CHRISTMAS; ITS ORIGIN

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 25, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 52.

CHRISTMAS; ITS ORIGIN.

What Does It Mean to You?

The day called “Christmas” does not come to us from Christ, altho the name does. Yet even that is unscriptural and pagan. It is composed of two words “Christ” and “mass,” the sacrifice of Christ. But when Christ died, He died once for all.

The celebration of December 25 comes to us directly from the old pagan feast, the Saturnalia, observed in honor of Saturn, or Bacchus, or Tammuz, all different names for the same characteristics deified. The feast goes back to Babylon of old, to Queen Semiramis, a woman most vile. “In Babylon, where it originated, and afterward in all the pagan nations, the great drunken festival, called in Rome Saturnalia, was celebrated in commemoration of the birth of Tammuz (Bacchus) in the month of Thebeth, answering to our December. In Rome the whole month, and often a part of January, was considered as belonging to the Saturnalia, tho the 25th of December was specially devoted to the birthday celebration.” (See “Pagan Counterfeits in the Christian Church,” chapter IV.)

The festival was one of unbridled drunkenness and licentiousness, the giving of gifts, dancing and reveling, in honor of the false messiah, Tammuz. The fir tree and ivy garlands and wreaths were used, symbols of the old sun-worship. The apostate church thought it would be a master-stroke to turn the power and influence of that festival into the Christian church, so the falsehood was promulgated that Christ was born on the 25th of December, and the old pagan festival was baptized and called Christian, to the great dishonor of God and His church. And all the excesses of eating and drinking, the licentiousness and revelry, the giving of presents to friends, now connected with Christmas, are of purely pagan origin, and leave the world worse than they find it.

Christ was not born on that day. He began His ministry in the autumn at the age of thirty years. Luke 3:23. Six months from this time He attended a Passover, attending four during His ministry, at the last of which He was crucified in A. D. 31, at the age of about thirty-three years and six months. This would bring His birth six months from the last of March or first of April, or in our September or October.

“But is it not good to celebrate the birth of ‘Christ?’ one asks. Certainly. “Is it not well to ‘have a day set apart for that purpose?’—No, not unless God so directed; and He has never so done. The birth of Jesus was not for a day, but for all time. “The Word was made flesh” that men might hope and rejoice in its power every day, for all time. When we ourselves take a day to celebrate an event that God has given for all time, we lose sight of the real significance of the great fact, and worship an idol.

We should be grateful for the gift of “the Holy child Jesus.” It should soften and enlarge with gratitude every heart which contemplates God’s wondrous love, and Christ’s eternal sacrifice. But this should not lead us to give useless gifts, or gifts to those not in need. Let our gratitude to God for the gift of His Son constrain us to help the poor and the needy, the sick and the destitute, the ignorant and lost who do not know God’s wondrous love. Let the season this year be used in this way. Teach children the real Christ lesson to deny themselves for the sake of others. They will in thus doing be truly happier and less envious.