CANTICLES:


Show me where scripture says:
1) Jesus was born on DECEMBER 25 ?

2) Where the apostles celebrate "Christmas" ??

OLAADEGBU:


What is the origin of Christmas celebrations? Why do we have them?

http://www.gotquestions.org/Christmas-origin.html

Answer: Christmas is a popular December holiday celebrated by large numbers of people all around the world. It has long been known as the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, which occurred over 2,000 years ago. However, not all who celebrate the holiday do so with Jesus’ birth in mind. In fact, there are many traditions associated with Christmas that actually began as a part of pagan culture.

The exact date of Jesus’ birth is unknown, as the Bible does not give specifics as to the dates of either His birth or conception. But in the second century A.D., a Roman Christian historian named Sextus Julius Africanus calculated Jesus’ birthdate to be December 25 (nine months after Africanus believed Jesus was conceived). In spite of the assumptions made in Africanus’s line of thinking, the date was widely accepted.

At that time, Roman culture already celebrated a holiday on December 25: Saturnalia, the winter solstice. This tradition honored Saturn, the god of agriculture, and was celebrated with merriment, feasting, and gift giving. When Rome eventually instituted Christianity as the state religion in the fourth century, the Roman church converted Saturnalia to a Christian holiday in order to commemorate Jesus’ birth. Christians have celebrated it as such ever since.

The question then becomes, “Since Christmas has its origins in pagan traditions, is it acceptable for Christians to celebrate it?” The fact remains that, although Christmas has some associations with a secular holiday, Christians still celebrate it to remember the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It may be a matter of conscience for some, for as Paul states in 1 Corinthians 10:23: “‘Everything is permissible’—but not everything is beneficial. ‘Everything is permissible’—but not everything is constructive.” There are many others who believe the holiday has been redeemed due to the deeper meaning it has been given. These individuals continue to celebrate Christmas based on Paul’s words further on in the passage: “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (verse 31).

Read more: http://www.gotquestions.org/Christmas-origin.html#ixzz3MjYEmp1x

OLAADEGBU:


What did Adam say to Eve on Christmas?

CANTICLES:
Show me where scripture says:
1) Jesus was born on DECEMBER 25 ?

2) Where the apostles celebrate "Christmas" ??

OLAADEGBU:
Christmas was once illegal in the US of A

Christmas is not Biblical at all! The truth is Christmas was illegal in America because it was a pagan holiday. The Pilgrims were Puritans, who believed that Scripture defined the holy days.

The Puritans didn't want anything to do with the day. Pagan-Christmas was disdained for decades. That is until 1856, almost 200 years after it's ban. It wasn't until Clement Clarke Moore's poem "A visit from St. Nicolas" was published in New York in 1823 that sentiments began to change. Today, baby Jesus is synchronized with the Saturnalia Festival.

From as early as 217 BC, Saturnalia was celebrated. Rome celebrated December 25 as the birthday of the sun god Mirthra, during Saturnalia (Sola Invicta). Sola Invicta assimilated aspects of many deities into its figure of the Sun King. It was the liveliest festival of the year and work was suspended. There was giving of gifts and houses decorated in greenery and lights. There were lavish banquets, entertainment, drinking and merriment during this festival. (Sound familiar?) Bringing trees indoors is a modern custom, but decorating outdoor trees with stars and sun symbols and using greenery indoors was common during Saturnalia.

https://www.facebook.com/Torah4Today/photos/a.1788060998134813/3094024980871735/

ifyken:
Who cares if Christmas is pagan. Are you saying pagan gods are stronger than our mighty GOD. If it has pagan origin then we will baptise it to form a new date. We don't care about the past because Jesus said"whatever we bind on Earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever we loose on Earth shall be loosed in heaven". So we thereby loose Christmas from it's pagan origin thank you.

Kobojunkie:
It does not work that way. It is sin to practice that which God has not commanded of you in His name. Such an act is akin to adding commandments to God's Law, an authority that belongs to No man. And since God did not give to us any Holidays in Jesus Christ - His New Covenant and Law in the Kingdom of God, it means God has sanctioned no holidays for His followers in Jesus Christ.

Instead, individuals are free to celebrate any pagan holiday provided they desist from attaching the name of God to it in any way or form.

ifyken:
1. When you were in school did you go to school on public holiday.
2. Did God sanction any public holiday?
3. Only weak christain worry about pagan stuff.the phone or computer you are using,please tell me where it is in the bible that god sanctioned it. Did you know that you are afraid of Christmas because of pagans. How weak in spirit you are. Is it pagans we should fear or the almighty God in heaven who is eternal,who says anything and it comes to pass,who was,is and is to come,who will say yes and no man can say no.

4. Know this and know peace, celebrating Christmas can not take you to hell. If you don't want to celebrate Christmas for some Reason maybe something bad happened in the past o Christmas or you are broke then use that reason. Don't try to say what God has not said.

5. Even Jesus cleansed all food. Therefore it stand to reason that all holidays have been cleansed.

6. If in Christmas you use that time to be fornicating or watching porn or masturbäting,that is when you can say your Christmas can lead you to hell

ifyken:


Who cares if Christmas is pagan. Are you saying pagan gods are stronger than our mighty GOD. If it has pagan origin then we will baptise it to form a new date. We don't care about the past because Jesus said"whatever we bind on Earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever we loose on Earth shall be loosed in heaven". So we thereby loose Christmas from it's pagan origin thank you.

Christmas’ origins and the December 25 date has many problems. Primarily, Christmas is not found in Scripture or any ancient Christian writings.

In 46 BC, when the Roman Julian Calendar was adopted, December 24 was the shortest day of the year. Therefore, December 25 was the first annual day that daylight began to increase. This is the origin of the rebirth or annual birthday of the Invincible Sun/Sol Invictus.

Sol and the other Roman emperors left imperial connection to the Solar cult pictured in coins. Sol is depicted sporadically on imperial coins in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, then more frequently from Septimius Severus onwards until AD 325/6.

Although, the December 25 feast existed before 312 — before Constantine’s said conversion to Christianity (he continued to honor the sun god Sol Invictus). In AD 274 Sol Invictus was the official sun god of the later Roman Empire and a patron of soldiers. In 354, the ascendant Christian church in the reign of his pious but unsavory son, Constantius II, found it prudent to change the celebration of the birth of Jesus from the traditional Catholic date (January 6) to December 25, in order to combat the pagan Sun god’s popularity—his “birthday” being December 25. (Frederick H. Cramer, Astrology in Roman Law and Politics, p. 4. Copyright 1954 by the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia).

From the mid-forth century on, after Constantine, we find Christians deliberately adapting pagan festivals, syncretizing them with Christian themes. A famous proponent of this practice was Pope Gregory the Great, who, in a letter written in 601 C.E. to a Christian missionary in Britain, recommended that local pagan temples not be destroyed but be converted into churches, and pagan festivals be celebrated as feasts of Christian martyrs. At this late point, Christmas acquired more pagan trappings.

It’s not until the 12th century that we find the first suggestion that Jesus/Yeshua’s birth celebration was deliberately set at the time of pagan feasts. A marginal note on a manuscript of the writings of the Syriac biblical commentator Dionysius bar-Salibi states in ancient times the Christmas holiday was actually shifted from January 6 (first set by the Catholics) to December 25 so that it fell on the same date as the pagan Sol Invictus holiday. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Bible scholars spurred on by the new study of comparative religions latched on to this idea (Prominent among these was Paul Ernst Jablonski; on the history of scholarship, see especially Roll, “The Origins of Christmas,” pp. 277–283.). They claimed that because the early Christians didn’t know when Jesus was born, they simply assimilated the pagan solstice festival for their own purposes, claiming it as the time of the Messiah’s birth and celebrating it accordingly.

In 1582 AD, Roman Catholic Pope Gregory the XIII adopted the current Gregorian Calendar, in order to eliminate the solar time shift (leap year) error introduced by the Julian Calendar. The original December 25 birth date was retained for all pagan sun gods by the Roman Saturnalia and Sol Invictus traditions; which were now labeled by the Catholic Church as the "Twelve Days of Christmas."

More recent studies have shown that many of the holiday’s modern trappings (Christmas tree, mistletoe, etc.), are taken directly from pagan customs, as Christianity expanded into northern and western Europe.

Yeshua said, "They worship Me in vain; they teach as doctrine the precepts of men.’ You have disregarded the commandment of God/Yahweh to keep the tradition of men.” He went on to say, “You neatly set aside the commandment of Yahweh to maintain your own tradition" (Mark 7:7-9).