My thoughts on Christmas

As Christmas is around the corner a lot of things are going around my mind.

On every Christmas I've always had an advent calendar with chocolate in each door, well my Mum has given me two this year. I rememeber when she gave a calander which was a Playmobile version which had no chocolate and I was very upset. I was a boy at the time and I loved sweets to the point that I wouldn't have accepted anything else.

This Christmas my family have decided "not" to hang up the Christmas tree or have presents, at least not in the quantity that we've always had. Instead, we are thinking of relaxing ourselves on this occasion and spend the money we would have spent on Christmas presents and instead on helping the poor and homeless. This is probably a good thing as a recent study showed that the average American spending on Christmas gifts in November has jumped to $830 this year. The third highest amount spent on record, the first only $866 in 2007.

 http://www.gallup.com/poll/186620/americans-plan-spending-lot-christmas.aspx

Still the desire of certain items like Klonoa: Empire of Dreams still linger around in my mind like the form of a Christmas Wish list.

But I've developed some concerns about Christmas, in particular its origins which have a lot of Pagan influences and may not be anything to do with Jesus Christ. My understanding throughout my life was that the original intention of Christmas was to celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ. There is only one small problem: Was Jesus really born on December 25th? Not according to the Bible, or its scholars and certainly not according to historical experts, saying he was most likely born in the Fall, not December 25th.

http://biblelight.net/sukkoth.htm

http://www.christiananswers.net/christmas/mythsaboutchristmas.html

As mentioned earlier, Christmas in fact has a lot of Pagan influences and infact has been known to celebrate other Gods outside Christianity.

The day December 25th was chosen to worship the birth of Jesus because the Roman Catholic Church to Christianise the Pagan Festivals and the Wiccan Winter Solstice. E.g. in particular the festival of Saturnalia. Saturnalia involves the Roman God Saturn who was the God of Time and Harvest. During that time Roman Laws were lifted and Romans engaged in various behaviours that included property damage, sexual harassment and even human sacrifice which included children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkGfcwY5yKI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAj3VMhtfVQ

Christmas also seems to worship Nimrod the very individual responsible for trying to construct the Tower of Babel, which God prevented from completion by confusing the languages so that communication was impossible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel

Some Bible believing Christians have also labeled Santa as the Anti-Christ, when I say Anti-Christ, I don't mean that you're against Christ but rather you are in place of Christ. Beyond the fact that rearranging Santa's name makes it Satan, Santa has many characteristics that are borrowed from Jesus.

http://www.cuttingedge.org/news/n1132.cfm

Overall I've only described a tiny fraction of the origins of Christmas and why I have doubts onto whether I should celebrate it anymore. Everything about Christmas is considered displeasing to the Lord and He would call his people to come out of "Babylon". However, I can't convince my family about the truth about Christmas and I feel like I don't have the strength to walk away from it all.