• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

prohibition against christmas trees?!

jewscout

Religious Zionist
Well actually it's really talking about idols but what does it sound like it's talking about?
Jeremiah 10:1-4 JPS version 1917 said:
Hear ye the word which HaShem speaketh unto you, O house of Israel;
thus saith HaShem: Learn not the way of the nations, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the nations are dismayed at them.
For the customs of the peoples are vanity; for it is but a tree which one cutteth out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman with the axe.
They deck it with silver and with gold, they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.
I always thought this was kinda funny. Now don't think i don't like christmas trees, i do they are very pretty, but it is rooted in european paganism.
Just a fun fact i thought people would get a kick out of.:woohoo:
 

HelpMe

·´sociopathic meanderer`·
the jesus fish or the set-apart spirit as a dove

De4:16-18

herefore, diligently guard yourselves, for you saw no form when
yahweh.gif
spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, 16lest you should do corruptly and shall make for yourselves a carved image in the form of any figure – the likeness of male or female, 17the likeness of any beast that is on the earth or the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the heavens, 18the likeness of any creature that creeps on the ground or the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth.

:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:
 

painted wolf

Grey Muzzle
I always feel bad for the trees.. left to slowly starve to death for the amusement of others then just tossed like so much junk. If I ever do a Christmass tree again it will be a potted one that I can keep alive to enjoy for years.
Anyway this does point out that most people don't REALY know where thier customs come from. What is good to adopt and what isn't when joining a new culture?

wa:do
 

kreeden

Virus of the Mind
I've been saying for years that the only way I will have a tree in my house is if one attacks me and it is a matter of self-defence . ;)
 

Druidus

Keeper of the Grove
So are the days of the week... And most holidays... Are you to prohibit them? Much in Judaism and Christianity is based off of paganism...
 

jewscout

Religious Zionist
Druidus said:
So are the days of the week... And most holidays... Are you to prohibit them? Much in Judaism and Christianity is based off of paganism...
No we shouldn't prohibit them at all i just think it's kinda funny:jiggy:
 

HOGCALLER

Active Member
Jewscout,

Let me help you stir the pot. Below is something I originally post in another forum but that has relevance here also:

Before you could have Christmas celebrations you had to have birthday celebrations. Perhaps the best way to properly understand Christmas celebrations is to first properly understand birthday celebrations.

Today there are some people that decline to celebrate their birthdays for reasons of conscience. Does that seem strange? Actually, if you had been a member of the early Christian church, you would have refused to celebrate your birthday.

“The celebration of the anniversary of an individual’s birth, though customary among the ancients, was originally frowned upon by the Christians,” notes William S. Walsh in his book Curiosities of Popular Customs. Historian Walsh goes on to quote from early Christian writings on the subject, saying: “Thus Origen, in a homily on Leviticus xii 2, assures his hearers that ‘none of the saints can be found who ever held a feast or a banquet upon his birthday, or rejoiced on the day when his son or his daughter was born. But sinners rejoice and make merry on such days.”’

Where did early Christians get their distaste for birthdays? Partly from the Jews. “In the Bible there is no instance of birthday celebrations among the Jews themselves,” points out M’Clintock and Strong’s Cyclopædia, adding: “In fact, the later Jews at least regarded birthday celebrations as parts of idolatrous worship.”

Birthdays and Astrology

Of course, early Christians had reasons of their own for not celebrating birthdays. Back then birthdays had strong connections with pagan religion that are less noticeable today. “The custom of commemorating the day of birth is connected . . . in its content, with certain primitive religious principles,” points out the Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics. What principles?

Spiritism, for one. “The Greeks believed that everyone had a protective spirit or daemon who attended his birth and watched over him in life. This spirit had a mystic relation with the god on whose birthday the individual was born. The Romans also subscribed to this idea. They called the spirit the genius. This notion was carried down in human belief and is reflected in the guardian angel, the fairy godmother and the patron saint.”—The Lore of Birthdays, Ralph and Adelin Linton.

Another reason for early Christians to avoid birthdays was the connection with astrology. “The keeping of birthday records was important in ancient times principally because a birth date was essential for the casting of a horoscope,” say Ralph and Adelin Linton. To early Christians astrology was associated with Eastern religions, Roman Stoicism and the twisted thinking of the Gnostics. Christians wanted no part of that!

Change in Church Attitude

Eventually the nominal church’s opinion of birthdays changed. Why? Because the overall attitude of the church toward the Roman world changed, not surprisingly, when persecution ceased under Emperor Constantine. Nominal Christianity, much corrupted from the apostolic version, became the state religion. Now what happened to her previous hostility to anything pagan?

As the church “emerged from the storm of persecution into the sunshine of imperial favor,” wrote 19th-century clergyman Henry J. Vandyke, “she passed from the lower conception of a church saved out of the world, to the higher conception of a world to be saved through the ministry of the church.”

What was the result of such unscriptural reasoning? “Then it was that, opening her heart to the humanity of religion, she began to draw near to the humanity of Jesus, and to seek with eager interest for the day of His birth, that she might make it holy.” If Jesus’ birthday could be celebrated, what about other birthdays? William Walsh makes the connection, saying: “With the celebration of Christ’s Nativity returned the celebration of the nativities of ordinary mortals.”

There we see the connection between birthday and Christmas celebrations. Many historians believe that there is an even stronger connection. In fact many historians, both secular and religious, claim Christmas is not Christian at all, because it did not originate with Christ. It predated the Christian era by many centuries. Shortly after the Flood the celebration of birthdays and what would later become Christmas had its beginning. It began with Nimrod, grandson of Ham the son of Noah, a wicked, ruthless dictator, responsible for the great organized worldly apostasy from God that continues to this day. In contempt for God and all decency Nimrod married his own mother, Semiramis. After his untimely death, his mother-wife, Semiramis, taught the lie that her husband-son was a spirit god. She claimed a full-grown evergreen tree sprang overnight from a dead tree stump, which symbolized the springing forth to new life of the dead Nimrod. She taught that on the anniversary of his birth, which was December 25, Nimrod would visit the evergreen tree and leave gifts upon it. The historian, Professor Hislop, says: “Now the Yule Log is the dead stock of Nimrod, deified as the sun-god, but cut down by his enemies; the Christmas-tree is Nimrod redivivus—the slain god come to life again.”—The Two Babylons, pages 97, 98.

This is the beginning of Christmas with its spirit. This is also the origin of the yule log, the Christmas tree, the celebrating of birthdays, the spirit of exchanging gifts, the spirit of feasting and merrymaking, visits and salutations, jocularity, revelry and drunkenness. All of this is an outgrowth of the first lie, nurtured by the spirit of Satan the Devil, who told it. In Eden to Eve he said: “You positively will not die. . . . and YOU are bound to be like God.” (Genesis 3:4,5) Like Eve, Semiramis believed Satan’s lie and proclaimed Nimrod as a spirit god. With this proclamation a wild celebration began on his birthday that has stuck down through the centuries to our day. In the Western world it is called Christmas.

Nimrod became worshiped as the “divine son of heaven,” “the Messiah, son of Baal the sun-god.” Devil-worshiping pagans believed that life and immortality proceeded from Nimrod, and so they worshiped the never-dying sun in the heavens as the personification and representation of Nimrod’s “divinity.” Mother and child, Semiramis and Nimrod, became chief objects of worship. The pagan world idolized this combination. In Egypt they were worshiped as Isis and Osiris, in Asia as Cybele and Doius, in pagan Rome as Fortuna and Jupiter-puer. Even in China, Japan, Tibet and in other non-Christian lands is to be found the counterpart of the Madonna, held sacred in Christendom. Pagans adored these symbols long before the birth of Christ, yet Christendom hails these as Christian and adoringly speaks of them as “the beautiful spirit of Christmas.”

Does It Matter Today?

God, on the other hand, commanded his people: “Learn not the way of the heathen, . . . For the customs of the people are vain.” (Jeremiah 10:1-3, KJV) God’s declaration against pagan gods has not changed, nor has his attitude toward pagan worship, because, says he: “For I, Jehovah, change not.” (Malachi 3:6, ASV)

The Bible studiously avoids the recording of the date of anyone’s birthday, nor is there any Biblical record of birthday celebrations by God’s servants, either before or after Christ. The conspicuous silence of the Bible regarding birthdays is powerful testimony that the same were not kept, that they were frowned upon as pagan. Origen of Alexandria (A.D. 185-254) wisely discerned: “In the Scriptures sinners alone, not saints, celebrate their birthday.” The only birthday celebrations mentioned in the Bible are that of Pharaoh, when a man was hung, and that of the adulterous King Herod, whose step-daughter Salome danced to make the celebration “merry,” yes, merry by having the head of John the Baptist chopped off.

‘But why pick on a little thing like birthdays and Christmas?’ some might object. Because Christians believe that the Bible principle “the person faithful in what is least is faithful also in much” applies here. (Luke 16:10)

Besides, while celebrating a birthday or Christmas might seem to be ‘a little thing,’ a big principle is involved. The fourth-century church began to accept birthdays only after a major change in her thinking. As noted above, clergyman Vandyke referred to the Scriptural principle that the Christian church is “no part of the world,” (John 15:19; James 1:27) as a “lower conception.” But Christians who base their belief on the Bible cannot subscribe to such thinking!

Nowhere do the Scriptures authorize the church to reject Jesus’ statement that “you are no part of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.” (John 15:19) Where did the church get the authority to reject Jesus’ words as a “lower conception” and to follow a self-proclaimed “higher conception,” that the church should become part of the world in order to save it?
 

Hope

Princesinha
Though Christian, my parents never allowed our family to 'celebrate' Christmas or Easter, solely because both holidays are rooted in paganism. Therefore, we never had Christmas trees, decorations, visits to Santa, egg-hunts, Easter bunny, and the like. We never had birthday 'parties' either ( still don't ), and even stopped putting candles on our cakes when my parents discovered that this too was rooted in paganism. I lived a very strange, sheltered existence! :eek:
 

may

Well-Known Member
HOGCALLER said:
Jewscout,


[/QUO

Good post, i enjoyed reading that ,it was very informative ,certainly something to think about if we are christians who are trying to live our lives as the early christians did
 

Scuba Pete

Le plongeur avec attitude...
I always get a kick out of that scripture JS... it DOES sound like a Christmas tree.

Hope, I have heard of many sects banning Christmas and Easter, and I actually agreed with them for some time. Then someone pointed out that we spend the ENTIRE year trying to get people to think about Jesus and then two trying to get them to NOT think about Jesus.

Philippians 1:15 It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. 16 The latter do so in love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17 The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. 18 But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, 19 for I know that through your prayers and the help given by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance.

So let's rejoice that WHATEVER THE MOTIVE, Christ is preached.
 
Top