this is something that has really bothered me for 3 years...?

Christmas and Easter are Pagan holidays.

Story of Christmas

A. Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong 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.

B. The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’s observance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he 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 most German bakeries during the Christmas season).

C. In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.[2]

D. The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’ birthday.

E. Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia. As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.” The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.

F. The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that “the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”[3] Because of its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681.[4] However, Christmas was and still is celebrated by most Christians.

G. 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]

H. 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.

The Origins of Christmas Customs

a. Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CE and later became Bishop of Myra. He died in 345 CE on December 6th. He was only named a saint in the 19th century.

b. Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament. The text they produced portrayed Jews as “the children of the devil”[11] who sentenced Jesus to death.

c. In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy. There Nicholas supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, or Pasqua Epiphania, who used to fill the children's stockings with her gifts. The Grandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of the Nicholas cult. Members of this group gave each other gifts during a pageant they conducted annually on the anniversary of Nicholas’ death, December 6.

d. The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by German and Celtic pagans. These groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden –their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw. Woden had a long, white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn. When Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a beard, mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavy winter clothing.

e. In a bid for pagan adherents in Northern Europe, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas cult and taught that he did (and they should) distribute gifts on December 25th instead of December 6th.

f. In 1809, the novelist Washington Irving (most famous his The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle) wrote a satire of Dutch culture entitled Knickerbocker History. The satire refers several times to the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name, Santa Claus.

g. Dr. Clement Moore, a professor at Union Seminary, read Knickerbocker History, and in 1822 he published a poem based on the character Santa Claus: “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there…” Moore innovated by portraying a Santa with eight reindeer who descended through chimneys.

h. The Bavarian illustrator Thomas Nast almost completed the modern picture of Santa Claus. From 1862 through 1886, based on Moore’s poem, Nast drew more than 2,200 cartoon images of Santa for Harper’s Weekly. Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from a stern looking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock. Nast also gave Santa a home at the North Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of the good and bad children of the world. All Santa was missing was his red outfit.

i. In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contracted the Swedish commercial artist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa. Sundblom modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubby face. The corporation insisted that Santa’s fur-trimmed suit be bright, Coca Cola red. And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, and commercial idol.

I do not know the religion but there are a couple of them that do not celebrate Christmas as for why I could not tell you because most of the same religions just celebrate Jan 1 as a holiday for passing out gifts so they most truly are celebrating Christmas and they can believe {because its a choice] that they are not by simply doing the same as we do just on other days some religions even go as far as to use birthdays for such presents as you would see at Christmas. Basically its all different choices and everyone has to choose who they are I do not believe any religion is wrong its simple a choice

As for the pagan thing this is the first I have heard of this and I am Neo Pagan so I have always been told from all religions no matter how they celebrate it they are celebrating the birth of there God!

Back in the day it was decided that Jesus's birthday should be celebrated around the time that certain Pagans were already celebrating the birth of their own God. I mean, why not join the party? It's not that serious. Nobody knows when Jesus's birthday is. Christmas stopped being about religion a long time ago, but if YOU want to celebrate Jesus on that day, go for it. It's just a day like any other. You can pick another if you like. Enjoy yourself. Horrible parents force children to worry about things that are far too grown up for them to comprehend rather than letting them just be children and have fun.

Actually this person's statements are partly true. When mainstream christianity came upon the world there were a lot of peoples in the world that were pagans. This is not the same thing as devil worship. Think of Native indians. They did not worship the devil but were considered pagans because they had a beleif system that was earthy in type and did not include God and Jesus. Any way.. if you research the beginnings of christian holidays you'll find out that they were used to take place of the pagan holidays and were made over so that it would not be a huge and imposible task for people to change over thousands of years of beleif. Do your research. Almost all religions started as pagan religion and even the christmas tree was a pagan tradition. The Catholics adapted a lot of Roman and Greek holidays by changing pagan gods/goddes to God, Jesus and even saints. even easter was changed from the original astara with it's own god celebrating new beginnings and spiritual changes. Even christians changed the way God was worshipped from the Jewish way of worship from the seventh day to Sunday which is our first day in the calendar because Jesus was crucified and died on Friday and rose on Sunday. Also remember the calendar that we know went through major changes in different parts of the world at different times. Some cultures have different calendar beginnings that are factual but confusing to us using the calendar as we now know it.

If you do the research it becomes quite fascinating and you learn a lot. Maybee this will also help your best friend and his wife. Don't refute her religion, nobody likes that, but expand her mind to freedom of religion coming from the many, many different changes. Also tell her the (Jewish) Moses gave the law from God himself but Jesus came to deliver us from the law and from us needing to go to a priest with sacrifices to attain forgiveness from our sins. Also, did you know that women were not allowed into the temple unless they were special(I've only read of 2 women being in the temple) and even then they had to have their head covered because they were considered inferior to men. It's actually a huge discussion.

Hope this helps

Lisa

She is mostly right. The history of chritmas came about the time of Constantine. He was a Pagan and December 25th was an important day for the pagans. There were a lot of conflicts between them and the chritians. So he got the two sides to agree to accept Dec 25th as a single day to worship both of their gods. It was a political move to gaive him more power. Jesus was not born in december, but in or around the first of April. That is fact. But this whole thing of gift giving and things that are now associated were never a part of the early christian church. His resurrection was celebrated by a taking of a sacrament, but his birth and death were not. Truly, celebrating Christmas now is historically an important day in Pagan history and not christmas. No problem, it is the idea people say. Wrong. How would you feel if your chief enemy (Satan is the chief enemy and the pagans are a religion originated by his promptings to insult God) created a day and someone said lets me it the day we celebrate your birthday. Would that offend you? I would think that God is greatly offended not only that we celebrate this day of pagans but how we do it. All the drinking and giving each other drinks mixed in with a few christmas songs doesn't make up for the offense. What Jesus did for us is much more than either his birth or his death. Why celebrate anyones death, do you have a party every year for your grandmothers death? His entire life brought us eternal happiness and likewise every day showed reflect our gratitude by giving reverence and our gift of servitude to HIM through our faith and good works

Christmas was orginally a celebration by pagans of the longest night of the year. When the Romans invaded England they changed it into a festival to celebrate the birth of Jesus. When the British invaded, conquered and settled in other countries they took christmas with them.

Yes, christmas was started by pagans - the whole tree and presents and lights and such - thats all part of the pagan ritual. However, its a perfectly good and legitmate christian holiday now.

Seventh Day Adventists don't do anything fun. (Thats my own personal opinion) Your friends wife certainly sounds strange - surely it would have made more sense to share her views with you even if you didn't agree with them.

Hey,

I've been in a similar situation. Many things that are associated with Christmas were actually used by pagans in their false worship, but now has a new meaning for Christians. We use Christmas to remind ourselves of Christ's birth, and if that's what you're using these things for, I don't see a problem. Now, getter her to see that might be a problem. Good luck with that. (No sarcasm intended)

Also, here's a page with some info on it's origins. Hope it helps.

http://de.essortment.com/christmaspagan_rece.htm

As much as I know Christmas is Pagan. and Seventh Day Adventist is a cult. SDA's here celebrate Christmas, if she doesn't celebrate Christmas, think of it as a good thing. Maybe she is a real Christian and not an SDA after all.

Some historians have said that Christmas was a pagan religion and that many aspects of the Christian religion is based in Pagan religion. Christmas is supposed to be the day of the first Roman Emperor's(Constantine)birth or death; I cannot really remember as I do not pay too much attention to Roman interests unless it is forced.

It is well-established that Christmas and its attendant features are pagan in origin, having been borrowed from the pagan festivals in connection with Saturnalia and the god Mithra. Most people readily acknowledge that they do not celebrate this festival with paganism in mind, but rather, as a way to honor Christ. But important questions are being overlooked. How does Christ feel about it? How does God feel about it? Are they honored this way? At 1 Corinthians 10:21-22, Paul plainly teaches us that we cannot eat from God's table and eat from the table of demons. God has never tolerated the mixture of pure worship with false. Our motives do not minimize the danger inherent in this.

Suppose you bake a beautiful cake for your child. Scrumptious yellow cake. You want luscious chocolate icing. You have none. So you spread excrement on the top. Bite into it. Is it good? Are you frowning in disgust? Of course you are. Why? Because – your motivation does not matter, the creamy way that the excrement goes on top does not matter. What you have done is put waste on the top of the cake. To God, all forms of paganism is like excrement. And mixing it with his pure worship, no matter how sincere we are, is like spreading dung on top of that cake. Look at what the Hebrews did in the wilderness. At Exodus 32:3-5, it reports that they made a golden calf, calling it their god who led them out of Egypt. They knew that was not so, course, just like we know December 25th is not Christ's birthday. Still, they adopted this pagan calf business from Egypt . Then they said "tomorrow there is a festival to Jehovah God." In other words, we're not honoring the calf – we are honoring God. Do we see what they were doing? Mixing pure worship with paganism. How did God feel? Well, how many were put to death?

Mixing paganism or any sort of false religion with pure worship has always been, and always will be, unacceptable to God.

I don't know all the details but its true that the Catholic church incorporated many pagan ritual into Christianity that carry on to this day. From these things we get the Christmas tree, the Easter bunny and Easter eggs because Easter is named after a fertility god. Don't worry about it though, because what matters to God is the intent of our hearts. Are we worshiping Esther or are we worshiping Jesus? If we aren't even aware of who or what Esther was but we are celebrating Christ then as far as I know we're good with God. There is a verse that says something about those who are weak in the faith. That we shouldn't participate in what they consider a sin if it causes them to doubt God or lose their self control. This verse relates the story about eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols. It doesn't hurt you to eat the meat, but if it causes the weaker Christian to begin to worship the god the meat was sacrificed to then you shouldn't eat it.