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No, Christmas is not pagan. Just stop.
God must be pretty weak compared to Satan if Satan is capable of corrupting absolutely everything about praising Christ and if God is utterly incapable of sanctifying even the smallest of human actions. I can't even burn a log in my fire or give a present without it being Satanic. If I were to believe the Jehovah's Witnesses' narrative about what's Satanic and what's not, I'd be forced to conclude that this world has been hopelessly and irrevocably lost from God's grasp almost from the words "Let there be". Satan is everywhere, and God is nowhere to be seen.
Only if you go by the Latin Vulgate version. The Greek says "Peace and goodwill to men".
"If you look for the light, you can often find it. But if you go looking for the dark, it is all you will ever see." Based on my conversations with many JW's on this forum, I'd have to say that you look more to find evil in things than you do to find what is good. This wasn't the way of St. Paul, who praised the pagan Athenians for their religious fervor, even for an unknown god. And even Jesus had some good words for the Pharisees; one of them (Nicodemus) was a close follower of His, and He instructed His disciples to do as the Pharisees said, but not as they did.
Then it would seem that St. Paul himself partook of the table of demons by praising the Gentiles for their religious fervor. Are you prepared to consign him to hell, too? Or what about when our Lord told people to do as the Pharisees said to do whilst keeping clear of their example? Did both St. Paul and Christ Himself partake of the table of demons?
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Yet you don't examine a single one of the article's claims or even attempt to debate it. Calling something "apologetics" doesn't invalidate it. Try again.
No. Saturnalia was held from the 17th to the 23rd. The 25th is not the solstice. The 25th was probably picked as the date for Sol Invictus because it's after the solstice--AKA, the sun has already begun to rise and shine for longer again.
Where in the world are you getting this from? The solstice is only one day, and that day can fall either on the 20th, the 21st, the 22nd or the 23rd, with the 20th and the 23rd being rare (and especially the 23rd). The sun doesn't stay in the same exact position for three days straight.
No, it starts doing that immediately after the solstice, which again falls anywhere between the 20th and the 23rd. There has never in history been a solstice as late as the 25th. It is astronomically impossible, unless your calendar drifts (but this is why we have leap days, to prevent this from happening.
Evidence of any other deities other than Sol Invictus having their feast days on the 25th? And I don't mean the Romans saying "Oh, [insert god here] is really just the same thing as Sol Invictus, so they're celebrated on December 25th too!" I mean actual records of other solar deities having a feast day on the 25th.
Evidence? Links to the direct source mythologies (and not some quackjob like Zeitgeist)? If you've ever read the Gospels, you will know that Jesus' dying and rising on the third day has nothing to do with solar imagery as it is presented in the Gospel narratives. It has rather to do with references to the Prophet Jonah, Christ being the New Adam, and Christ rising on the eighth or first day of the week.
This is about as blatantly false as you saying that the solstice lasts for 3 days. Again, even if you could find comparable imagery and narrative devices between Christ and pagan deities, that in no way implies causation. The argument you're making is like me saying that the Japanese emperor's familial descent from the sun goddess Amaterasu is an Egyptian story just because the Egyptians had roughly the same story for the origin of their Pharaohs as descendants of Ra.
Again, check yourself before you wreck yourself. Christianity originated within Judaism, was promulgated by Jews, was codified by Jews, and was founded by a Jew.
I myself don't have anything against paganisms. I find much of the symbology and the ethics absolutely fascinating, and it gives me another perspective through which to look at my own faith. But there are some who seem to think that anything not-Christian is 100% evil and has absolutely no truth and nothing worth redemption about it.
Alright, you're on track so far...
No they did not. Osiris died because Set was a jerk, and now he's just the lord of the dead, but the dead were still making it to the afterlife just fine before he kicked the bucket. Persephone's wedding to Hades and six months vacation from his realm have nothing to do with her dying, and her descent and ascent to and from Hades is associated with the changing seasons, not with people's place in the afterlife, or with anybody's resurrection from the dead. Likewise Baldr--he died because Loki is the literal worst, and again, everybody in Hel was already there before he died. Baldr's death didn't change the nature of the afterlife for anybody, and it is speculated that he may rise from the dead after Ragnarok to be one of the new generations of gods over the new earth when the cycle of creation and destruction begins again in Norse cosmology. But everybody who died before and during Ragnarok are dead and they're not coming back--again, Baldr is the only one who resurrects. His resurrection doesn't help anybody else to come back from the dead like Christ's does. It's certainly not a victory over death as it is in Christian eschatology.
You have to define this term reeeeaaally loosely to make this work. Most deities who aren't born of other deities are born out of natural or nonliving things like sea foam (Venus), a rock (Mithras), blood (the Olympians or the Titans, I forget which), or other things like that. Which, sea foam and rocks and blood don't have sex, so I guess that makes them virgins? Again, you have to dilute the term "virgin" to an almost meaningless level to make that argument work.
1: Those deities don't even exist in a Christian worldview, so this argument doesn't carry any weight to a Christian.
1: The festival of Sol Invictus didn't even exist until it was created in 274. St. Cyprian had already been dead for several decades in this time.
1: I'm sure many a pagan and animist would like a word with you about this.
This is factually wrong, as I have stated above with sources. Christmas was celebrated before this time. The only question is when it was split off from Theophany.
You mean outside of the fact that we're Christians, Christmas is our holiday, it's not synonymous with the ancient Roman festival of Sol Invictus, and we decide what our holidays mean, and not you or any conspiracy theorists?
Jesus birthday was placed on a solar deity day but the 3 day resurrection also just happens to fit so that type of resurrection was obviously influenced by solar cults.
