Christmas: The Birthday of the Sun

Christians have kept the pagan gods of ancient Egypt, Rome, Iran, and India alive for 6,000 years through the celebration of Christmas.

Gabriel Seabrook f the contemporary Christian were to be told that the origins of Christmas have nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity and that the early Christians did not celebrate

the birth of Jesus, she or he would naturally be quite shocked. Christians might be equally amazed to learn that the word Christmas does not once appear in the Bible, that there is no biblical injunction to celebrate it, and that a person by the name of Jesus Christ did not live in historical reality. Yet, these are facts that a study of authentic history has unfailingly and repeatedly shown to be true and anthropol-ogists, archaeologists, and comparative mythologists have, of course, known them for many years. Unfortunately, this knowledge is rarely disseminated to the general public, whose traditional ideas of Christmas are founded on the slippery slopes of misinformation and disinformation. In order to discover the true meaning of this syncretistic holiday we must objectively examine the magico-religious cosmologies and ideologies of both ancient and paleanthropic cultures.

First, it must be understood that all myths, and the religions that emerge from them, arise from the human psyche, the earliest traces of which can be found in the fossil remains of the peoples who lived between 35,000 and 150,000 years ago: the Neandertals. From a psychological point of view, as Jung pointed out, the collective unconscious of humanity seems to contain "essential archetypes" which, out of psychological and biological necessity, exhibit themselves in every known religion, both prehistoric and modern. Of these "modern" religions, at least seven hundred separate cults have developed around the mythological figure of the savior-god Jesus and the Christian holy book, the Bible. From the Catholics, Mormons, and Baptists to the Unitarians, Methodists, and Lutherans, nearly a fifth of the world's population each year celebrates the primitive ritual of Christmas. Yet, amazingly, there is not a single shred of empirical evidence that a man named Jesus ever lived.' How

Gabriel Seabrook is an anthropologist, writer, and poet. This essay is an excerpt from his forthcoming book on the nature of religion and mythology.

do today's Christians rationalize this apparent inconsistency? Anthropology is perfectly suited to solving this uniquely Christian conundrum.

Students of comparative mythology and comparative religion are well aware that there have been thousands of "saviors" and "messiahs" created by humanity throughout history. This is hardly surprising: Our species has invented at least one hundred thousand religions over the millennia.2 Indeed, the savior myth has been found in nearly every culture around the world. We have many examples: Mahavira, a Jainist savior; Saoshyant, a savior-god of Zoroastrianism; Glooskap, savior of the Abnaki, an Amerindian people; and the savior of the Iranians, Mithra. Judaism, from which the Christian Jesus myth partially emerged, was no exception—the ancient Jews themselves having assimilated the idea from the pagan religions of Egypt, Persia, Canaan, and Mesopo-tamia. Numerous other religions as well, such as the Aztecs, Buddhists, and Hindus, have also created savior-gods who were born of virgins, died, and then ascended into heaven.

What is the modern Christian to make of all this? The reader may decide. But as University of London professor G. A. Wells states, "If [Jesus] had really lived, early Christian literature would not disagree so radically as to what kind of person he really was."3 Furthermore, we might ask, if such a man did not in fact exist, why, where, and when did the annual observance of his birth begin? As with so many aspects of ancient religion and mythology, it began with our neighborhood star, the sun.

The profound importance of the sun to the diverse peoples of prehistory cannot be overstated. Quite understandably,

it was regarded as the creator of all life and was worshiped as such by both hunting and cereal cultures. From the Greeks, Chinese, and Scandinavians to the Irish, Haitians, and Amerindians, thousands of solar cults have come and gone in the vast panoply of our species' supernatural belief systems. For the prescientific agrarians living ten thousand years ago, the difference between life and death was marked by the success or failure of their agricultural harvest. Through the use of magic, myth, fertility rites, and supplication rituals, they hoped

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to appease the sun-god who they believed controlled the planting, sprouting, growth, and harvesting of their crops. Thus, it was from out of the annual life and death cycles of domesticated vegetation and the changing seasons that the gradual belief in a godlike figure who governed these events (by dying and being resurrected) quite naturally came into being. Clearly, the savior concept, on which the modern celebration of Christmas is based, originated from just such Neolithic vegetation and solar cults.

Six thousand years ago, the Copper and Bronze Age people of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas believed that the sun moved around the earth. Not knowing that the earth rotates on its axis around the sun, it appeared to them that it was the sun that slowly changed its position in the sky as the seasons progressed. Once every six months, on June 21 (the longest day of the year) and December 22 (the shortest day of the year), the sun seemed to change direction and move toward the equator. The ancient observers of this phenomena called these periods "solstices," from the Latin word soltitium, meaning "sun standing still," for it seemed to them that the sun stopped momentarily on these two days as it reversed direction (in actuality, a terrestrial optical illusion).

In ancient Egypt, the primary solar cult surrounded the god Horus, ruler of the sun and sky, who was married to Isis, the goddess of fertility. According to Egyptian mythology, Horus was born on December 25, a day of mystical sacrality already celebrated for millennia before the invention of Christianity. By the time of the early Romans, several thousand years later (500 B.c.E.), the honoring of Horus's birthday had become one of the most popular traditions in the area of the Mediterranean basin. The Romans conveniently borrowed this ancient Egyptian custom and incorporated it into their own eschatologies and mythologies. Such appropriation between cultures was, and still is, an extremely common

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Drawing by Tom Flynn

practice among the world's religions, including Christianity, as we will see. Like the Egyptians, the Romans celebrated this particular time of year because it meant the return of longer days, which began on December 22, the winter solstice. To them this "return of the sun" represented a time of joy and feasting, for the great fall harvests were over and the storehouses were full. And because it was the start of winter, the lengthening days also marked what seemed to them to be the rebirth of the sun (later to be thought of as the "resurrection of the Son"), and the hope of warmer weather ahead.

One of the many nature deities worshiped by the pagans of the Iron Age (2000 B.c.E.) was Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture and the sowing of seeds. Quite naturally a celebration arose around the harvested crops that Saturn was believed to have dominion over. Saturday, the seventh day of the week, would come to be named after this Roman god. Eventually, an annual festival called "Saturnalia" was held in his honor every year on the winter solstice. Each December 17, the Saturnalia festivities began. The usually strict social rules of Roman conduct were loosened and a wild state of sexual debauchery reigned. The similarities between the Roman's Saturnalia and the American Mardi Gras can hardly be overlooked: Both celebrations last for a week or so; schools, courts, and businesses close; parties are held, and gifts are exchanged; and drunken and promiscuous behavior abounds. In addition, the Romans were not allowed to quarrel, the roles of slave and master were reversed, and criminals were not executed. An intriguing religious holiday indeed!

On December 25, however, all of the riotous activities of the former week would end, and on this, the final day of celebration, the Natalis Solis Invicti, or "Birthday of the Unconquered Sun" was celebrated. Though the sun had reached its lowest point in the sky three days earlier on the solstice, it wasn't until the 25th that it appeared to be rising

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again. On midnight, priests clad in long white robes would enter an underground cave sanctuary and there ascend the steps of the temple of Mithras as altar boys lit candles and incense. A great feast, the Brumalia, was prepared and presents were exchanged. The temple was the Roman center of worship and, after the earlier week of sensual debauchery, religious celebration now began in earnest. Mithras was the most wide-spread and popular god in the Roman Empire at this time, and not surprisingly, Mithraism was also the predominant religion. It held such dominance that it reigned for many hundreds of years before the first Gnostic Jesus cults arose. Indeed, it lasted well into the fourth century *C.E., nearly sup-planting the early Christian church. Who was this powerful savior-god Mithras, arch rival of Christianity's legendary messiah?

T ike the symbols, gods, and myths that accompany all i Jreligions, Mithras had his beginnings in the human psyche:

the collective unconscious of an ancient culture. This culture was India, a civilization already well established by the year 2000 B.C.E. One of the many Hindu deities who was honored and revered was Mitra, god of the sun and caretaker of the world. Around 1,500 years later, in 450 B.C.E., the Persian ruler of Iran, Artaxerxes, incorporated the Hindu god Mitra into his country's own religion, Zoroastrianism. The mythic figure was renamed "Mithra." As the cult of Mithra spread across Asia, it gained in popularity. One of the minor characteristics of Mithra was his role as a warrior god, who hurled life-destroying arrows and incurable diseases at his enemies on the battlefield. Both the soldiers and the common people of Rome found this tough, violent god especially appealing, and by 100 B.C.E., Mithra had joined the hundreds of other deities of Roman mythology as the sun-god "Mithras."

Mythologists have established that the Jesus myth was, in large part, based on the legend of Mithras. Since the emergence of Mithras predates the invention of Jesus by many centuries, it is vital to our knowledge of Christmas to understand the essence of the mythic story of this once popular god and what he meant to the people who worshiped him. At one time, Mithras, like any proper supreme being, lived in the sky above; that is, in "heaven." As he watched the suffering of humanity far below he was touched with compassion, whereupon he descended to Earth to help alleviate some of the tortured agonies that these wretched mortal creatures were enduring.

It was on December 25 that Mithras, carrying a torch in one hand and knife in the other, was born of a virgin. His birth was witnessed by numerous shepherds who spread the word of his nativity far and wide. Mithras's entire earthly sojourn thereafter was one of benevolent deeds and kindness towards his followers. When he felt he had accomplished his life's mission, he held a last supper with the closest of his disciples and then returned to his place in heaven. The followers of Mithras believed that Mithras would return to Earth again near the end of the world, at which time he would judge the sins of all humanity. After a ferocious battle with the evil god Ahriman (from the Iranian term Angra Mainya, meaning "destructive thought"; also the origin of the Hebrew

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demon-god, Satan, meaning "adversary'), Mithras would then lead his chosen people across a burning body of water to a life of immortality and joy. As many Christians do today, Mithraists prepared themselves for the second coming of their savior by mastering different levels of spiritual initiation or attainment. Christians now term these "holy orders": deacons, bishops, monks, nuns, elders, priests, curates, and so on.

In addition to the yearly observance of the birth of Mithras on December 25, there was also a weekly celebration in honor of this god of the sun. As its name implies, Sol-day (i.e., Sun-day, the first day of the week) was the sacred day on which this service took place, a service in which Mithras was addressed as Dominus, the Roman word for Lord. So powerful was the religious influence of the "Lord" and his religion, Mithraism, that, by the decline of the western Roman Empire in the third and fourth centuries C.E., it had spread all the way to Britain and had become a seemingly permanent part of the fabric of Eurasian spiritual thought.

As with most other religious groups of the time, the Jews also celebrated on December 25, for this was their Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah). A spectacular banquet was held in honor of Judas Maccabeus (middle first century B.C.E.), who, it was said, conquered the pagan King Antiochus IV of Syria in 164 B.C.E. Historical records seem to show, however, that even this celebration was originally a Jewish holiday in observance of the sun and the winter solstice.4 Meanwhile, there were other influences at work, moving the pagan world ever closer to Christianization and the emergence of the Christmas holiday.

Around 240 C.E., Mani (c. 216-276 C.E.), a Persian sage, created a religion, Manichaeism, based on ideas borrowed from Mithraism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism. Mani considered himself the Paraclete or comforter (Jn. 14:26), and with his twelve disciples sought to convert the Eastern world to his teachings. Such actions would later lead outraged Zoroastrian priests to crucify the unorthodox spiritual leader. Interestingly, however, one of the mystic teachings of Manichaeism was that the sun-god of pagan belief was identical with the sun-god of Christianity. Indeed, Jesus seems to have at one time been known as the "Sun of Righteousness."5 Though the more orthodox Christian sects today reject this concept, of course Mani was correct, as modern archaeology and comparative mythology and religion have shown. In fact, it was just such Manichaeistic thought that gradually helped smooth the way for the hundreds of thousands of pagans that were now converting to Christianity. As these newly baptized followers of the Jesus cult exchanged religions, they brought with them thousands of years of traditional pagan customs and practices. In this way the celebration of December 25 was gradually transformed from the birthday of the sun to that of the Son. The festivities and rituals of Saturnalia and Mithraism, by now so familiar to them, were brought along as well and incorporated into the celebration of the birth of the Christian savior-god, Jesus. The first tentative observance of "Christmas" had begun.

Numerous other symbols and rituals from the pagan world were brought over to Christianity and to the commemoration of Christmas. The figure of the Virgin Mary suckling the

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infant Jesus was actually a blend of two deities: the Roman goddess Diana, virgin goddess of chastity, childbirth, and the moon, and the Egyptian goddess Isis, mother of Egypt, who was depicted on ancient tomb walls nursing her child the sun-god Horus; Joseph was patterned after Seb (both names seem to have similar linguistic origins), the Egyptian earth-god, protector of Isis, and foster father of Horus.6 The Egyptian phallic sign of life, the ankh, became the Christian cross. The legendary founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, were transformed into the biblical saints Peter and Paul; Constantine's birthday, December 25, was incorporated, along with Saturnalia, Horus's, and Mithras's birthday, into the observance of Jesus' birthday.? The Three Kings, the stable, the crib, the manger, and the Star of Bethlehem all have obvious astrological origins: All are in fact, deeply embedded in ancient Egyptian, Buddhist, Hindu, Chinese, Persian, Greek, and Jewish mythologies, predating Christianity by countless centuries.

The accoutrements of animistic ritual, so familiar to those contemporary Christians who attend church services, were also brought along by the converting pagans: the burning of incense and candles; the wearing of robes and vestments by the clergy; sacraments, in which the blood of the once-sacrificed human or nonhuman animal is today replaced by bread or wafers (the "body of Christ") and wine or water (the "blood of Christ"); chants and hymns; and the giving of presents to the honored god (today known as church tithing).

With the establishment of the Roman Catholic church by Emperor Constantine (c. 280-387 C.E.) in the middle of the fourth century C.E. the old gods of the pagans would seem to have been finished. But such was not to be the case. In fact, paganism not only did not die out, it had a spiritual rebirth under the guise of Christian symbolism, doctrine, ritual, and myth. As we have seen, it was the increasing numbers of pagans converting to the Jesus cults, bringing with them the old gods, that gave Christianity its solid pagan foundation. Modern-day Christians may need to remind themselves that the figure of Christ himself was wholly pagan in origin. Here, after all, was a human-invented man-god of ancient origins: A mythic deity who took on human form, was born of a virgin, performed supernatural acts, and was crucified and resurrected—identical in every respect to the many hundreds of other savior-gods, from other cultures throughout history.

Pope Julius I (c. 309-352 c.E.) seems to have been the first to decree that December 25 be celebrated as the

"Mass of Christ." The earliest documented reference we have that December 25 was known by the word Christmas came shortly after the death of Julius I in 354 C.E. One hundred and fifty years later, Christmas was made an official Roman holiday by Emperor Flavius Justinian (483-565 C.E.). By the seventh century the celebration had spread across the European continent. Others, the Saxons, Celts, Druids, Scandinavians, and Germans, all contributed various legends to the celebration of Christmas as the centuries passed: the Christmas tree, once an ancient Egyptian phallic symbol; mistletoe, used in fertility rites; the Nativity, based on ancient Egyptian sun-god legends; the Star of Bethlehem, actually

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the star Sirius, known then as the "Herald of the Sun," used in a common pagan custom announcing the birth of gods and rulers; the crib and manger, ancient Egyptian symbols for birthplaces; the stable and animals, Greek and Egyptian astrological myths connected with the sun signs Capricorn, Virgo, and Taurus; the Three Kings, an Egyptian astronomical allegory concerning the three stars of Orion's belt; holly, a symbol of immortality; and wreaths, mince pies, puddings, and the Yule log, all sun symbols. We have a myriad of traditional holiday foods as well, such as goose, from the Egyptian word sa, which stood for both "goose" and "son"8, and turkey, a culinary descendant of the goose. All found their way into the festivities of Christmas, each one firmly rooted in the pagan religions of great antiquity, thousands of years old.

In the tenth century, Vikings began arriving on the continent of North America, an area already inhabited by thousands of Amerindian cultures, peoples who had crossed the Bering Straits land bridge perhaps forty thousand years earlier. By the sixteenth century, Caucasoid explorers from Europe began permanent settlements on American soil. These early European invaders, however, were not as enthusiastic about celebrating Christmas as Christians are today. In fact, from 1659 to 1684, the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony forbid the celebration of Christ's birth in any manner.9 Strangely, its official observance in North America was almost totally unknown until the middle of the nineteenth century. Why?

The starchy Christian fathers of the Puritan colonies viewed the observance of Christmas as a sacrilegious English import for which there was no biblical injunction. But more important, they considered it a vain, heathenistic, and vulgar exercise: Indeed, they well knew that the idea of Santa Claus emerged from pagan folk legends surrounding magic and the occult. Apparently there are numerous Christians who are still of the same sentiment today. The Worldwide Church of God for instance, a strict fundamentalist sect, publishes flaming diatribes concerning the "immorality" of celebrating the birth of Christ. 10

If we were to use history as a guide, however, December 25 would today be known and celebrated as the Mass of the Sun, that is, "Sunmas." For in the six thousand years that December 25 has been used as a specific day for religious celebrations, only a fraction of that time has it been thought of as a purely Christian holiday; and this itself was a recent development, beginning only late in the nineteenth century.

Actually, it is rather curious that Christmas is celebrated by the 350 million Protestants of the world. After all, the "Mass of Christ" is Roman Catholic in origin, a church that the Augustinian monk Martin Luther (1483-1546) "protested" against in 1529, inaugurating the great Reformation of the sixteenth century. The worldwide population of Catholics, now numbering nearly one billion people, would seem to be the only Christian group who should properly be celebrating this holiday. Nonetheless, Christmas is not the sole property of the Roman Catholic church, nor even of Christianity.

As we have seen, every facet of Christmas is ultimately pagan in origin, dating far back to the first civilizations and

(continued on p. 60)

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(Christmas, cont d. from p. 17) beyond into the mists of prehistory. For in reality Christmas is a combination of the birthday of hundreds of ancient mythic sun-gods, assorted heathen deities, and historical pagan rulers. Christians may perhaps like to think that paganism is dead, trampled into oblivion by the holy cross. But nothing could be further from the truth. The very essence of Christianity, its teachings, myths, rituals, holidays, its many pagan-styled gods and goddesses, its "saints" and symbols, are all founded on concepts of non-Christian origin. The name "Christ" itself may be taken as a good example.

The word is actually a title that finds its origins in Babylonia during the time of Chaldean rule, around 1000 B.C.E. One of the words of the Chaldeans used for their sun-god was Chris. (In Hebrew, the word for sun is heres, an equivalent to the Chaldean Chris.) The Greeks bor-rowed this Chaldean title to use in their word Christos, meaning "anointed." Placing olive oil on one's head was a common practice of consecration, used often in religious rites among ancient peoples (1 Sam. 10:1; 1 Kings 1:39). Traditionally, the olive has long been associated with the sun. Its oil was probably used originally in connection with sacred rituals surrounding the sun-gods: The oily sheen of the anointed person's head (the halo) seems to have begun as an allusion to the brightness of the golden sun."

Furthermore, the linguistic parallels between both the names "Jesus" and "Christ" and that of numerous other ancient savior-gods are obvious: the Greek god Bacchus; the Roman god Mithras; the Hindu god Krishna; the Egyptian god Horus; and the Greek god Zeus. Such similarities have been observed by archaeologists, hierologists, and biblical scholars for many centuries. How can such closely corresponding names, from such widely dissimilar cultures and periods in history, be accounted for if they are not all mytho-logical in origin?

It must be quite evident to the interested student of religion and mythology that the "sun" in the sky above gradually came to be the "Son" on the earth below, a process that took

many thousands of years. In truth, the minor deity of Christianity, Jesus, is an indistinguishable offspring of the messiah-savior-god invented by early Jewish and pagan Gnostics; a mythic figure who in turn arose from the far more primitive solar-gods of our oldest civilizations. The human psyche, with all its complex, rational capabilities, seems reluctant to discard the childish notion that there are supernatural beings above who control the events of human life; who descend from heaven above to aid humanity, die, and are reborn, promising great rewards to those who "believe." Yet Christianity itself, as we have plainly seen, is of earthly origins: Even the legend of the "Christ" seems to have its earliest roots in Africa, where the highly superstitious minds of the ancient Egyptians created innumerable cryptic symbols and myths—religious arche-types so powerful that they have not lost their intrigue, appeal, or grandeur in sixty centuries.

And so here Jesus the Christ remains to this day: a pagan wolf in Christian sheep's clothing. But in the end, it matters little whether we count ourselves as pagan, secular humanists, Jewish, or Christian, for December 25, the winter solstice, remains truly the birthday of the sun.

Notes

1. G. A. Wells. The Historical Evidence for Jesus (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1988).

2. Edward 0. Wilson. On Human Nature (New York: Bantam Books [by arrangement with Harvard University Press], 1978), p. 176. (0riginal source, Anthony F. C. Wallace.)

3. G. A. Wells, op. cit., p. 197. 4. R. J. Condon. Our Pagan Christmas

(Austin, Texas: American Atheist Press, 1989), pp. 6-7. (0riginally published by the National Secular Society, London, 1974.)

5. James George Frazer. The Golden Bough. (New York: Collier Books [Macmillan Publishing Company], 1922), p. 417.

6. R. J. Condon, op. cit., p. 15. 7. John Romer. Testament (New York:

Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1988), pp. 230-231.

8. R. J. Condon, op. cit., p. 20. 9. Richard Shenkman. Legends, Lies, and

Cherished Myths of American History (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc. [Per-ennial Library], 1988), pp. 140-141.

10. Herbert W. Armstrong, Keith W. Stump, and John Halford. The Plain Truth About Christmas (Pasadena, California: Worldwide Church of God, 1952, 1985, 1986).

11. R. J. Condon, op. cit., pp. 12-13. •

(Humanity and Morality cont d. from p. 29) humanity and morality, which was expressed in the way mass demonstra-tions were conducted without gross violence. After the memorable demon-stration in Prague on November 17, 1989, when I was detained for the last time, there was no bloodshed, not a single shop-window was broken, and no motor car was set on fire.

I believe that this simple fact stands for other commitments of our people. We do not want to found a new state based on injustice and violence but on the ideals of humanity, morality, and liberty. I understood that one of my most important duties as president of the Federal Assembly was to support with legal acts the moral vigor of these ideas. We have passed bills to make irreversible the Helsinki agreement guaranteeing civil rights and freedoms—meaning the freedom of speech, conscience, assembly, emigration and return, religious confes-sion, enterprise, and so on. By passing these bills Czechoslovakia has taken her place among developed countries. After the elections we will and must introduce free market economics. Without eco-nomic prosperity there is no social security, human dignity suffers, and liberty and humanism get lost. We will and must pass further bills securing legal rights and just security for all citizens.

We shall not only catch up to other modern nations but we must react to new conditions of economic and political pluralism and of the development of national sovereignty. With this work we shall accomplish the new democratic constitution. I am glad to say that we are finding support for our efforts at creating a new world order in which humanitarian ideals, human freedom and dignity, morality and truth will find their realization.

I have often meditated on why force and violence can occasionally defeat humanity and truth. I have come to a firm conclusion: Violence does not know what morality is. Violence is essentially immoral and consequently inhuman, and by this fact it is doomed. Even if it survives for several years it cannot last. Let me say that I personally, with my lifelong experience, consider morality and humanity the supreme ideal, which gives sense to human life. •

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