Real Story of Christmas

I.
The Real Story of Christmas

By LAWRENCE KELEMEN, a Jewish author
I. When was Jesus born?
A. Popular myth puts his birth on December 25th in the year 1 C.E.
B. The New Testament gives no date or year for Jesus birth. The earliest gospel St. Marks,
written about 65 CE begins with the baptism of an adult Jesus. This suggests that the earliest
Christians lacked interest in or knowledge of Jesus birthdate.
C. The year of Jesus birth was determined by Dionysius Exiguus, a Scythian monk, abbot of a
Roman monastery. His calculation went as follows:
a. In the Roman, pre-Christian era, years were counted from ab urbe condita (the founding of
the City [Rome]). Thus 1 AUC signifies the year Rome was founded, 5 AUC signifies the 5th
year of Romes reign, etc.
b. Dionysius received a tradition that the Roman emperor Augustus reigned 43 years, and was
followed by the emperor Tiberius.
c. Luke 3:1,23 indicates that when Jesus turned 30 years old, it was the 15th year of Tiberius
reign.
d. If Jesus was 30 years old in Tiberius reign, then he lived 15 years under Augustus (placing
Jesus birth in Augustus 28th year of reign).
e. Augustus took power in 727 AUC. Therefore, Dionysius put Jesus birth in 754 AUC.
f. However, Luke 1:5 places Jesus birth in the days of Herod, and Herod died in 750 AUC four
years before the year in which Dionysius places Jesus birth.
D. Joseph A. Fitzmyer Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the Catholic University of
America, member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and former president of the Catholic
Biblical Association writing in the Catholic Churchs official commentary on the New
Testament[1], writes about the date of Jesus birth, Though the year [of Jesus birth is not
reckoned with certainty, the birth did not occur in AD 1. The Christian era, supposed to have its
starting point in the year of Jesus birth, is based on a miscalculation introduced ca. 533 by
Dionysius Exiguus.
E. The DePascha Computus, an anonymous document believed to have been written in North
Africa around 243 CE, placed Jesus birth on March 28. Clement, a bishop of Alexandria (d. ca.
215 CE), thought Jesus was born on November 18. Based on historical records, Fitzmyer guesses
that Jesus birth occurred on September 11, 3 BCE.
II. How Did Christmas Come to Be Celebrated on December

25?
A. Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness
celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman
law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the
weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose an enemy of the
Roman people to represent the Lord of Misrule. Each Roman community selected a victim
whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the
festivals conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the
forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.
B. The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia)
describes the festivals observance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these
customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and
other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and
most German bakeries during the Christmas season).
C. In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan
masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of
pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.[2]
D. The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy
this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalias concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus
birthday.
E. Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia. As Stephen
Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, In return
for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Saviors birth by assigning it to this
resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or
less the way it had always been. The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking,
sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.
F. The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that the early Christians who first
observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month,
but because the Heathens Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to
have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.[3] Because of its known pagan
origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts
between 1659 and 1681.[4] However, Christmas was and still is celebrated by most Christians.
G. Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by
the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced
Jews to race naked through the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reports, Before they
were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the
same time more amusing for spectators. They ran amid Romes taunting shrieks and peals of
laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed
heartily.[5]
H. As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the
ghetto in Rome were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the
jeers of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome sent a
petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual Saturnalia abuse of the
Jewish community, he responded, It is not opportune to make any innovation.[6] On December
25, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots
across the country. In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, and
many Jewish women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.
III. The Origins of Christmas Customs

A. Christmas Trees
Just as early Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas with the Saturnalia, so
too worshippers of the Asheira cult and its offshoots were recruited by the Church sanctioning
Christmas Trees.[7] Pagans had long worshipped trees in the forest, or brought them into their
homes and decorated them, and this observance was adopted and painted with a Christian veneer
by the Church.
B. Mistletoe
Norse mythology recounts how the god Balder was killed using a mistletoe arrow by his rival
god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna. Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human
sacrificial victim.[8] The Christian custom of kissing under the mistletoe is a later synthesis of
the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificial cult.[9]
C. Christmas Presents
In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelled their most despised citizens to bring offerings
and gifts during the Saturnalia (in December) and Kalends (in January). Later, this ritual
expanded to include gift-giving among the general populace. The Catholic Church gave this
custom a Christian flavor by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas (see
below).[10]
D. Santa Claus
a. Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CE and later became Bishop of Myra. He died in
345 CE on December 6th. He was only named a saint in the 19th century.
b. Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE
and created the New Testament. The text they produced portrayed Jews as the children of the
devil[11] who sentenced Jesus to death.
c. In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary
in Bari, Italy. There Nicholas supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, or
Pasqua Epiphania, who used to fill the children's stockings with her gifts. The Grandmother was
ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of the Nicholas cult. Members of this
group gave each other gifts during a pageant they conducted annually on the anniversary of
Nicholas death, December 6.
d. The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by German and Celtic pagans. These
groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and
Tiw. Woden had a long, white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each
Autumn. When Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a
beard, mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavy winter
clothing.
e. In a bid for pagan adherents in Northern Europe, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas
cult and taught that he did (and they should) distribute gifts on December 25th instead of
December 6th.
f. In 1809, the novelist Washington Irving (most famous his The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and
Rip Van Winkle) wrote a satire of Dutch culture entitled Knickerbocker History. The satire refers
several times to the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name,
Santa Claus.
g. Dr. Clement Moore, a professor at Union Seminary, read Knickerbocker History, and in 1822
he published a poem based on the character Santa Claus: Twas the night before Christmas,
when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were
hung by the chimney with care, in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there Moore
innovated by portraying a Santa with eight reindeer who descended through chimneys.
h. The Bavarian illustrator Thomas Nast almost completed the modern picture of Santa Claus.
From 1862 through 1886, based on Moores poem, Nast drew more than 2,200 cartoon images of
Santa for Harpers Weekly. Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from a
stern looking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock. Nast also gave Santa a home at the North
Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of the good and bad children of the world. All
Santa was missing was his red outfit.
i. In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contracted the Swedish commercial artist Haddon
Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa. Sundblom modeled his Santa on his friend Lou
Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubby face. The corporation insisted that Santas fur-trimmed
suit be bright, Coca Cola red. And Santa was born a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god,
and commercial idol.
IV. The Christmas Challenge

Christmas has always been a holiday celebrated carelessly. For millennia, pagans, Christians, and
even Jews have been swept away in the seasons festivities, and very few people ever pause to
consider the celebrations intrinsic meaning, history, or origins.
Christmas celebrates the birth of the Christian god who came to rescue mankind from the curse
of the Torah. It is a 24-hour declaration that Judaism is no longer valid.
Christmas is a lie. There is no Christian church with a tradition that Jesus was really born on
December 25th.
December 25 is a day on which Jews have been shamed, tortured, and murdered.
Many of the most popular Christmas customs including Christmas trees, mistletoe, Christmas
presents, and Santa Claus are modern incarnations of the most depraved pagan rituals ever
practiced on earth.
Many who are excitedly preparing for their Christmas celebrations would prefer not knowing
about the holidays real significance. If they do know the history, they often object that their
celebration has nothing to do with the holidays monstrous history and meaning. We are just
having fun.
Imagine that between 1933-45, the Nazi regime celebrated Adolf Hitlers birthday April 20 as
a holiday. Imagine that they named the day, Hitlerday, and observed the day with feasting,
drunkenness, gift-giving, and various pagan practices. Imagine that on that day, Jews were
historically subject to perverse tortures and abuse, and that this continued for centuries.
Now, imagine that your great-great-great-grandchildren were about to celebrate Hitlerday. April
20th arrived. They had long forgotten about Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. They had never heard
of gas chambers or death marches. They had purchased champagne and caviar, and were about to
begin the party, when someone reminded them of the days real history and their ancestors
agony. Imagine that they initially objected, We arent celebrating the Holocaust; were just
having a little Hitlerday party. If you could travel forward in time and meet them; if you could
say a few words to them, what would you advise them to do on Hitlerday?
On December 25, 1941, Julius Streicher, one of the most vicious of Hitlers assistants, celebrated
Christmas by penning the following editorial in his rabidly Antisemitic newspaper, Der
Stuermer:
If one really wants to put an end to the continued prospering of this curse from heaven that is the
Jewish blood, there is only one way to do it: to eradicate this people, this Satans son, root and
branch.
It was an appropriate thought for the day. This Christmas, how will we celebrate?

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I.

The Real Story of Christmas

II. How Did Christmas Come to Be Celebrated on December

III. The Origins of Christmas Customs

IV. The Christmas Challenge

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