CHAPTER III.
FESTIVALS.
IF Rome be indeed the Babylon of the Apocalypse, and the Madonna
enshrined in her sanctuaries be the very queen of heaven, for the
worshipping of whom the fierce anger of God was provoked against the
Jews in the days of Jeremiah, it is of the last consequence that the
fact should be established beyond all possibility of doubt; for that
being once established, every one who trembles at the Word of god must
shudder at the very thought of giving such a system, either individually
or nationally, the least countenance or support. Something has been said
already that goes far to prove the identity of the Roman and Babylonian
systems; but at every step the evidence becomes still more overwhelming.
That which arises from comparing the different festivals is peculiarly
so.
The festivals of Rome are innumerable; but five of the most important
may be singled out for elucidation--viz., Christmas-day, Lady-day,
Easter, the Nativity of St. John, and the Feast of the Assumption. Each
and all of these can be proved to be Babylonian. And first, as to the
festival in honour of the birth of Christ, or Christmas. How comes it
that that festival was connected with the 25th of December? There is not
a word in the Scriptures about the precise day of His birth, or the time
of the year when He was born. What is recorded there, implies that at
what time soever His birth took place, it could not have been on the
25th of December. At the time that the angel announced His birth to the
shepherds of Bethlehem, they were feeding their flocks by night in the
open fields. Now, no doubt, the climate of Palestine is not so severe as
the climate of this country; but even there, though the heat of the day
be considerable, the cold of the night, from December to February, is
very piercing, * and it was not the custom for the shepherds of Judea to
watch their flocks in the open fields later than about the end of
October. * It is in the last degree incredible, then, that the birth of
Christ could have taken place at the end of December. There is great
unanimity among commentators on this point. Besides Barnes, Doddridge,
Lightfoot, Joseph Scaliger, and Jennings, in his "Jewish
Antiquities," who are all of opinion that December 25th could
not be the right time of our Lord's nativity, the celebrated Joseph Mede
pronounces a very decisive opinion to the same effect. After a long and
careful disquisition on the subject, among other arguments he adduces
the following;--"At the birth of Christ every woman and child
was to go to be taxed at the city whereto they belonged, whither some
had long journeys; but the middle of winter was not fitting for such a
business, especially for women with child, and children to travel in.
Therefore, Christ could not be born in the depth of winter. Again, at
the time of Christ's birth, the shepherds lay abroad watching with their
flocks in the night time; but this was not likely to be in the middle of
winter. And if any shall think the winter wind was not so extreme in
these parts, let him remember the words of Christ in the gospel, 'Pray
that your flight be not in the winter.' If the winter was so bad a time
to flee in, it seems no fit time for shepherds to lie in the fields in,
and women and children to travel in." * Indeed, it is admitted
by the most learned and candid writers of all parties * that the day of
our Lord's birth cannot be determined, * and that within the Christian
Church no such festival as Christmas was ever heard of till the third
century, and that not till the fourth century was far advanced did it
gain much observance. How, then, did the Romish Church fix on December
the 25th as Christmas-day? Why, thus: Long before the fourth century,
and long before the Christian era itself, a festival was celebrated
among the heathen, at that precise time of the year, in honour of the
birth of the son of the Babylonian queen of heaven; and it may fairly be
presumed that, in order to conciliate the heathen, and to swell the
number of the nominal adherents of Christianity, the same festival was
adopted by the Roman Church, giving it only the name of Christ. This
tendency on the part of Christians to meet Paganism half-way was very
early developed; and we find Tertullian, even in his day, about the year
230, bitterly lamenting the inconsistency of the disciples of Christ in
this respect, and contrasting it with the strict fidelity of the Pagans
to their own superstition. "By us," says he, "who
are strangers to Sabbaths, * and new moons, and festivals, once
acceptable to God, the Saturnalia, the feasts of January, the Brumalia,
and Matronalia, are now frequented; gifts are carried to and fro, new
year's day presents are made with din, and sports and banquets are
celebrated with uproar; oh, how much more faithful are the heathen to
their religion, who take special care to adopt no solemnity from the
Christians." * Upright men strive to stem the tide, but in
spite of all their efforts, the apostacy went on, till the Church, with
the exception of a small remnant, was submerged under Pagan
superstition. That Christmas was originally a Pagan festival, is beyond
all doubt. The time of the year, and the ceremonies with which it is
still celebrated, prove its origin. In Egypt, the son of Isis, the
Egyptian title for the queen of heaven, was born at this very time, "about
the time of the winter solstice." * The very name by which
Christmas is popularly known among ourselves--Yule-day * --proves at
once its Pagan and Babylonian origin. "Yule" is the
Chaldee name for an "infant" or "little
child;" * and as the 25th of December was called by our Pagan
Anglo-Saxon ancestors, "Yule-day," or the "Child's
day," and the night that preceded it, "Mother-night,"
* long before they came in contact with Christianity, that sufficiently
proves its real character. Far and wide, in the realms of Paganism, was
this birth-day observed. This festival has been commonly believed to
have had only an astronomical character, referring simply to the
completion of the sun's yearly course, and the commencement of a new
cycle. * But there is indubitably evidence that the festival in question
had a much higher reference than this--that it commemorated not merely
the figurative birth-day of the sun in the renewal of its course, but
the birth-day of the grand Deliverer. Among the Sabeans of Arabia, who
regarded the moon, and not the sun, as the visible symbol of the
favourite object of their idolatry, the same period was observed as the
birth festival. Thus we read in Stanley's Sabean Philosophy: "On
the 24th of the tenth month," that is December, according to
our reckoning, "the Arabians celebrated the BIRTHDAY OF THE
LORD--that is the Moon." * The Lord Moon was the great object
of Arabian worship, and that Lord Moon, according to them, was born on
the 24th of December, which clearly shows that the birth which they
celebrated had no necessary connection with the course of the sun. It is
worthy of special note, too, that if Christmas-day among the ancient
Saxons of this island, was observed to celebrate the birth of any Lord
of the host of heaven, the case must have been precisely the same here
as it was in Arabia. The Saxons, as is well known, regarded the Sun as a
female divinity, and the Moon as a male. * It must have been the
birth-day of the Lord Moon, therefore, and not of the Sun, that was
celebrated by them on the 25th of December, even as the birth-day of the
same Lord Moon was observed by the Arabians on the 24th of December. The
name of the Lord Moon in the East seems to have been Meni, for this
appears the most natural interpretation of the Divine statement in
Isaiah lxv. 11, "But ye are they that forsake my holy mountain,
that prepare a temple for Gad, and that furnish the drink-offering unto
Meni." * There is reason to believe that Gad refers to the
sun-god, and that Meni in like manner designates the moon-divinity. *
Meni, or Manai, signifies "The Numberer." and it is
by the changes of the moon that the months are numbered: Psalm civ. 19, "He
appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth the time of its going
down." The name of the "Man of the Moon," or
the god who presided over that luminary among the Saxons, was Mane, as
given in the "Edda," * and Mani, in the "Voluspa."
* That it was the birth of the "Lord Moon" that was
celebrated among our ancestors at Christmas, we have remarkable evidence
in the name that is still given in the lowlands of Scotland to the feast
on the last day of the year, which seems to be a remnant of the old
birth festival for the cakes then made are called Nur-Cakes, or
Birth-cakes. That name is Hogmanay. * Now, "Hog-Manai" in
Chaldee signifies "The feast of the Numberer;" in
other words, The festival of Deus Lunus, or of the Man of the Moon. To
show the connection between country and country, and the inveterate
endurance of old customs, it is worthy of remark, that Jerome,
commenting on the very words of Isaiah already quoted, about spreading "a
table for Gad," and "pouring out a drink-offering to
Meni," observes that it "was the custom so late as
his time [in the fourth century], in all cities especially in Egypt and
at Alexandria, to set tables, and furnish them with various luxurious
articles of food, and with goblets containing a mixture of new wine, on
the last day of the month and the year, and that the people drew omens
from them in respect of the fruitfulness of the year." * The
Egyptian year began at a different time from ours; but this is a near as
possible (only substituting whisky for wine), the way in which Hogmanay
is still observed on the last day of the last month of our year in
Scotland. I do not know that any omens are drawn from anything that
takes place at that time, but everybody in the south of Scotland is
personally cognisant of the fact, that, on Hogmanay, or the evening
before New Year's day, among those who observe old customs, a table is
spread, and that while buns and other dainties are provided by those who
can afford them, oat cakes and cheese are brought forth among those who
never see oat cakes but on this occasion, and that strong drink forms an
essential article of the provision.
Even where the sun was the favourite object of worship, as in Babylon
itself and elsewhere, at this festival he was worshipped not merely as
the orb of day, but as God incarnate. * It was an essential principle of
the Babylonian system, that the Sun or Baal was the one only God. *
When, therefore, Tammuz was worshipped as God incarnate, that implied
also that he was an incarnation of the Sun. In the Hindoo Mythology,
which is admitted to be essentially Babylonian, this comes out very
distinctly. There, Surya, or the sun, is represented as being incarnate,
and born for the purpose of subduing the enemies of the gods, who,
without such a birth, could not have been subdued. *
It was no mere astronomic festival, then, that the Pagans celebrated
at the winter solstice. That festival at Rome was called the feast of
Saturn, and the mode in which it was celebrated there, showed whence it
had been derived. The feast, as regulated by Caligula, lasted five days;
* loose reins were given to drunkenness and revelry, slaves had a
temporary emancipation, * and used all manner of freedoms with their
masters. * This was precisely the way in which, according to Berosus,
the drunken festival of the month Thebeth, answering to our December, in
other words. the festival of Bacchus, was celebrated in Babylon. "It
was the custom," says he, "during the five days it
lasted, for masters to be in subjection to their servants, and one of
them ruled the house, clothed in a purple garment like a king." *
This "purple-robed" servant was called "Zoganes,"
* the "Man of sport and wantonness," and
answered exactly to the "Lord of Misrule," that in
the dark ages, was chosen in all Popish countries to head the revels of
Christmas. The wassailling bowl of Christmas had its precise counterpart
in the "Drunken festival" of Babylon; and many of the
other observances still kept up among ourselves at Christmas came from
the very same quarter. The candles, in some parts of England, lighted on
Christmas-eve, and used so long as the festive season lasts, were
equally lighted by the Pagans on the eve of the festival of the
Babylonian god, to do honour to him: for it was one of the
distinguishing peculiarities of his worship to have lighted wax-candles
on his altars. * The Christmas tree, now so common among us, was equally
common in Pagan Rome and Pagan Egypt. In Egypt that tree was the
palm-tree; in Rome it was the fir; * the palm-tree denoting the Pagan
Messiah, as Baal-Tamar, the fir referring to him as Baal-Berith. The
mother of Adonis, the Sun-God and great mediatorial divinity, was
mystically said to have been changed into a tree, and when in that state
to have brought forth her divine son. * If the mother was a tree, the
son must have been recognised as the "Man the branch." And
this entirely accounts for the putting of the Yule Log into the fire on
Christmas-eve, and the appearance of the Christmas-tree the next
morning. As Zero-Ashta, "The seed of the woman," which
name also signified Ignigena, or "born of the fire," he
has to enter the fire on "Mother-night," that he may
be born the next day out of it, as the "Branch of God,"
or the Tree that brings all divine gifts to men. But why, it may be
asked, does he enter the fire under the symbol of a Log? To understand
this, it must be remembered that the divine child born at the winter
solstice was born as a new incarnation of the great god (after that god
had been cut in pieces), on purpose to revenge his death upon his
murderers. * Now the great god, cut off in the midst of his power and
glory, was symbolised as a huge tree, stripped of all its branches, and
cut down almost to the ground. * But the great serpent, the symbol of
the life restoring * AEsculapius, twists itself around the dead stock ,
* and lo, at its side up sprouts a young tree--a tree of an entirely
different kind, that is destined never to be cut down by hostile
power--even the palm-tree, the well-known symbol of victory. The
Christmas-tree, as has been stated, was generally at Rome a different
tree, even the fir; but the very same idea as was implied in the
palm-tree was implied in the Christmas-fir; for that covertly symbolised
the new-born God as Baal-berith, * "Lord of the Covenant,"
and thus shadowed forth the perpetuity and everlasting nature of
his power, not that after having fallen before his enemies, he had risen
triumphant over them all. Therefore, the 25th of December, the day that
was observed at Rome as the day when the victorious god reappeared on
earth, was held at the Natalis invicti solis, "The birth-day of
the unconquered Sun." * 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. In
the light reflected by the above statement on customs that still linger
among us, the origin of which has been lost in the midst of hoar
antiquity, let the reader look at the singular practice still kept up in
the South on Christmas-eve, of kissing under the misletoe bough. That
misletoe bough in the Druidic superstition, which, as we have seen, was
derived from Babylon, was a representation of the Messiah, "The
man the branch." The misletoe was regarded as a divine branch
* --a branch that came from heaven, and grew upon a tree that sprung out
of the earth. Thus by the engrafting of the celestial branch into the
earthly tree, heaven and earth, that sin had severed, were joined
together, and thus the misletoe bough became the token of Divine
reconciliation to man, the kiss being the will-known token of pardon and
reconciliation. Whence could such an idea have come? May it not have
come from the eighty-fifth Psalm, ver. 10,11, "Mercy and truth
are met together; righteousness and peace have KISSED each other. Truth
shall spring out of the earth [in consequence of the coming of the
promised Saviour], and righteousness shall look down from heaven"? Certain
it is that that Psalm was written soon after the Babylonish captivity;
and as multitudes of the Jews, after that event, still remained in
Babylon under the guidance of inspired men, such as Daniel, as a part of
the Divine word it must have been communicated to them, as well as to
their kinsmen in Palestine. Babylon was, at that time, the centre of the
civilised world; and thus Paganism, corrupting the Divine symbol as it
ever has done, had opportunities of sending forth its debased
counterfeit of the truth to all the ends of the earth, through the
Mysteries that were affiliated with the great central system in Babylon.
Thus the very customs of Christmas still existent cast surprising light
at once on the revelations of grace made to all the earth, and the
efforts made by Satan and his emissaries to materialise, carnalise, and
degrade them.
In many countries the boar was sacrificed to the god, for the injury
a boar was fabled to have done him. According to one version of the
story of the death of Adonis, or Tammuz, it was, as we have seen, in
consequence of a wound from the tusk of a boar that he died. * The
Phrygian Attes, the beloved of Cybele, whose story was identified with
that of Adonis, was fabled to have perished in like manner, by the tusk
of a boar. * Therefore, Diana, who though commonly represented in
popular myths only as the huntress Diana, was in reality the great
mother of the gods, * has frequently the boar's head as her
accompaniment, in token not of any mere success in the chase, but of her
triumph over the grand enemy of the idolatrous system, in which she
occupied so conspicuous a place. According to Theocritus, Venus was
reconciled to the boar that killed Adonis, because when brought in
chains before her, it pleaded so pathetically that it had not killed her
husband of malice prepense, but only through accident. * But yet, in
memory of the deed that the mystic boar had done, many a boar lost its
head or was offered in sacrifice to the offended goddess. In Smith,
Diana is represented with a boar's head lying beside her, on the top of
a heap of stones, * and in the accompanying woodcut , * in which the
Roman Emperor Trajan is represented burning incense to the same goddess,
the boar's head forms a very prominent figure. On Christmas-day the
Continental Saxons offered a boar in sacrifice to the Sun, * to
propitiate her * for the loss of her beloved Adonis. In Rome a similar
observance had evidently existed; for a boar formed the great article at
the feast of Saturn, as appears from the following words of Martial:--
"That boar will make you a good Saturnalia." *
Hence the boar's head is still a standing dish in England at the
Christmas dinner, when the reason of it is long since forgotten. Yea,
the "Christmas goose" and "Yule cakes"
were essential articles in the worship of the Babylonian Messiah, as
that worship was practised both in Egypt and at Rome . Wilkinson, in
reference to Egypt, shows that "the favourite offering"
of Osiris was "a goose," * and moreover, that the "goose
could not be eaten except in the depth of winter." * As to
Rome, Juvenal says, "that Osiris, if offended, could be
pacified only by a large goose * and a thin cake." * In many
countries we have evidence of a sacred character attached to the goose.
It is well known that the capitol of Rome was on one occasion saved when
on the point of being surprised by the Gauls in the dead of night, by
the cackling of the geese sacred to Juno, kept in the temple of Jupiter.
* The accompanying woodcut * proves that the goose in Asia Minor was the
symbol of Cupid, just as it was the symbol of Seb in Egypt. In India,
the goose occupied a similar position; for in that land we read of the
sacred "Brahmany goose," or goose sacred to Brahma. *
Finally, the monuments of Babylon show * that the goose possessed a like
mystic character in Chaldea, and that it was offered in sacrifice there,
as well as in Rome or Egypt, for there the priest is seen with the goose
in the one hand, and his sacrificing knife in the other. * There can be
no doubt, then, that the Pagan festival at the winter solstice - in
other words, Christmas - was held in honour of the birth of the
Babylonian Messiah.
The consideration of the next great festival in the Popish calendar
gives the very strongest confirmation to what has now been said. That
festival, called Lady-day, is celebrated at Rome on the 25th of March,
in alleged commemoration of the miraculous conception of our Lord in the
womb of the Virgin, on the day when the angel was sent to announce to
her the distinguished honour that was to be bestowed upon her as the
mother of the Messiah. But who could tell when this annunciation was
made? The Scripture gives no clue at all in regard to the time. But it
mattered not. But our Lord was either conceived or born, that very day
now set down in the Popish calendar for the "Annunciation of
the Virgin" was observed in Pagan Rome in honour of Cybele,
the Mother of the Babylonian Messiah. * Now, it is manifest that
Lady-day and Christmas-day stand in intimate relation to one another.
Between the 25th of March and the 25th of December there are exactly
nine months. If, then, the false Messiah was conceived in March and born
in December, can any one for a moment believe that the conception and
birth of the true Messiah can have so exactly synchronised, not only to
the mouth, but to the day? The thing is incredible. Lady-day and
Christmas-day, then, are purely Babylonian.
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