Original article from http://go.to/antichristmas/
This article provides a detailed analysis of the origins of Christmas. It’s long but contains a lot of interesting information.
December 25th occurs about the time of the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. The shortening days were taken as a sign that the Sun was getting weaker. After the Solstice, the days begin to get longer ...... and pagan peoples thought that was an indication that the Sun was getting stronger. Thus, the Winter Solstice became the birthday of several gods: Attis, Frey, Thor, Dionysus, Osiris, Adonis, Mithra, Tammuz, Cernunnos and so forth. It is a solar holiday, marking the time that the sun becomes apparently stronger day by day.
Mithra, by the way, was born on December 25, of a virgin. His birth was witnessed by shepherds and magicians [magi]. Mithra raised the dead and healed the sick and cast out demons. He returned to heaven at the spring equinox and before doing so had a last supper with his 12 disciples (representing the 12 signs of the zodiac), eating mizd, a piece of bread marked with a cross (an almost universal symbol of the sun). Any of that sound familiar?
First of all, we need to establish from the beginning that December 25th is NOT the date of the birth of Jesus.
The year of the Christian Nativity must be ascertained by historical and chronological research, since there is no certain and harmonious tradition on the subject. The Anno Domini dating system, which was introduced by the Roman abbot Dionysius Exiguus, in the sixth century, and came into general use two years later, during the reign of Charlemagne, puts the Nativity Dec.25, 754 Anno Urbis, that is, after the founding of the city of Rome. Nearly all chronologers agree that this is wrong by at least four years. Christ was born 750 AU (or 4 BCE) if not earlier.
According to Matthew 2:1 (comp. Luke 1:5, 26), Christ was born “in the days of King Herod I, the Great,” who died, according to Josephus, at Jericho, 750 AU, just before Passover. This date has been verified by the astronomical calculation of the eclipse of the moon, which took place March 13, 750 AU, a few days before Herod's death. Allowing two months or more for the events between the birth of Christ and the murder of the Innocents by Herod, the Nativity must be put back at least to February or January, 750 AU (or 4 BCE), if not earlier.
We also have a Jewish festival near that date: Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights (another solar reference) which occurs on the 25th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev, approximately in December by the Roman calendar, and the Zoroastrian Yalda, the celebration of the victory of good over evil.
The Christian holiday was not always celebrated on December 25th, however. For the first three hundred years of the current era, there was no festivity of the birth of Jesus. Some churches celebrated Jesus' birthday in the spring time and some celebrated it on January 6 (Epiphany).
Early in the fourth century, the Roman church decreed that December 25 would henceforth be recognized as the birthday of Christ. The Eastern churches refused to accept Christmas until 375 C.E., and the churches in Jerusalem rejected the December 25 date until the seventh century. There are still some Eastern Rite churches that continue to celebrate the Epiphany date.
The Winter Solistice was the season of a major celebration of fertility in ancient Rome called Saturnalia, starting on December 17th. This honoured the good old days when the god Saturn ruled a supposed Golden Age, and there were no masters and no slaves, and everything was easy. Thus, it became a reversal-holiday, when the masters served the slaves, and a slave was chosen to temporarily rule the household. The Romans were civilized enough to not kill him afterwards, as seems to be the custom with such holidays in more primitive cultures. They also exchanged presents, were allowed to gamble in public, and in general had a good time. It was the greatest holiday of the year.
It should come as no surprise then that the Christian Church co-opted this seasonal holiday, celebrated by the city that ruled the world -and- celebrated by Christianity's major competitor (Mithraism). It was simply a very astute political move.
St. John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople at the end of the fourth century wrote: “On this day also the Birthday of Christ was lately fixed at Rome in order that while the heathen were busy with their profane ceremonies, the Christians might perform their sacred rites undisturbed. They call this (December 25th), the Birthday of the Invincible One (Mithras); but who is so invincible as the Lord? They call it the Birthday of the Solar Disk, but Christ is the Sun of Righteousness.”
This custom of the Feast of Fools was continued in medieval Western Europe, with a Lord of Misrule, mummers doing traditional plays, feasting with a boar's head, games, dancing and other such merriment. This could last for more than just Christmas Day, going on until at least Epiphany (January 6th) in many cases ..... these are our “Twelve Days of Christmas.”
Christmas even started out controversially in North America. Reverend Rel Davis writes…
“The festival of Christmas has always been a controversial one in Christianity. The Puritans banned Christmas altogether and during the Cromwellian period in England, anyone celebrating Christmas was jailed for heresy. Probably the most hated of all Puritan laws was the one abolishing Christmas and probably led to popular acceptance of royalty (nb: the Restoration) – at least the King allowed the masses to celebrate Yule!”
Now let's look at some Christmas customs:
The word Yule is derived from the Old Norse Jol or Jul thru Anglo-Saxon Geol to Middle English Yule. It means Winter Solstice.
The word Christmas derives, of course, from Middle English Cristes Masse or Christ’s Mass, that is, the Roman church’s standard ritual celebration. At the time Middle English was spoken, the Roman Catholic Church was pretty much the only game in town.
The night before, Christmas Eve, was called Modranect or Modranecht by the Germanic pagan peoples (this seems to be Old English / Anglo-Saxon, and apparently means Mother's Night). This is obviously in honor of the Mother Goddess who bore the solar Child of Promise.
The Magi, or the Three Wise Men: The Magi were, in antiquity, priests of Zoroastrianism ..... and reputed to be expert Magi-cians and astrologers. Mithraism is associated with Zoroastrianism much like Christianity stems from Judaism.
As shown in the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and in Mallory's Morte d'Arthur the pentagram is very much a Christian symbol too.
The Yule Log is pretty obvious. Sympathetic magic, with its rule of As in Heaven, so on Earth (a re-stating of the more usual wording of As above, so below) means that to have a blazing fire on earth would encourage the sun to grow stronger. Therefore, the Winter Solstice is a fire festival, with bonfires and Yule logs being lit to help the sun grow stronger between then and Midsummer.
Mistletoe is an old Celtic symbol of regeneration and eternal life. The Romans valued it as a symbol of peace and this eventually led to its usage as one of the common symbols of Christmas. Kissing under mistletoe was a Roman custom, due to its' being regarded as a symbol of fertility. Many primitive societies, such as the Ainu of Japan and the Wallas of West Africa also regarded the mistletoe with veneration.
If we go way back into history, to the time people refer to as pagan, that is where most of our Christmas customs came from. For example, the pagan practice of decorating the home during soltsice was christianized by the early missionary monks of St Benedict, under St Augustine himself, following the rules set down by the then, leader of the whole Christian Church, pope St Gregory. He told the monks to encourage the people of Britain to decorate their temples for the 'nativities of the saints' rather than to their earlier deities; and to celebrate likewise, eating the animals they had slain, for food for themselves, rather than for making sacrifices.
Gregory was a man way ahead of his time. He realised that the Church would make more converts by 'adding on' to what was already an inherent practice, rather than trying to eliminate everything pagan. However, the focus of these new celebrations was to be the Birth of Jesus.
The time of the year—following the harvest, and centering about the winter solstice—has almost universally been a period of festivity and religious significance in the northern hemisphere ages before the spread of Christianity. The date is undeniably pagan: even Catholic authorities admit that.