the prophets of Israel died on the same dates as their birth or conception.

This notion is a key factor in understanding how some early Christians came to believe that December 25th is the date of Christ’s birth. The early Christians applied this idea to Jesus, so that March 25th and April 6th were not only the supposed dates of Christ’s death, but of his conception or birth as well. There is some fleeting evidence that at least some first- and second-century Christians thought of March 25th or April 6th as the date of Christ’s birth, but rather quickly the assignment of March 25th as the date of Christ’s conception prevailed.

It is to this day, commemorated almost universally among Christians as the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel brought the good tidings of a savior to the Virgin Mary, upon whose acquiescence the Eternal Word of God (“Light of Light, True God of True God, begotten of the Father before all ages”) forthwith became incarnate in her womb. What is the length of pregnancy? Nine months. Add nine months to March 25th and you get December 25th; add it to April 6th and you get January 6th. December 25th is Christmas, and January 6th is Epiphany.

From many non-religious writings on the history of man we can find enough historical facts concerning the actors and events around Jesus his person and birth which make it clear that it could never be December the 25th, or he just would be a fictious person and the gospels would just by mythical stories. Though even the non-religous historians and atheist researches have found enough proof of the existence of the Jewish master teacher Jeshua who worked on the nerves of the Roman rulers and people from the temple in Jerusalem.

Feast of Western Christian origin

When looking at the work of William J. Tighe, we must also see he writes:

Christmas (December 25th) is a feast of Western Christian origin. In Constantinople it appears to have been introduced in 379 or 380. From a sermon of St. John Chrysostom, at the time a renowned ascetic and preacher in his native Antioch, it appears that the feast was first celebrated there on 25 December 386. From these centers it spread throughout the Christian East, being adopted in Alexandria around 432 and in Jerusalem a century or more later. The Armenians, alone among ancient Christian churches, have never adopted it, and to this day celebrate Christ’s birth, manifestation to the magi, and baptism on January 6th.

Western churches, in turn, gradually adopted the January 6th Epiphany feast from the East, Rome doing so sometime between 366 and 394. But in the West, the feast was generally presented as the commemoration of the visit of the magi to the infant Christ, and as such, it was an important feast, but not one of the most important ones — a striking contrast to its position in the East, where it remains the second most important festival of the church year, second only to Pascha (Easter).

In the East, Epiphany far outstrips Christmas. The reason is that the feast celebrates Christ’s baptism in the Jordan and the occasion on which the Voice of the Father and the Descent of the Spirit both manifested for the first time to mortal men the divinity of the Incarnate Christ and the Trinity of the Persons in the One Godhead.

Many not finding Christmas pagan and having all the pagan attributes in their house

Perhaps you, like lots of people who call themselves Christian, may not find Christmas pagan and have all the pagan attributes in the house.

But we do not see what a Santa of Finland has to do with the birth of Christ, which was on October 17, 4 BCE, nor with Saint Nicolas who was from Mira (in Turkey- and not Spain).
You may also not find all those elf’s and goblins part of mysticism or pagan culture, but we can not wonder what they and Christmas trees have to do with the regions of Palestine and Israel.

Not wanting to see the Biblical and historical truth just to hold to tradition is a free choice, but something we should be very careful with, also by knowing we might be saved, but we do have to do works of faith and live accordingly.

We do know it is a very very long time ago that Jehovah God commanded His people Israel:

“Learn not the way of the heathen, . . . For the customs of the people are vain.”

The heathen have lots of festivals where they want others to join them and even to do things which are not so mcuh liked by the Most High Elohim. When taking part in such festivals we should consider if we are doing the right thing. By participating in those activities which the Bible considers wrong, are we then not going in against the Will of God?

Let us also not forget what the Most High God of Israel said to His people

“1 Hear ye the word which Jehovah speaketh unto you, O house of Israel: 2 thus saith Jehovah, Learn not the way of the nations, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the nations are dismayed at them. 3 For the {1 } customs of the peoples are vanity; for {2 } one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman with the axe. {1) Heb statutes 2) Or, it is but a tree which one cutteth } (Jer 10:1-3 ASV)

“ Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works; but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and break in pieces their {1 } pillars. {1) Or obelisks } (Ex 23:24 ASV)

“ And thou shalt consume all the peoples that Jehovah thy God shall deliver unto thee; thine eye shall not pity them: neither shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee.” (De 7:16 ASV)

Do you notice how God looks down on people who greatly love such worldly festivals where the focus is more on material than on the True God. How many who call themselves Christian do not make anything like the atheist and heathen people their works?

Real Christians must not serve the gods of the majority of the population, because that will be a snare to the real Source of Life, the Most High God above all gods. Jehovah’s declaration against pagan gods has not changed and shall never change. Nor has God his attitude toward pagan worship changed, because, He says: