Landmark Independent Baptist Church, Archer, FL

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P.O. Box 847  11150 NE 113th Place  Archer, Florida 32618 
PHONE: 352-486-6101  FAX: 810-821-0397  EMAIL: libcfl@aol.com

Let's Keep Christ Out of Xmas!

by Pastor Greg Wilson

It may come as a surprise to most, but Christmas has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. It does, however, have everything to do with the pagan Roman god Mithras, and with the false “Christ” of apostate Christendom and the Romanist Mass.

The date of December 25th is itself evidence that this holiday is not about the Christ of the Bible. For while we do not know the exact day of our Lord’s birth, we can be virtually certain that it was not December 25th. All of the Biblical evidence is against such a date. At that particular season, the shepherds would not have been in the fields with their sheep at night. They would have secured them in folds, against the bitter cold of the Judean winter. It is also unlikely that Caesar would have required all the citizens to return to the cities of their birth for a tax-census in the dead of the winter. Robert Myers in the book Celebrations, states: “The Biblical narrative of the birth of Jesus contains no indication of the date that the event occurred. However, Luke’s report that the shepherds were ‘abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night’ suggests that Jesus may have been born in summer or early fall. Since December is cold and rainy in Judea, it is likely the shepherds would have sought shelter for their flocks at night.”

We might ask then, where did this date originate? Ancient history provides us with an answer. December the 25th marked the winter solstice, and it was considered a special day in many of the pagan religions. It was particularly important in the cult of Mithras, a popular deity in the Old Roman Empire. Again Myers (who is hardly seeking to turn people away from the celebration of Christmas having written his book “with the editors of Hallmark Cards”) gives some interesting background. He says, “Prior to the celebration of Christmas, December 25th in the Roman world was the Natalis Solis Invicti, the Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun. This feast, which took place just after the winter solstice of the Julian calendar, was in honor of the Sun God, Mithras, originally a Persian deity whose cult penetrated the Roman world in the first century B.C. . . . Besides the Mithraic influence, other pagan forces were at work. From the seventeenth of December until the twenty-third, Romans celebrated the ancient feast of Saturnalia. . . . It was commemorative of the Golden Age of Saturn, the god of sowing and husbandry.”

Until the recent era you would not be able to find a Baptist who would have anything to do with these pagan feasts. They have now become “sacred cows” in many “Baptist” churches, and woe be to the one who speaks a word against any of them. Quoting from a 12/23/83 USA TODAY article about Christmas: “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.” Indeed, even many Protestants abhorred this pagan day until recent times. Henry Ward Beecher, a Congregationalist, wrote in 1874 of his New England boyhood: “to me Christmas is a foreign day, and I shall die so. When I was a boy I wondered what Christmas was. I knew there was such a time, because we had an Episcopal church in our town, and I saw them dressing it with evergreens, and wondered what they were taking the woods in the church for; but I got no satisfactory explanation. A little later I understood it was a Romish institution, kept by the Romish Church.” 

We could continue with much more documentation and history, but anyone who has the desire can soon find out for himself that Christmas is a thoroughly pagan holiday — in its origin, in its trappings, and in all its traditions.

Don’t take my word for it though, you need only read a dictionary, encyclopedia, or some books on the holidays from your public library. No honest person can deny these truths. The Roman Catholic Church, which originated this holiday, admits that it was taken from paganism and adapted for its own purposes. 

What then ought to be the Christian’s response to this, and other pagan and Roman inventions? It cannot be denied that they are pagan pure and simple — from beginning to end. God gives us specific instructions in His Holy Word: “Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen . . .” (Jer. 10:2). These words are perfectly clear. We have no other option consistent with obedience. We cannot acknowledge these pagan festivities in any fashion. I personally have no desire to honor baby Mithras on his December 25th birthday. I sincerely urge all others to keep Christ out of this pagan Xmas mess!

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