by Irvine Syazyombo
In this world, people are more prone to readily accept deceit than tolerate truth. They would rather listen to what they want to hear than pay attention to truth.
For example if a well read person advised that there is no connection between the pagan origins of Christmas and Jesus Christ,it would be hard to make Christmas observers understand.
However, whether one accepts it or not, the truth is that the origin of Christmas was a pagan observance of the birthday of Noah’s great grandson, Nimrod who was so evil that he even married his biological mother.
“Nimrod was so evil,it is said he married his own mother whose name was Semiramis.After Nimrod’s untimely death,his so called mother-wife,Semiramis,propagated the evil doctrine of the survival of Nimrod as a spiritual being. She claimed a full-grown evergreen tree sprung overnight from a dead tree stump which symbolized the springing fourth unto new life of the dead Nimrod. On each birthday anniversary she claimed Nimrod would visit the tree and leave gifts on it. December 25th was the birthday of Nimrod. This is the real origin of the Christmas tree,” writes Herbert Armstrong in his booklet titled ‘The Plain Truth About Christmas.
The observance of December 25th as the pagan god’s birthday went on from generation to generation. Even the worship of Baal ,according to Armstrong, was a tradition from the worship of Nimrod.
Ancient Roman pagans also upheld the tradition. They had a festival of saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated from December 17th to 25th.
“During this period Roman courts were closed and Roman law dictated that no one would be punished damaging property or injuring people during the week long celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose ‘an enemy of the Roman people’ to represent the ‘Lord of Misrule’. Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th,Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman,”
says www.simpletoremember.com.
The site also quotes ancient Greek writer, poet and historian Lucian(in his piece titled Saturnalia) describing the observance of the festival’s observance in his time.
“In addition to human sacrifice he(Lucian)mentions these customs; widespread intoxication, going from house to house while singing naked, rape and other sexual license, and consuming human shaped biscuits(still produced in some English and Germany bakeries during the Christmas season)”
The site explains that Christians of the fourth century imported Saturnalia and converted large numbers of pagans ,promising them that they would continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.
The site observes that since there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia, as a remedy, Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, Jesus’ birthday.
The web site says the earliest Christmas holidays were observed by drinking, sexual indulgence, and singing naked in the streets , the precursor of modern caroling .
“ Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reports, ‘Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators. They ran… amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.’[5]
As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome sent a petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual Saturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, ‘It is not opportune to make any innovation.’[6] On December 25, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots across the country. In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, and many Jewish women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed,” reveals the site.
It is up to each individual whether to worship pagan tradition or worship God in truth and spirit.
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