Friday, December 02, 2005

The "Real" Meaning Of Christmas

The Christmas holiday is a fun holiday to enjoy. It often brings out the very best in persons. Giving to others. Sharing. Concern for the poor. Some countries such as Japan, in which only a mere 1% of persons are Christian have one of the biggest Christmas holiday celebrations. Yet in this country, this purely secular holiday from derived from pagan traditions is yearly made into a political struggle by the religious right who falsely claim this day celebrates the birthday of Christ, which of course it never did.

The early Pilgrims who settled America outlawed this pagan holiday practice. In fact, as late as 1870 anyone in Boston who took this pagan day off could be fired from work. It was only very late in the nineteenth century in Alabama that this pagan derived secular holiday became officially recognized. Alabama was also an area with many Southern Baptists, a church that was founded by cotton and tobacco industry interests who establish a religion to justify slavery in America. It is not surprising that many present day Southern Baptist leaders such as Rev. Pat Robertson seek to mislead their followers into making Christmas a political cause by falsely claiming that it is the birthday of Jesus. The Southern Baptist faith was founded on misleading and abusing Scripture to support slavery, so misuse for other political causes is no great leap for this church. And despite the claims of Southern Baptist, or other modern Christian leaders, the truth is in fact that no good evidence exists whatsoever that Jesus was born on this date. The truth is the December 25, date only has a significance to pagan followers, and not Christians.

Around 90 AD, a pagan cult known as a mystery religion celebrating the pagan god, Mithra, began to flourish in the Roman controlled MidEast. This god was supposed born on December 25, which was seen as the winter solistice, or a date on which was the shortest of the year, with the least amount of sunlight. After that date, the days began to get longer, and since many pagan religions were based on sun worship, an increase in sunlight was seen as a rebirth of the sun. From this pagan history, it is absolutely absurd for some Christians to falsely contend that December 25, is the birthday of Jesus or even any true form of a Christian holiday.

The Scriptures even forbid holidays honoring God other than the Sabbath. Yet those who claim to be Christian often ignore this as well.

Instead of simply enjoying this holiday as a day off from work, or a reason to give to others, many in the Christian right are beginning their yearly attempts to make this into another political cause to promote more of their false propaganda, which is unScriptural, based on manmade beliefs and causes, and was nothing in common with God's true lessons from Scripture.

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