CHRISTMAS   QUESTIONS

"CHRIST'S MASS"

Subject: Christmas –  a few questions about it asked recently of Lew White

Message from (name deleted):  "This appears to be my year to break away from observing christmas.  From what I have studied I believe that ceasing to observe christmas is part of "Coming out of her".  I believe that I have been called to stop participating in this man-made holiday and to start observing the appointed times of Yahuah.  I have already told my parents and grandmother and I can not say that this was an easy thing to do.  It was met with sadness as I expected.  I just now informed my wife's mother over the phone and she basically said that she "didn't feel her daughter should be with someone who doesn't want to be her family on christmas".  She doesn't understand why I cannot at least be with the family on that day.  Forsaking christmas has been a process over the past few years.   I know that there is no way that I would be able to confront these people in my life if it were not for His strength and encouragement.  If I were to ignore Yahuah's desire, I will live as a miserable coward not worthy of what He has called me to.  I also believe that this is a test and that Yahuah can use my obedience to Spiritually benefit my family.  I am assuming that you were brought up in a family that celebrated christmas.  If this was the case, do you mind sharing with me a little about your experience with your family when you stopped participating in christmas?"

1)  I believe that I am to cease from having anything to do with christmas, even if that means not even eating with my family.  Would you say this is accurate?

2)  Will you share with me some about your experience with your family when you stopped participating in christmas?

  

Dear brother (name deleted), 

   Like most people, I was raised celebrating Christmas as the “birthday of the Savior”. Because families are bonded by the closeness and love they share around the "holidays", to reject the holidays seems to be a signal they are being rejected. If we begin by going to them and explaining that we love them, but certain truths have convicted us to stop celebrating certain holidays, they may still feel insulted for several years. The mind of the flesh is very bonded to these holidays.

 This practice of Christmas under other names has been observed by Pagans as the rebirth of the sun deity for approximately 3000 years.  The last big shift in the meaning or application of the solstice festival occurred in about 525 CE (AD), when Dionysius Exiguous (a monk) was appalled at what he discovered being celebrated at Rome upon his visitation there.  He saw the raw, Pagan festival of Saturnalia in full swing.  He was from Scythia, north of the Black Sea, an area once occupied by the northern tribes of Israel that had fled there from the land of Samaria in 722 BCE, driven out by the Assyrians.  He recognized Pagan behavior, but chose to simply divert the “meaning” of the practice toward the birth of Yahusha, instead of the sun.

 Today we see the terms "festival of lights", and "solstice festival" used by the media, to disarm the low-information masses and humanists who love to keep observing the glittering winter holiday. "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays" have no connection to Yahusha, since He was born in the fall during the commanded festival called Sukkoth, one of the redemption shadows of things to come (there are seven of them).   

   The worship of Baal and his consort Asherah was wrapped-up in the practice and symbols of this festival originally dedicated to the re-birth of the sun deity, being nine months from the springtime fertility festival of Ishtar (Easter), a time when the sun was believed to impregnate the Earth with the rays of the solar disc.  As Christianity developed, these formerly Pagan festivals became reinvented so the idolatry would be concealed, down-played, or cloaked beneath new meanings  -  they essentially put lipstick on a pig and kissed it, believing it had changed into a beautiful woman. 

The Jesuit practice of “casuistry (Google that term) makes it possible to think about something in a completely new way, rationalizing and justifying it, so adapting a Pagan practice is thought to be “cleansed” as acceptable as long as the camouflage covers the old ideas well enough.  The wreath is a symbol of a womb, the tree is a phallus, and the balls are testacles  --  all liberally sprinkled with the tinsel which represents the semen of the solar deity.  These symbols are only “seen” for what they really are by those initiated in the occult, yet Yahusha told us that what is whispered in secret will be shouted from the rooftops.   To the Canaanites, the tree was worshipped as Asherah, and gifts were brought into the “groves” of trees and placed beneath them as offerings.

Goliath of Gath (a Philistine/Palestinian) would have certainly used the tree, balls, Easter baskets, and Maypoles seen today.  All of this is specifically against Dt. 12:28-32, but it is all well camouflaged and promoted to apply to the Messiah of Israel throughout the entire world.  People can live in denial of the truth for their entire lives, but most never have the opportunity to learn there is anything wrong.

 

My parents and other family members thought I had come in contact with a “cult” or had lost my mind when I first stopped going to the Christmas Day family get-togethers around 1986. They still don’t understand any better after over 20 years, but I always have hope they will come to understand my motivation for avoiding the Pagan practices specifically condemned by the Creator, Yahuah.  

 

All I can do is encourage you to avoid idolatry in all its forms (Acts 15:29), and embrace the faith once delivered to the saints, Yahuah’s Torah (the Covenant), which Yahusha seeks to write upon a believer’s heart.

 

In answer to your first question, I’d say that Yahusha would not go to a party or gathering that people were having that had at one time been based on sun worship (Baal), or excuse it like the Jesuits with mental acrobatics (casuistry).  So, completely ignoring the man-made “Christmas Day” is the best decision considering we’re going to have to give an account to the Creator of the heavens and the Earth one day. 
We also have to warn those who engage in such things, otherwise their blood (on the day of judgment) will be upon our heads.

   Needless to say, those who practice Christmas Day, Sun-day, and Easter Day are not exactly thrilled to hear about the true origins of the days from people like us.  They feel we are judgmental, harsh, and no fun to be around.  What they don’t see in us is the incredible freedom and clean-feeling we have because we have resisted the harlotry of idolatrous practices.  We’re strange to them, and probably have the stench of the Messiah upon us.  Peter told the former Pagans not to fall back into their idolatry, as a pig that has been bathed would return to wallowing in the mud, or a dog would return to that which it had once vomited up:

 

2Pe 2:21, 22: “For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the set-apart common delivered to them.  For them the proverb has proved true: ‘A dog returns to his own vomit,’ and, ‘A washed sow returns to her rolling in the mud.’”  

 

For more details, see www.fossilizedcustoms.com/christmas.html

The Lie

Parents lie to their child about a Santa Claus, 
as they were lied to by their parents, schools, movies, songs, commercials, and stores everywhere.

They keep inflating, compounding, and repeating that lie, and then when someone comes along and speaks Truth, it threatens to expose the lie. When we are living in a delusion, we can’t bear to hear Yahusha is the real Name, because that means the previous name we accepted (Jesus) is a lie.

Galatians 4:16 is about pagans and their weak and miserable principles:
“Have I now become your enemy,

having told you the Truth?” 
Challenge your Christian pastor to teach the Truth:
http://www.fossilizedcustoms.com/truthtradition.html

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Fossilized Customs HOMEPAGE