yomola:

Gamine and Horus are Hysterical, Christmas is a christian thing, Santa is not, Jesus is the reason for christmas. Christmas is a time to reflect on the hour God gave man his greatest gift, himself, via flesh, The giving of gifts symbolizes the 3 wise men from the Far East, giving presents to the new born king, Santa & Father christmas is some pagan creation that is getting very popular. fullstop

davidyIan:

@Poster

What will you be doing at christmas then ? you will be inside with your boyfriend asking him to go deeper deeper deeper?

no where in the bible did they celebrate it!

Where did u see 3 wise men in the bible

Relationship with Mithraism

There are many parallels between Mithraism and Christianity. These include the central figures of each religion having virgin births celebrated on the same date (December 25th), the stories of Christ and Mithra as children being visited by shepherds, the trinity, and the immortal soul. Mithraism was popular in the Roman administered regions before the advent of Christianity, and some have theorized that these themes were transferred to early Christianity by proponents of Mithraism.

However, writers of Christian apologetics have argued that because the Gospels were written before 100 and that since little is known of Roman Mithraism until after 100 that it is not possible to definitively state that Christianity borrowed any of its doctrines from Mithraism; some have even suggested it is more likely the flow was the other way. [6] Ronald H. Nash has stated "allegations of an early Christian dependence on Mithraism have been rejected on many grounds. Mithraism had no concept of the death and resurrection of its god and no place for any concept of rebirth -- at least during its early stages, During the early stages of the cult, the notion of rebirth would have been foreign to its basic outlook, Moreover, Mithraism was basically a military cult. Therefore, one must be skeptical about suggestions that it appealed to nonmilitary people like the early Christians."

(Just so you know, Mithras is not included in this section because he is not a 'suffering' or 'dying' deity) at all:

“Finally, even if we grant the importance of the ‘suffering god’ myth for mysteries, it is virtually impossible to include Mithras in this company…Once again we must acknowledge the special position of the mysteries of Mithras: they are mysteries without a ‘suffering god’ myth.

The Christian interpretation point (perhaps better phrased as "Christian paranoia"?) was certainly operative in Tertullian (c.200), with his accusation of 'imitation' against the pagan cults. He mentions their competing with Christian 'sacraments', by offering their own type of water baptism and oblation of bread, and even uses the phrase "a semblance of a resurrection" (in the Mithras cult). As we noted earlier, "full" bodily resurrection was a Christian distinctive (drawing scorn from Celsus and Porphyry), so it is certainly understandable how some Christian writers could get sensitized to 'see it' hiding in analogous images and references--especially phenomena that they personally were not involved in. Although they came from diverse pre-Christian backgrounds, they do not seem to know very much actual detail about the mystery initiations and beliefs, and may have been 'guessing' at this, just as the pagans 'guessed' at what went on at the Christian events (e.g. the Lord's supper was sometimes 'guessed' at being cannabalistic). And, that one couldn't be sure what exactly a pagan meant by 'resurrection' can be seen from this section from Celsus, in which he accuses Christians of (a) saying the same thing as traditional resurrection myths; and THEN THAT (b) our resurrection story doesn't make sense!

"The oriental myth of the dying and rising saviour-god (Tammuz, Bel-Marduk, Adonis, Sandan-Heracles of Tarsus, Attis, Osiris, the Cretan Zeus, Dionysus, and cf. the Mithras sacrifice and the double life of Kore) constitutes neither the native soil of the Gospel nor a true parallel to it. Egeirein and egeiresthai hardly occur at all in the relevant passages…. It is rather said that the god is delivered (Firm. Mat.Err. Prof. Rel., 22) or that he or the deliverance has come from Hades (Plut.Is. et Os., 19 [II, 358b]; Phot. Bibliotheca, 242 [MPG, 103, 1281a], or that he lives (Ps. Luc.Syr. Dea, 6). Indeed, sometimes the continued life is only partial (Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, V, 7 and 14 [A. Reiffenscheid in CSEL, IV]; Paus., VII, 17, 12), or perhaps even symbolical in the form of budding almonds or figs in the myths or wild jubilation and dramatic representation in the cults. Decomposition may take place (Diod. S., III, 59, 7). The resurrection of the god is not original in the Attis cult. Plut.Is. et Os., 11 (II, 355b); 58 (II, 374e) contests the historical character of the myths. Imaginary erotic pictures simply express the unfailing power of nature. The case seems to be rather different when we come to Dionysus. In him the Greeks perceive not so much the successiveness as the identity of life and death. We thus have an advanced identity mysticism of a speculative type. While the spiritual and ethical note is almost completely lacking in the eastern world, it is present here, but in a form very different from that of the NT, In neither case do we find the distinctive eschatological concept, e.g., of R. 6:10. For all the points of contact and mutual influence between the NT and the surrounding world, there is the decisive difference that in the NT the kernel and basis is spiritually and ethically significant history rather than nature myth or speculative myth. [TDNT: egeiro, ‘arise’]

We immediately run into a problem here--that of "who borrowed from whom?". If the NT was completed before the Fall of Jerusalem in 70 a.d., and the Mystery Religions (MR's) in the Roman Empire only started 'flourishing' after 100 A.D. (and were almost certainly not present/influential in Jerusalem before its Fall!), then any alleged dependence of the gospels on the MR's is a bit tenuous. This problem is most acute in the case of Mithras, but also applies to a lesser extent to the Hellenistic version of Isis/Osiris and Dionysos. So, Meyer, in his sourcebook about the subject [TAM:226]:

"If we turn finally to Mithras, we are left with a surprising dearth of relevant evidence. It has generally been assumed, as a result of our ideas of what a "mystery religion" should be, that Mithras should guarantee his followers some kind of transcendent salvation immortality, ascent to heaven from the "cave" which is the cosmos. Clear evidence, however, is lacking. This is all the more surprising because spiritual life, the immortality of the soul, and the ascent of the righteous to heaven are such well-established ideas in Iranian, Zoroastrian tradition. But this is not so with Mithras.

The transformational aspects of the cult of Mithras are more striking, as the initiate ascended through the seven grades. In addition to its cultic title (raven, male bride, etc.), each grade was correlated with a different planet: and the soul of the initiate was probably conceived as rising during his lifetime further and further away from the earth, finally achieving apogenesis or birth away from the material world. That is, the progressive transformation of the soul of the initiate in this life, on which much of the cult focussed, was probably conceived as continuing after death. This is a quite different conception from the ideas of immortality or resurrection that developed among some Jews by the first century A.D., and became particularly associated with Christianity - which offered not only a radically new life here and now, but also the hope of a bodily resurrection and a glorious after-life." [HI:RR1:289f]

There was a curious gaiety about the Christians; years later it was this warmth which attracted Augustine. The women were a particular power: Mithras, for example, did not admit them. It was thirdly in the very strength of conviction, in the simple directness which cut through the multitudinous choices offered by the ancient world, above all in the courage which faced martyrdom without flinching and wrung a grudging recognition from Celsus and Marcus Aurelius, and secured the conversion of Justin and Tertullian. It was finally in a message of hope for all, for from the first resurrection of Christ had meant for his followers a certainty of victory over death. As Nock put it pungently, ‘it was left to Christianity to democratize mystery

What some critics seem to be unaware of is that attempts to reconstruct the beliefs and practices of Mithraism face enormous challenges because of the lack of information that has survived. In fact, we posses no existing texts of their belief system that come from the Mithraic devotees themselves (one is left wondering what sources Chishti knows about that the rest of Mithraic scholars are unaware of). The only references that we have concerning the beliefs of Mithraism are found in early Church fathers (for the reason of defending Christ’s uniqueness) and Platonic philosophers who used Mithraic symbolism for their own philosophical ideas

According Nash, none of these representative "monuments for the cult can be dated earlier than A.D. 90-100."10 Nash identifies this as "one of the major reasons why no Mithraic influence on first-century Christianity is possible."11 Indeed, the bulk of out-side references for Roman Mithraism date between the 2nd-5th centuries