The Christmas Question

IS IT REALLY PAGAN?

Throughout Israel’s history, God’s people often mingled their worship of the one true God with customs and traditions borrowed from pagan religions. Whenever that happened, God spoke through His prophets to express His hatred of this mingling of the holy and the profane, the sacred and the secular. In today’s world, Christmas manifests the mingling of the holy and the profane, the sacred and the secular, more than any other holiday. Does that mean that Christmas is pagan?

When I started Gates of Eden in 1995, nearly all the Messianic people I knew shunned Christmas. Why? Because they knew that Deuteronomy 12:30-32 commands us to not use pagan customs and traditions in our worship of the LORD, and they knew from history that nearly all of today’s Christmas customs and traditions were borrowed from pagan idolatry.

A RECENT SHIFT

In recent years, a significant number of Messianic people, most of them much younger than I, have been saying that Christmas is not pagan. Some of these youngsters say that they personally do not celebrate it, but they are giving a green light to other believers to celebrate it if they wish to do so.

Why this change of opinion? I do not know the reason with absolute certainty, but from what I do know, it seems that one thing responsible for this shift of opinion is an effort to debunk Alexander Hislop’s book The Two Babylons.

Hislop’s book was published in 1858 and appeared in many editions in Great Britain and the U. S. In his book, Hislop cites ancient historical references to demonstrate that Roman Catholic customs and traditions, including Christmas, were borrowed from pagan idolatry.

In 1966, author Ralph Woodrow published Babylon Mystery Religion. Woodrow’s book was basically just a condensed version of Hislop’s 330-page book, without Hislop’s hundreds of footnotes.

I first read Woodrow’s book sometime around 1980. Around 1996 I saw a copy of Hislop’s book at a used book store, so I bought it and read it. It was rather dry reading, but I read it all, including the footnotes.

Shortly after that, someone informed me that Ralph Woodrow had written another book to recant the claims he had made in his book Babylon Mystery Religion. In his new book, Woodrow stated that Hislop’s claims were not true. I read Woodrow’s new book, but I did not understand why he was so strongly convinced that Hislop’s claims were wrong. The thing that most impressed me about Woodrow’s recantation was his lack of remorse and contrition. Woodrow’s former book, Babylon Mystery Religion, was wildly popular among Protestants. I have a 1990 edition, which says that there were “Over 350,000 copies in print” as of June 1990. If Woodrow truly believed that his former book had misinformed and misled multitudes of Christians, why was there not a profuse apology in his latter book?

HISLOP’S TWO BABYLONS

What about the information in Hislop’s book? Is it false, as Ralph Woodrow and some young Messianics are saying? Or is it true?

In the front flyleaf of the cover, Donald Grey Barnhouse, D. D., calls Hislop’s book “one of the great books in the Christian literature of apologetics.” Barnhouse says that there is “a wealth of material in the footnotes buttressing the facts brought forth in the argument.”

In the back flyleaf of the cover, it says “This volume offers proof for every statement, including more than 260 original sources of facts, citing title and place and date of publication of each.” I counted 270 sources in the list.

There are footnotes galore documenting Hislop’s sources throughout the book. You have to look hard to find a page without footnotes. To give you an idea of how many footnotes there are, there are 100 footnotes just in the first 27 pages.

Hislop obviously documented his sources. So why are some people now claiming that Hislop was wrong?

A couple years ago in a Facebook debate about Christmas, when one brother mentioned Hislop, a young pro-Christmas Messianic leader flatly replied “Hislop lied.”

I was not involved in that Facebook debate; I just happened to see the exchange. But it got me to wondering why some people totally reject Hislop’s work. Some even mock and ridicule Hislop, as if his entire book contains nothing but nonsense. I contacted another brother, Tom Steele, who is quite knowledgeable about academic matters such as this, and asked him if he knew the reasons for such fierce anti-Hislop sentiment.

THE PROBLEM WITH HISLOP

Tom told me that the main problem with Hislop’s Two Babylons is in his citing of sources. Yes, Hislop meticulously cited his sources, but there is a difference between citing a source and manipulating the information in that source to support an erroneous claim.

According to Ralph Woodrow, that is what Hislop did. To what extent, I do not know. And I do not have the time nor the ability to track down all 270 of Hislop’s sources and examine every footnote to see to what extent Hislop manipulated information to support erroneous claims, as Woodrow accuses him of doing. Ironically, Tom Steele points out in his online article “Is Christmas Pagan?” that Woodrow actually does this very thing (i.e., he manipulates information to support an erroneous claim) in his attempt to debunk Hislop! (See Tom’s article at TruthIgnited.com.)

Apparently the scholarly community now considers Hislop to be an unreliable source because of “sloppy scholarship.” Does that mean that every single one of Hislop’s claims should be rejected and labeled as bunk? By no means, especially if Hislop’s claims can be verified in other reliable sources.

LOOKING AT OTHER SOURCES

Out of curiosity, I wanted to see what mainstream sources say about the source of Christmas customs and traditions.

I decided to go to our local library in East Peoria. I do not like to do online “research.” I prefer to consult real books printed on real paper by real publishers, to avoid getting misinformation from some website put together by some unqualified lone individual who does not really know what he or she is talking about. A few years ago, I went to our library to see what various encyclopedias said about the Venerable Bede, because people were falsely claiming that Bede was not a reliable source for his claim that our English word Easter came from the name of a pagan fertility goddess. The result of my research was my article “Bede Bashing By Facebook Buddies” (GOE 25-2; also 3/25/23 blog at gatesofeden.online).

Since some young Messianic teachers have been saying that “Hislop lied” and therefore Christmas is not pagan, I decided to go to the library, like I did for my research on Bede, and see what mainstream encyclopedias say about Christmas.

I walked upstairs and asked the librarian, “Where are the encyclopedias?”

“They’re online on the computers now,” she replied.

My heart sank. I did not want to do online “research.” I phoned the Peoria Library. It’s bigger, so I thought maybe they still had real encyclopedias in printed book form. But no, they too got rid of all their encyclopedias.

So I was forced to go online to see what various encyclopedias say about Christmas. However, I limited my research to reliable, mainstream encyclopedias, and I ignored so-called “encyclopedias” that sounded sketchy. Here is information from three reliable mainstream encyclopedias.

ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA

“In polytheistic Rome, December 25 was a celebration of the Unconquered Sun, marking the return of longer days. It followed Saturnalia, a festival where people feasted and exchanged gifts. The church in Rome began celebrating Christmas on December 25 during the reign of Constantine....”

NEW WORLD ENCYCLOPEDIA

“Besides its Christian roots, many Christmas traditions have their origins in pagan winter celebrations. Examples of winter festivals that have influenced Christmas include the pre-Christian festivals of Yule, and Roman Saturnalia.

“This is how Christmas came to be celebrated on the Roman holiday of Saturnalia, and it was from the pagan holiday that many of the customs of Christmas had their roots.

“The feast of Sol Invictus on December 25 was a sacred day in the religion of Mithraism, which was widespread in the Roman Empire. Its god, Mithras, was a solar deity of Persian origin, identified with the Sun. It displayed its unconquerability as ‘Sol Invictus’ when it began to rise higher in the sky following the Winter Solstice -- hence December 25 was celebrated as the festival of Sol Invictus.

“The followers of Mithras were eventually forced to convert [to Christianity] under these laws [laws that prohibited the worship of pagan gods]. In spite of their conversion, they adapted many elements of their old religions into Christianity. Among these, was the celebration of the birth of Mithras on December 25, which was now observed as the birthday of Jesus.

“During the Reformation, Protestants condemned Christmas celebrations as ‘trappings of popery’ and the ‘rags of the Beast.’”

WORLD HISTORY ENCYCLOPEDIA

“Several of the traditions today strongly associated with Christmas have a very long history indeed, even pre-dating the Christmas celebration itself. Early Christianity sought to distance itself from pagan practices and so later Roman emperors closed down ancient sacred sites, prohibited rituals, and ended sporting games that had once honoured pagan gods. However, changing the habits of ordinary people was a different matter. The pagan festival of Saturnalia had been particularly popular, and its traditions that had endured for a millennium were, in many cases, transferred to the new festival of Christmas.”

MAINSTREAM CHRISTIAN SOURCES

“But Daniel, those mainstream encyclopedias are secular sources. What do mainstream Christian sources say about Christmas?”

Eerdman’s Publishing Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan is about as mainstream Christian as a publishing company can be. Here is what Eerdman’s Handbook to the History of Christianity, published in 1977, says:

“The Christian church took over many pagan ideas and images. From sun-worship, for example, came the celebration of Christ’s birth on the twenty-fifth of December, the birthday of the Sun. Saturnalia, the Roman winter festival of 17-21 of December, provided the merriment, gift-giving and candles typical of later Christmas holidays” (pg. 131).

On the same page is a photo of a 4th century mosaic that depicts “Christ as the sun-god mounting the heavens in his chariot.”

ROMAN CATHOLIC SOURCES

Roman Catholic author Greg Dues, in his book Catholic Customs & Traditions, writes the following:

“The winter solstice occurred on December 25 on the Julian calendar and became the popular date for Christmas. As noted in the origin of Advent, a five-day pagan harvest festival of Saturnalia devoted to Saturn, the god of agriculture, occurred shortly before the winter solstice. It was celebrated with gift exchanges, feasting, and excesses.

“Most Christmas traditions associated with evergreens and trees are related somehow to pre-Christian practices . . . Teutonic and Scandinavian peoples worshipped trees and decorated houses and barns with evergreens at the new year to scare away demons.

“The origin of this [Santa Claus] is a fascinating and deliberate mixture of a bishop-saint, Father Christmas, Christmas Man, and the Norse mythological god Thor . . . the Norse god Thor: elderly, jolly (though god of war), with white hair and beard, friend of the common people, living in the north land, traveling through the sky in a chariot pulled by goats, and as god of fire, partial to chimneys and fireplaces.

“A mixture and even confusion of the sacred and secular characterizes the Christmas season today” (pages 51-62).

In the rest of his book, Dues freely admits that virtually all Roman Catholic customs and traditions were borrowed from pagan idolatry, thereby confirming Hislop’s general claims.

So there you have it, brothers and sisters. As Tom Steele told me, we do not need Hislop to prove the pagan origins of Christmas. Mainstream encyclopedias, mainstream Christian publishers, and Roman Catholic authors all agree that the customs and traditions of Christmas were borrowed from pagan idolatry. The holy and the profane, the sacred and the secular, were blended together into a lukewarm mixture. That is the very thing that the Almighty commanded us not to do in Deuteronomy 12:30-32.

In closing, let me say that I do not think that my shunning of Christmas makes me better than others. There are probably some Christmas-celebrating Christians who please the Lord more than I do, Christians who excel in so many other areas but are uninformed about the paganism in Christmas. I am not sharing this information to condemn, but to teach, because I am a teacher. What you do with this information is between you and the Lord.

| DB