And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. (Rev. 17:5)
The last day of the Roman winter festival of Saturnalia, a.k.a. Christmas, was a vile and pagan excuse for debauchery. We know the celebration of the Lord’s resurrection was a ruse to accommodate the heathen into Christianity. The Christian authorities told the Romans they could continue their spring rituals, but now it would be known as the anniversary of the resurrection of Jesus, a celebration He never sanctioned. The same applies to His nativity. He said nothing about it, but fourth century Christian leaders, in the brazen and craven attempt to bolster their rolls with pagan Romans, allowed them their winter solstice festival, but called the last day of the celebration the birthday of Jesus. The evil woman (the Babylonish system of Satan worship) of Matt. 13:33 hid leaven in the fine flour, and it flourished because yeast is a living organism, and so is Satan.
Clear thinking Christians know Jesus was not born on Dec. 25th,, and they know He never established a commemoration of anything but His death; however the pagan sun gods were born on the winter solstice – Mithras, Osiris, Horus, Hercules, Bacchus, Adonis, Jupiter, Tammuz, and Saturn, to name some. In the Roman Empire, it was the worship of the Saturnalia – the winter solstice and the return of the sun. It was a time of merriment, drunkenness, debauchery, and revelry. The customs we practice today – evergreen trees, giving of gifts, holly, parties, mistletoe, lights, Yule logs, etc. – were essential elements of the ancient worship. The pagan festival developed this way: Through the winter (the time when the sun god was losing his battle with the god of the dead), the Romans watched their harvest stores diminish, so they were much in need of the sun to return and for their supplies to be replenished. That god had to be assisted, so the Romans offered their small children and infants to the sun god for his empowerment and strength. Since every year the sun did return to strength, they attributed this to their child sacrifices. Seeing that their efforts succeeded, and that the sun was becoming stronger, they partied. For a week they closed their courts and suspended their laws, allowing for unbridled debauchery. Each community chose an innocent “enemy of the Roman people” whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures for the week, and then at the last day (Christmas), believing they were destroying the forces of darkness, brutally murdered the innocent man or woman.
So entrenched were these superstitious practices among the pagans that the Christian hierarchy (soon to metastasize into the Roman Catholic Church) refused to demand the pagans to halt their celebration to become Christians, but simply renamed the last day of the Saturnalia as Christmas, calling it the birthday of Jesus. It was a vile and insidious mix of Christ (the fine flour) with rank paganism (the leaven).
When the early Roman Catholics renamed the last day of the Saturnalia Christmas (a mass for Christ), they took a wholly idolatrous celebration with all its baggage of sun worship, child sacrifices, murder, and debauchery, and turned it into the most revered day of the year for both true and nominal Christians. Even the world of unbelievers loves this holiday, and merchants especially thrive on it. But this egregious amalgamation of the desperately wicked deities of old with the purity of the Son of God is an abomination to our Father. So, too, are all the accessories associated with the holiday – in honor of Adonis, evergreen trees were sacrificed and propped up unnaturally in homes like a personage dressed brightly and conjuring up darkness of ancient instincts, but exposed by Yahweh (Jer. 10:1-5); exchanging of gifts, an important part of the Roman Saturnalia, and of the ecstatic and decadent world upon the death of the Lord’s servants (Rev. 11:10); Santa Claus, the evolution of Saturn, the sun-god, omniscient (knowing the secrets of the human heart), and omnipresent (visiting every house in one night), the mighty warrior Odin from Scandinavia riding through the sky dispensing gifts, hearkening back to the original god Nimrod, “a mighty hunter before the Lord” (Gen. 10:8-9); holly, ivy, and mistletoe, all evergreens and strong life symbols of immortality and fertility and good luck, protecting houses from witchcraft; etc. It is hard to imagine how true, enlightened Christians can have anything whatsoever to do with this abhorrent admixture of Nimrod’s religion and our Lord Jesus. Paul admonished the Ephesians, who were recipients of the highest of all revelations – the Body of Christ comprised of Jews and Gentiles – with this: “ For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. (Ephesians 5:8-11) We must be holy and separate people unto the Lord, no matter what it costs us, especially when our children’s lives hang in the balance. We will answer for them if we mislead them.
When we stand before the Lord and answer for our works performed in our lives, what shall we say to the charge of adopting rank paganism and for allowing it to gain a foothold in our lives and in our homes and in our families? Paul asked this of the Corinthian believers in his first letter (6:14): “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?” Christ’s Mass has become so engrained in the American (and world) culture that it takes a radical surgery to remove it from our lives and from the lives of our children. It is beyond question that those around us will consider the taking of such a stance extreme, and we could become pariahs to them, perhaps even in our own families. However, what shall we do when we know the depths of the evil that is associated with the holiday? Shall we ignore it? Shall we simply go along to get along? Shall we allow our emotions to rule in our hearts instead of Christ; because everything surrounding the celebration – all its joy and lightness and songs and familiar feelings – is warm and fuzzy? Shall we fight to put Christ back in Christmas when we know very well He was never there in the first place? Is Christ’s Mass the fork in the road of our journey that will determine our gaining the prize of the upward call to the overcomers? Let us forsake everything and anything that is not of Him!
At this late hour in the Christian dispensation we have to make the hard choices. Will it be Jesus and His Body, or will it be well-dressed evil stroking our soul life, most particularly, our emotions? Let us aggressively deal with every satanic element designed to dilute our relationship with Jesus Christ. Let us take Jesus! and let the world have this alluring celebration that He never sanctioned, and that will find its place in the Lake of Fire. Let Jesus fill the void when we jettison this Roman Catholic leaven once and for all.