From: herbertwarmstrong@cog-web-svc.com   
      
   How This Pagan Custom Got into the Church   
      
   Then how did this pagan custom creep into the Western Christian world?   
      
   The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge explains it   
   clearly, in its article on "Christmas": "How much the date of the   
   festival depended upon the pagan Brumalia (Dec. 25) following the   
   Saturnalia (Dec. 17-24), and celebrating the shortest day of the year   
   and the 'new sun'...cannot be accurately determined. The pagan   
   Saturnalia and Brumalia were too deeply entrenched in popular custom to   
   be set aside by Christian influence....The pagan festival with its riot   
   and merrymaking was so popular that Christians were glad of an excuse to   
   continue its celebration with little change in spirit and in manner.   
   Christian preachers of the West and the Near East protested against the   
   unseemly frivolity with which Christ's birthday was celebrated, while   
   Christians of Mesopotamia accused their Western brethren of idolatry and   
   sun worship for adopting as Christian this pagan festival."   
      
   Remember, the Roman world had been pagan. Prior to the fourth century,   
   Christians were few in number, though increasing, and were persecuted by   
   the government and by pagans. But, with the advent of Constantine as   
   emperor, who made his profession of Christianity in the fourth century,   
   placing Christianity on an equal footing with paganism, people of the   
   Roman world began to accept this now-popular Christianity by the   
   hundreds of thousands.   
      
   But remember, these people had grown up in pagan customs, chief of which   
   was this idolatrous festival of December 25th. It was a festival of   
   merrymaking, with its special spirit. They enjoyed it! They didn't want   
   to give it up! Now this same article in the New Schaff-Herzog   
   Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge explains how the recognition by   
   Constantine of Sunday, which had been the day of pagan sun worship, and   
   how the influence of the pagan Manichaeism, which identified the SON of   
   God with the physical SUN, gave these pagans of the fourth century, now   
   turning over wholesale to "Christianity," their excuse for calling their   
   pagan-festival date of December 25th (birthday of the SUN-god), the   
   birthday of the SON of God.   
      
   And that is how "Christmas" became fastened on our Western world! We may   
   call it by another name, but it's the same old pagan sun-worshipping   
   festival still! The only change is in what we call it! You can call a   
   rabbit a "lion," but it's still a rabbit, just the same.   
      
   Again from the Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Certain Latins, as early as   
   354, may have transferred the birthday from January 6th to December 25,   
   which was then a Mithraic feast...or birthday of the unconquered   
   SUN...The Syrians and Armenians, who clung to January 6th, accused the   
   Romans of sun worship and idolatry, contending . . . that the feast of   
   December 25th, had been invented by disciples of Cerinthus...."   
      
      
   Title: The Plain Truth About Christmas   
   Author: Herbert W Armstrong   
   Date: 1952, 1972, 1974   
   Type: Booklet   
   Type Media: PDF   
      
   https://cog-hwa.org/pub/bb/xmas.pdf   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)