Merry Christmas!  It is a festive season.  Little children filled with anticipation and excitement.  Family is busy putting up decorations.  Boughs of holly and evergreen are assembled and placed about the house.  Trees are chosen and decorated with sparkling trinkets and ornaments.

    It is a season of giving and receiving presents, of sending greetings, and a time to sing songs.  Parades with special floats, sumptuous meals and merrymaking add to the festivity.  Houses are being decorated with greenery and lights, and gifts were given to children and the poor.  Yule logs and Yule cakes and fir trees, gifts and greeting all commemorate different aspects of this festive season and good fellowship.

    Then there is Santa Claus which is an important part of Christmas celebrations in most part of the world, bringing gifts to all good boys and girls.  The description may vary widely, but most often it is that of an elderly man known by old Saint Nicholas, Santa Claus.

    Santa Claus has become the most widely recognizable name of all people, even more popular than Jesus Christ.  There is no Biblical connection whatsoever between Santa Claus and any other of the mythical Christian-season gift- bringer and the birth of Christ.  The tradition is of human origin.

  The early church did not celebrate Christmas, and the New Testament scriptures are silent about any such celebration.  If celebrating Christmas did not come to us by the Divine authority of Christ, or His Apostles where did it originate and by what authority?

    Israel was warned in no uncertain words, “Learn not the way of the heathen” (Jeremiah 10:2).   The Samaritans in their early history mixed Heathen Worship with the Worship of Jehovah, but Jehovah did not accept their services.  History tells us that December 25 was celebrated long before the birth of Christ as the birth of “The Unconquered Sun,” and many of their heathen customs are practiced in the supposed Christian Celebration of the Birth of Christ today.  December 25 was not the birthday of Jesus Christ.  This is a fact known to many Bible students.  It was a Heathen Festival adopted, whitewashed and handed down to us, as the festival in honor of the Birth of Christ by an Apostate Church, (Catholic).  I want to call your attention to the fact that the New Testament Scriptures solemnly warns us of a great apostasy, and that heathen customs would be taught in the so called Christian Church (2 Thessalonians 2:2-12).  That apostasy or falling away was already working in Paul’s time and historians tell us that a great apostasy from the original doctrines and practices of the early Church began soon after the death of the Apostles, and many false Christians entered the Church and brought in heathen doctrines during the second and third centuries as well as later.  This great apostasy led to the establishing of a great Church organization that claimed Divine authority to make laws and to establish Holy Days; Festivals for God’s people.  The prophet Daniel foretold the rise of such a power or Church system (Daniel 7:25-26).  Jesus also warned that such was coming in Revelation chapter 17 and 18.  That corrupt Church is illustrated as a corrupt woman.  This happened in the days of the Roman Empire.  This apostate Church claimed to be the true Church.  She became the State Church of Rome and even created a great “Ecclesiastical Monarchy” that history calls the “Holy Roman Empire.”  This Church claimed Divine authority and enforced her decrees by the point of the sword for centuries.  Heathen customs were adopted, added to or substituted for the simple Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

    Christmas and Easter both are of heathen origin, with many of the usages in our “Christian” celebrations coming directly from customs of the heathen who honored their Heathen Gods and Goddesses in the winter and spring festivals.

    “At the Winter Solstice the Germans held their great Yule Feast in commemoration of the return of the Fiery Sun Wheel.”  Many of the beliefs and usages of the Romans relating to this matter passed over from Heathenism to Christianity and have survived to the present day.  The Apostate Church of Rome is the one who whitewashed the old heathen festival; the Winter Solstice, and handed it down to the people, as the festival honoring the birth of Christ.  Thus people are yearly celebrating this Heathen Festival, thinking they are honoring our Lord and Savor Jesus Christ!