Sabbath 17/10/35/120

Dear Friends,

This week saw a humorous situation develop in Indonesia when one of the senior Imams called for the prohibition on the use of the term Merry Christmas being applied to people in Indonesia indiscriminately.

The call was rejected by one of the senior ministers of state on the grounds that it was a standard Christian festival. The Imam insisted it had nothing to do with the Koran and was prohibited. Neither really understood its origins and the fact that it was also prohibited by the Bible as a pagan festival. Jeremiah 10:2-8 shows that it is forbidden due to idolatry.

The fact is that it did not come into Christianity until the Fifth century CE in Syria in accordance with the resurgence of sun worship at the beginning of the Dark Ice Age. It has nothing to do with Christ or Christianity and was associated in Alexandria with the Mother Goddess in the cave who presented the infant of the Invincible Sun God at the winter solstice to show it was conquering the darkness and had begun to emerge victorious over winter.

The pine was sacred to this god who was termed Mithras or Attis or Adonis or Osiris in Egypt. The pine was an evergreen in the cold of winter in the Middle East and the North.

Over the last few years one of the Indian Tribes has been sending me a Christmas message and a request to solicit funds and contributions. I have sent then the details of the origins of this pagan festival and sent them also the paper The Origins of Christmas and Easter (No. 235) as well so they could understand what the Biblical position was. Instead they come back and accuse us of sending them so much material they cannot get my email off their books. The fact is that we sent them nothing except the email in response to theirs and then they abuse us. No one seems to understand that this festival is pure idolatry and was banned a number of times among the English speaking people.

It was banned under Henry VIII as a pagan festival and reinstated by the Catholic Mary Tudor. It was again banned by the Parliament of England under Oliver Cromwell and reinstated by the Scot Charles II when the Monarchy was restored.  It was also banned in the colonies of the US because of its pagan origins and fines were imposed on those who kept it.

It was restored by commercialism and embellished by the Americans. It is the crass commercialism of the festival that appeals to the Chinese and is tolerated by the Communists for that purpose.

Do not weary of telling people what it is and what its origins are.  It will be banished once and for all in a few years. Then the world will do as God orders with the festivals of the Bible and the Sacred Calendar.        

Pray we are able to educate the world very soon.

Wade Cox