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Last Updated on :
Saturday, November 22, 2014

 

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The Origins of Christ-Mass:
Catholic-Paganism
By G.V. Growcott


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"Learn not the way of the heathen...for the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest...they deck it with silver and gold" --Jeremiah 10:2-4

This Page:
"Most Holidays Are Pagan-Catholic"

Page 2:
"The Time of the Year"
"The Pagan Foundation"

Page 3:
"Originally Babylonian"
"Saturnalia: Climax of Rome's Year"
"Buffoonery and Blasphemy"
"Sigallaria and Brumalia"

Page 4:
"When The Catholics Invented Christmas"
"How The Early Christians Felt"

Page 5:
"Reformation... Then Declension"
"Santa Claus -- Christmas Tree"
"The Mark of the Beast"

 

"Overcome evil WITH GOOD" (Rom. 12:21).

THE teachings of Scripture are directed toward developing an intense desire for that which is better, more powerful, stronger, holier, closer to divine principle and standard; toward the arousing of godly and spiritual yearnings that find their satisfaction and peace only in a constant upward effort toward conformity with the Perfect Example: off with the Old Man, on with the New.

The glorious struggle of life must not be viewed as an unhappy, burdensome, stoical battle against what we really desire. The secret is rather a gradual, joyful education and training of the inclinations toward BETTER things; an opening up of out natural, dark, ignorant minds to divine Love and Light and Holiness--

"Yet show I unto you a MORE EXCELLENT WAY" (1 Cor. 12:31).

"Overcome evil WITH GOOD" (Rom. 12:21).

God says to us, "Here is a BETTER, a more excellent Way." The life in the Truth is a GROWTH: a movement ever forward and upward; a progressive advancement toward greater light and fuller understanding. God desires us to want to get as close as possible to Him, and as far as possible away from the customs of the world: especially the superstitious and "religious" customs. If we are not deeply moved with this desire, there is little hope for us attaining the Kingdom.

Baptism is only the first step of a long journey, a bare beginning: to STOP at that point is suicide. We can all surely call to mind passages which emphasize this essential divine principle of growth and development and transformation --

"Be ye TRANSFORMED by the RENEWING of your mind" (Rom. 12:2).

"GROW in grace and knowledge" (2 Pet. 3:18).

"Put on the New Man which is renewed in KNOWLEDGE" (Col. 3:10).

"GROW UP unto him in ALL things" (Eph. 4:15).

"Every man that hath this Hope in him PURIFIETH himself" (1 John 3:3).

And so the man of God, through constant application to the enlightening Word, is gradually molded from weakness and ignorance to greater and greater strength of purpose, character and spiritual perception. We dare not remain simple "babes." Let us approach this subject from this point of view: eager to learn, to ascertain the true FACTS, to consider the holy spiritual principles which bear upon those facts, to put away anything unclean or even doubtful--that we may in all things better pursue the good, acceptable, perfect will of our holy God.

MOST HOLIDAYS ARE PAGAN-CATHOLIC

One thing immediately strikes us forcibly, which perhaps we may have never noticed before. That is, that most of the present historical anniversaries that the world keeps are ghostly hangovers from the time when the Mother of Harlots held undisputed sway over "times and seasons," and the "bodies and souls of men." AND that many of them were borrowed by the Catholic Church from paganism. Many, of course, are now only unfamiliar names to most of us: Candle-mass, Epiphany, St. Stephen's, Michael-mass, All Saints, Whitsuntide, Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, Plough Monday, Twelfth Night, and scores of others. But some still remain prominent, as grim relics of an age of gross and incredible superstition.

"SAINT" VALENTINE, for instance, was a romantically-minded bishop of the third century, martyred (at least according to legend) for performing "Christian" marriages against the laws of the Emperor.

"SAINT" PATRICK converted Ireland to Catholicism and immortalized the shamrock by using it to demonstrate the superstition of the triple unity of the "Trinity".

EASTER is named from a pagan Saxon goddess of spring. Many ancient heathen nations revered the egg as the symbol of the beginning of life: it is from Teuton mythology that rabbit-laid eggs appear among Easter superstitions. Dressing up in new clothes for Easter goes back to Constantine's time. The Encyclopedia Britannica says--

"The name Easter is a survival from the old Teutonic mythology. It is derived from Eostre or Ostara, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring...There is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament, or in the writings of the apostolic Fathers. The sanctity of special times was an idea absent from the minds of the first Christians."

 

HALLOWEEN: Of this, the Encyclopedia Britannica says--

"Halloween long antedates Christianity. History shows that the main celebrations of Halloween were purely Druidical [ancient Britain]. The Druids believed in the calling together of certain wicked souls on Halloween by Saman, lord of death. Upon the Druidic ceremonies were grafted some of the characteristics of the Roman festival in honor of Pomona [pagan Italian goddess of fruits and gardens] held about November 1st, in which nuts and apples, representing the winter store of fruits, played an important part."

 

And this became the Roman Catholic "All Hallows", or "Festival of All Saints," and was so passed on to a besotted world. The Encyclopedia Americana says—

"Halloween is associated in the popular imagination with the prevalence of supernatural influences, and is clearly a RELIC OF PAGAN TIMES."

 

CHRIST-MASS, too, we find is fundamentally of "religious" origin (if superstitious paganism can be called "religion"), but it is FAR from exclusively, or even principally, "Christian." Most of its innumerable customs, traditions, and superstitions are of pagan origin. But the mystery-working of the Catholic Church has greatly complicated them by the addition of priests and madonnas and holy waters, and signs of the cross.

We must recognize the whole corrupt Babylonian system as a total unit, all equally part of the same Apostasy. The better we perceive, the less we will desire to have any part in heathen customs. When, by study, we come to perceive fully, we shall be shocked and revolted at the idea of having anything to do with it. We shall find it repulsive. We shall want to get as far away from it as we possibly can. Anyone who GROWS in the Truth must inevitably come to this conviction. The tragedy is that many never grow.

We find, above all things, that "Christ-Mass" has come to us in its present form as basically and primarily a Roman Catholic institution. To this great system of iniquity it owes its consolidation, establishment, permanence and popularity.

 


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