Firstly here are a few basic truths: Santa Claus - Santa is an anagram of Satan. Xmas is about businesses trying to make money by selling us a lie! The Bible says: "The Lord Hates a lying tongue." Yet we tell our beloved children that a stranger in a red outfit (Father Christmas) flies through the sky, pulled by reindeer, delivering gifts from the North Pole! Absurd. 

     We’re seeing more and more attempts by people to defend the idea of celebrating the birth of our Lord Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus Christ) on December 25th, which tells me that more and more people are feeling uncomfortable about it because they know it is incorrect. Believers in the Lord are challenging the traditions that have been with us since the days of Constantine.

     Many proponents of Xmas are correct in pointing out that the Bible does not require us to celebrate the birth of Christ.  We have a command to celebrate His death and Resurrection via the Lord's Supper, and to acknowledge our decision to follow Christ through baptism. 

     WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY? There is little argument that the birth of the Lord did not take place in December, and most theologians seem to be coming around to the idea that the birth took place in Autumn - either during the Rosh Hashanah feast or the Sukkot. Both of these are celebrated during the September/October time of the year.  This calculation comes from both the descriptions given in the Biblical account and from historical records.

     However, this does not mean that we can take liberties with God's perfect order of things and celebrate whatever we want when we want, and expect God to adjust to our timetables. God gave the children of Israel feast days for a reason, and they all pointed to a picture that only the real Messiah could fulfill. By doing this, He made sure there would never be any mistake in identifying Who the real Messiah would be. Anytime the Israelites began to make changes to these times and seasons they got into BIG trouble!

     The reason John made these statements was because the changes in God's timetable were established back in the days of Nimrod, the man who was mentioned in the Book of  Genesis 10:8-12: Cush was the father of Nimrod, who grew to be a mighty warrior on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; that is why it is said, "Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the LORD ."The first centres of his kingdom were Babylon, Erech, Akkad and Calneh, in Shinar. From that land he went to Assyria, where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah and Resen, which is between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.  He was the son of Cush, who was married to a woman named Semiramis. 

     Nimrod killed his father, married his mother and fathered a son named Tammuz. Nimrod had many names - Osiris, Horus, Kronos, Saturn, Dionysus, Apollo, Molech, Baal, the sun god, and more. They were all designed to acknowledge that he should be worshipped as a god to the people.

     When he died, his son (Tammuz) was born on December 25th so Semiramis declared that Nimrod was god, and that Tammuz was the son of god and the rebirth of god. She gave him all his father's names and people began to celebrate the birth of god on December 25th. 

     Also, December 25th is the end of the winter solstice, so the most important day to worship the sun is on December 25th. They consider the sun to be reborn (that's when the days begin to lengthen, again, so the sun worshippers made that day the day that they worshipped the rebirth of the sun).  The worship of Tammuz and the worship of the sun were blended together. This is what was happening in Ezekiel 8:14-18. 

     Ezekiel 8:14-18 ¹⁴ Then he brought me to the entrance to the north gate of the house of the LORD , and I saw women sitting there, mourning for Tammuz. ¹⁵ He said to me, "Do you see this, son of man? You will see things that are even more detestable than this." ¹⁶ He then brought me into the inner court of the house of the LORD , and there at the entrance to the temple, between the portico and the altar, were about twenty-five men. With their backs toward the temple of the LORD and their faces toward the east, they were bowing down to the sun in the east. ¹⁷ He said to me, "Have you seen this, son of man? Is it a trivial matter for the house of Judah to do the detestable things they are doing here? Must they also fill the land with violence and continually provoke me to anger? Look at them putting the branch to their nose! ¹⁸ Therefore I will deal with them in anger; I will not look on them with pity or spare them. Although they shout in my ears, I will not listen to them."

     If the worship of the "son of god" (Tammuz) was on December 25th, you can see it wasn't difficult to deceive people who later lost the knowledge of the true Biblical timetable by trying to make it the Lord's birthday. The evergreen tree grew in the place where Nimrod was buried, so from that time people would cut down an evergreen tree, set it up in their homes and decorate it with silver and gold discs as a symbol of the son of god, fertility and the sun-god.  This is what was discussed in Jeremiah 10:3-4:

     Jeremiah 10:3-4: ³ For the customs of the peoples are worthless; they cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. ⁴ They adorn it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter. Jeremiah 8:1-3 ¹ " 'At that time, declares the LORD , the bones of the kings and officials of Judah, the bones of the priests and prophets, and the bones of the people of Jerusalem will be removed from their graves. ² They will be exposed to the sun and the moon and all the stars of the heavens, which they have loved and served and which they have followed and consulted and worshiped. They will not be gathered up or buried, but will be like refuse lying on the ground. ³ Wherever I banish them, all the survivors of this evil nation will prefer death to life, declares the LORD Almighty.'  Jeremiah 9:14 ¹⁴ Instead, they have followed the stubbornness of their hearts; they have followed the Baals, as their fathers taught them."

      So the tree in chapter 10 is just a continuation of the same theme.  As a fertility symbol, I will leave it to your imagination as to the male body part it represents.  I had this confirmed to me on one of my trips to Egypt by an Egyptologist.  You can see now why I decided I didn’t want that thing standing up in my home anymore. There are some variations of the above account, but the basics are the same throughout most cultures of the world.  You can find much of this information on the internet, and some of it can be found in encyclopedias. I think it is obvious that Christmas does not come from a background that a holy God would want to wrap His arms around and embrace as His own. It is everything that Jesus is not, and He would not want to be associated with it.

     The Christmas celebration isn't condemned only in the Old Testament.  Acts 7:43 made reference to "the tabernacle of Molech and the star of the god Rompha". God pointed out that He is not happy about these things and did not want His children to have any part of these festivities because it was not based on God's perfect order.  He didn't want His truths to be lost, and certainly does not want to share His glory with any false god. 

     Acts 7:43 ⁴³You have lifted up the shrine of Molech and the star of your god Rephan, the idols you made to worship. Therefore I will send you into exile' beyond Babylon. Molech was one of the names that was attached to Nimrod and Tammuz, and the star of the god Rompha was the planet Saturn which was Saturnalia, the worship that took place during December 25th.  Molech is referred to several times in the Bible as a god that was an abomination to the Lord.

     All this mess was in conflict with the truths of God.  After the Lord died for our sins and rose from the dead, the early church was growing in numbers and influence. After a few hundred years, Constantine became emperor of the Roman Empire. He realised many of the new believers in Christianity were not Jewish and were practicing the pagan customs of that time. Therefore, he commanded everyone to take events and people associated with Christianity and celebrate them on pagan holidays.  By doing this, he knew it would be easier to blend everyone together.  It was the "if you can't beat them, join them" idea, only it would be joining them on Constantine's terms - not God's.  Well, the blend worked so well that the church lost many of its roots and truths because of this assimilation. If Molech and anything associated with him was a stench in God's nostrils, why do we assist in keeping his memory alive by continuing to use his traditions, festivals and paraphernalia and attach them to the one that we love - Christ?