CHRISTMAS STEMS FROM SUN WORSHIP? The author of The Two Babylons identifies also the child, whose birth was so universally celebrated, with Nimrod, who built the tower of Babel, and says that he was worshiped by the name Osiris in Egypt, and Tammuz (the same one as Adonis the famous hunter) in Phoenicia and Assyria. (See page 56.) This Tammuz is also mentioned by the holy prophet, Ezekiel, who in a vision saw the women of Judah weeping for him. He is there spoken of in company with sun-worship. It was an essential principle of the Babylonian system that the sun, or Baal, was the one only god. (Notice, BAAL? As in Daniels day too?) When, therefore, Tammuz was worshiped as God incarnate, that implied also that he was an incarnation of the sun.--Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons, Loizeaux Brothers, page 96. This festival has been commonly believed to have had only an astronomical character, referring simply to the completion of the sun’s yearly course, and the commencement of a new cycle. But there is indubitable evidence that the festival in question had a much higher influence than this--that it commemorated not merely the figurative birthday of the sun in the renewal of its course, but the birth-day of the grand Deliverer...the Sun-God and great mediatorial divinity. -Ibid pp. 94, 97. In Egypt, the son of Isis, the Egyptian title for the queen of heaven, was born at this very time, ‘about the time of the winter solstice.’ The very name by which Christmas is popularly known among ourselves - Yule day - proves at once its Pagan and Babylonian origin. ‘Yule’ is the Chaldee name for an ‘infant’ or ‘little child’ and as the 25th of December was called by our Pagan Anglo-Saxon ancestors, ‘Yule-day,’ or the ‘Child’s day,’ and the night which preceded it, ‘Mother-night,’ long before they came into contact with Christianity, that sufficiently proves its real character. Far and wide in the realms of paganism was this birth-day observed. -Ibid pp. 93, 94 In this way we trace sun-worship back to Nimrod, whose worship was universal in the old time. Again we have good reason to say: Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Fact is people... The wassailing-bowl of Christmas had its precise counterpart in the Drunken Festival of Babylon; The candles, in some parts of England, lighted at Christmas eve and used so long as the festive season lasts, were equally lighted by the pagans on the eve of the festival of the Babylonian god, to do honor to him, for it was one of the distinguishing peculiarities of his worship to have lighted candles on his alters. The Christmas tree, now so common among us, was equally common in pagan Rome and pagan Egypt. In Egypt that tree was the palm tree; in Rome it was the fir; the palm tree denoted the pagan Messiah, as Baal-Tamar; the fir referring to him as Baal-Berith.... On Christmas day the continental Saxons offered a boar in sacrifice to the sun, to propitiate her. In Rome a similar observance had evidently existed; for a boar formed a great article of Saturn, as appears form the words form Martial, That boar will make you a good Saturnalia. Hence the boars head is still a standing dish in England at the Christmas dinner, when the reason of it is long since forgotten. Yea, the Christmas goose and yule cake were essential articles in the worship of the Babylonian Messiah, as that worship was practiced both in Egypt and at Rome.-- Ibid., pages 97, 100, 101.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 14:12:31 +0000