Christian Misunderstanding of The Messiah
Problem: The Jewish Messiah is to be a human being born naturally to husband and wife. He is not to be a god, nor a man born of supernatural or virgin birth, as Christianity claims.
Nowhere does the Jewish Bible or Prophets say that the Messiah would be a god or God-like. The very idea that God would take on human form is repulsive to Jews because it contradicts the concept of God as being above and beyond the limitations of the human body and situation. Jews believe, according to the Jewish Scriptures, that God alone is to be worshipped, not a being who is His creation, be he angel, saint, or even the Messiah himself.
Nowhere does the Bible predict that the Messiah will be born to a virgin. In fact, virgins never give birth anywhere in the Bible. This idea is to be found only in pagan mythology. To the Jewish mind, the very idea that God would plant a seed in a woman is unnecessary and unnatural.
Answer for yourself: After all — what is accomplished by this claim?
Answer for yourself: What positive purpose does it serve?
The claim that Mary did not have natural relations with her husband must have made the Jews of that time suspect her of wrongdoing. The New Testament (the Christian Bible) admits as much when it says (Matthew 1:19), “Then Joseph her (Mary’s) husband, being a just man, and not willing to shame her in public, decided to divorce her quietly.” The whole idea of virgin birth serves no purpose, except to attract pagans to Christianity.
Problem: The Jewish Messiah is expected to return the Jews to their land. Yeshua was born while the Jews still lived in their land, before they had gone into exile. He could not restore them to their land because they were still living in it!
Problem: The true Messiah is to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem — but Yeshua lived while the Temple was still standing.
Problem: The Jewish Bible says that the Messiah will redeem Israel. In the case of Yeshua, the very opposite took place. Not long after his death, the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, Jerusalem was laid to waste, and the Jews went into exile to begin a 1900-year-long night of persecution—largely at the hands of the followers of this self-styled “Messiah!”
Problem: The Prophets in the Bible foretold (Isaiah 45) that when the Messiah comes, all the nations of the world will unite to acknowledge and worship the one true God. “The knowledge of God will fill the earth. The world will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the seas” (Isaiah 11:9). Nothing of this nature took place following the death of Yeshua. On the contrary, Islam developed and became the religion of the Arabs and many other nations, Christianity broke up into many conflicting sects which were constantly at war with each other, and a large part of the world continued to worship idols. Even today the world is far from the worship of one God.
Problem: When the true Messiah comes, his influence will extend over all peoples who will worship God at the Temple in Jerusalem. The Prophet says, “For My House will become the House of Prayer for all the Nations.” This has obviously not yet taken place, and, therefore, the Messiah has not yet come.
Problem: During the time of the Messiah a new spirit will rule the world, and man will cease committing sins and crimes; this will especially apply to the Jews. The Torah (in Deuteronomy 30:6) says that “God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your children to love God.” The Prophets taught: “And your people are all righteous, they will inherit the earth forever” (Isaiah 60:21); “In that day I will seek the sins of Israel and there will be none” (Jeremiah 50:20); “I will give you a new heart and a new spirit—and you will obey My laws and commandments and do them” (Ezekiel 36:26,27). Soon after the time of Yeshua, ignorance of God and even ignorance of science and philosophy filled the earth, as the “Dark Ages” overtook the world.
Problem: The true Messiah is to reign as King of the Jews. Yeshua’s career as described in the New Testament lasted all of three years, at the end of which he was crucified by the Romans as a common criminal. He never functioned as anything but a wandering preacher and “faith healer”; certainly, he held no official position or exercised any rule of any kind.
Problem: During the time of the Messiah, prophecy will return to the Jewish people and the presence of God will dwell amongst us. (Joel 3,1) “And after that I will pour my spirit on all of mankind and your sons and daughters will prophesy.” These predictions, too, are yet to be fulfilled.
Problem: One of the Messiah’s major tasks is to bring peace to the entire world. In the time of the Messiah, there are to be no more wars, and the manufacture of arms will cease. The Prophet Isaiah (2:4) says, “And they shalt beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Yet, Christian nations are continually at war and wars have been going on almost non-stop since the time of Yeshua up to and including today.
Problem: The New Testament itself claims that the prophecies concerning the Messiah were to be realized in Yeshua’s own generation. Mark (13:30) clearly says, “truthfully I say unto you that this generation shall not pass until all these things be done.” In Matthew 4, Yeshua is quoted saying that “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Almost 2,000 years have passed and still nothing has been accomplished.
Problem: Nowhere does the Jewish Bible teach the Messiah would come once, be killed, and be return once, be killed, and return again in a “second coming.” The idea of a second coming is a pure rationalization of Yeshua’ failure to function in any way as a Messiah, or to fulfill any of the prophecies of the Torah or the Prophets. The idea is purely a Christian invention, with no foundation in the Bible, and created only to explain away why Yeshua did not return in the generation of his followers as the New Testament attests.
Problem: The Bible says that the Messiah would be descended in a direct line from King David. However, if God was Yeshua’s “father,” is it not somewhat ridiculous to claim that he is descended from King David on his father’s side?
Problem: Why do some missionaries insist on distorting the meaning of the words of the prophets in order to substantiate their claims? (An example: The Hebrew term in Isaiah “almah” which means a “young woman” is mistranslated as “virgin.” Honest Christian scholars now acknowledge that this is a pious fraud and now (see the new Protestant “Reviser Standard Version” of the Bible) translate the word correctly. This is but one of many mistranslations or forced translations
Problem: While on the cross Yeshua is quoted as saying, “Forgive them, Father, for they (the Jews) know not what they do.” Why do some Christians insist on persecuting the Jews if Yeshua himself gave instructions to forgive them?
Problem: If his rising from the dead was so crucial to demonstrate who he was, why did this take place in secret and not in the presence of his “thousands” of devotees?
Problem: Yeshua claimed that he did not intend to change the Laws of Moses—”Think not that I have come to abolish the Law (Torah) and the Prophets, I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5). Later on, the New Testament attests that he himself abrogated some of the laws, while his followers eventually abolished or changed nearly all of them. Personally I believe the New Testament to be less than credible in describing events where Yeshua supposedly broke the Law or changed the Law.
Problem: However, the Torah itself clearly states in many places that its laws are eternal, never to be abolished. And even the Christians acknowledge that the Jewish Bible is the word of God. If the Torah is eternal and Yeshua himself claims to have no intention of abolishing or changing it, why do the Christians celebrate the Sabbath on Sunday when God clearly calls the Saturday-Sabbath an Eternal Covenant? Why do Christians eat pig when the Torah forbids it? What reason can Christians give for not celebrating Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur which are clearly spelled out in the Torah? This same argument applies to hundreds of other Torah laws that are ignored by Christians.
On the other hand, Christmas and Easter are not mentioned in either the Jewish Bible or the Christian “New Testament”— these festivals are pagan in origin, adapted for Christian use. But Pesach, Sukkos and Shavuos are clearly spoken of in the Bible. On top of which, Yeshua nowhere requests that the Biblical festivals no longer be observed.
Problem: Christians teach the philosophy of “turning the other cheek” and “loving your enemy.” Do you know of any Christian nations that live by this impractical ethic, or even take it seriously?
Problem: The many Christian statements about God being “Love” have been borrowed from the Jewish Bible and the Jewish religion. Among many such quotations from our Torah are: “Love thy neighbor as thyself”; “Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt”; “And you shall love the L-rd thy God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
If God is “Love,” how can Christians explain the silence and indifference of the Church and most Christian nations while six million Jews were being gassed and burned by the Germans? Why the stone-like silence during the Six Day War? Where was Christian love during the Spanish Inquisition and the hundreds of pogroms inspired by priests and monks?
Problem: Judaism believes that God is eternal, above and beyond time. God cannot be born, He cannot die, He cannot suffer, He can not “become flesh,” nor can He be divided into sections (“Father, Son, and Holy Ghost”). These are pagan notions. Certainly no “God” or “Son of God” could have called out on the cross, as Yeshua is supposed to have said, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” If he was God’s son, he would at least have said, “My father. . .”
Problem: If Yeshua was really the Messiah, why does the New Testament admit that all the rabbis of the time, without one exception, rejected his claim? Why was there not one man of learning, nor one prominent leader who accepted him?
Problem: If Yeshua was the Messiah, why did the overwhelming majority of his own people, the Jews living at that time, reject him? Why did his followers consist of a handful of people, almost all of whom were poorly educated? Why did his own family turn against him?
Problem: Who was in a position to judge if he was or was not the Messiah—his own people, who anxiously awaited the arrival of the Messiah, or pagan peoples who had no understanding of what the concept really meant?
Problem: Yeshua commanded his disciples to preach to the Jews only and not to the gentiles (Matthew 10), yet his disciples disobeyed him and did just the opposite. He clearly thought of himself as the Messiah of the Jews and of no one else. Yet, he was accepted by foreign nations and not by the Jews. Why?
Problem: If God has “rejected” the Jews for not “accepting Yeshua” as Christians claim, why have the Jewish People managed to survive 2,000 years of Christian persecution? How do Christians explain the miracle of Jewish survival? Why has God restored the city of Jerusalem and the Land of Israel to His “rejected” people?
How do they explain the fact that the Jewish people has re-established its national life in its ancient homeland, and is in possession of the City of Jerusalem? These are living historic facts without parallel.
Must not the Christians now acknowledge that the re-emergence of a Jewish State is indeed an unfolding and realization of Bible prophecy in our day? Does this not demonstrate that the many Biblical prophecies that speak of the return of the Jew to his land refer to the Jews and not to anyone else? (The Christians often refer to themselves as the “real Jews”—the “New Israel,” i.e. God chose them because the Jews rejected Yeshua.)
Isn’t this theological “slap in the face” the reason for the Pope’s refusal to recognize Israel, and for Christian silence during the Six Day War?
Problem: The Prophets contain many prophecies concerning the end of days and the time of the Messiah that have not yet taken place. These will all take place when the Messiah comes.
Why do we need a Messiah in the first place? In order to teach the Torah to the world and to establish “The Kingdom of God on Earth.” If the Christians have done away with the laws of the Torah, if they no longer regard the Torah as valid, what is left to teach mankind? Nowhere does the Torah suggest that it is to be abolished by the Messiah. On the contrary, the Torah is eternal, and the purpose of the Messiah is to bring us to the day when all of the Jewish people will observe the Torah and all of mankind will acknowledge its truths.
Problem: Nowhere does the Torah state that someone else’s death can bring forgiveness to a person’s sins. On the contrary, each man will be punished for his sins, and each man must repent for his sins alone. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die”; “Sons will not be punished for the sins of their fathers.” The idea that someone else’s death 1,900 years ago can somehow bring forgiveness from God for my sins is absurd and unfounded. Each person must return to God, each sinner must change his own ways and seek God’s forgiveness.
Insights into the Service of a Righteous Gentile
Source: AskNoah.org
By way of introduction, let me share with you that it was in my hometown college, a small religiously-affiliated institution, that I first began studying Biblical Hebrew. After graduating I decided that my studious nature was best suited for a career in academia, and I applied to Harvard Divinity School and was accepted there. I could not resist the opportunity to be a student at the storied Harvard, which I had never before thought I would even lay eyes on. It was exhilarating to be there, but at the same time it was very hard because of the totalitarian rule of political correctness and the exaltation of many kinds of abominations. I found no support or comfort in the face of the blasphemous deconstruction of the Bible in my classes (and my classes were relatively mild compared to most students there, since my concentration was in “old testament”). After much searching, I was eventually drawn to Torah because it is TRUE, which means it is ancient, unchanging, and timeless. It’s too bad that most people have never heard, and perhaps will never hear, the THEOLOGICAL reasons for the unsuperceded Torah.
I would like to address an important question that many people have when they first hear about Noahism and the Seven Commandments of Noah. It is commonly thought that there is a tension between G-d’s Mercy and His Justice, but in Noahism these are not really meant to be resolved. Each is an eternal truth. Similarly, each individual has a “good inclination” and an “evil inclination,” and usually has a heavenly ledger of both good deeds and sins. In Noahism, instead of one single sin by itself rendering all the rest of a person’s good deeds (or his other sins) completely moot, each is taken into account. It is true that each sin must be repented of and atoned for. However, the way G-d judges, i.e. the way He takes into account (as only He can) the totality of a person’s good and bad deeds, all the motives, all the circumstances, etc., is something beyond our understanding. The crudest way to put it is that, while each and every sin does indeed count against a person (and requires repentance and atonement), nevertheless all a person’s individual good deeds, prayers for forgiveness, etc., also count in a person’s favor. Some people coming from other faiths may incorrectly assume that Noahism, as part of Torah, demands absolute perfection from beginning to end, and that if one sins, he might as well give up completely because the whole attempt would be rendered a failure. That is not the case.
No one is perfect, as Solomon, the wisest of men, knew. The idea is not that one must be perfect, but to acknowledge that Torah Noahism is G-d’s true yoke of Kingship over the Gentiles. One should spend one’s life striving to do the best one can to follow these commandments, and repenting and atoning when one fails, all the while praying to G-d for assistance and mercy. One must recognize that our human failures and imperfections do not authorize us in the least to subtract from or alter G-d’s Laws to make them “easier,” since G-d our Creator knew our human weaknesses (better than we do) when He commanded those laws to us. Our weak natures do not excuse our sins, but neither those weak natures or those failures absolve us of the responsibility to accept and attempt to live by the Seven Commandments, which are the true G-d given path for all Gentiles, however many times we fall. Since a person is going to make mistakes and failures in any religious path he follows, then it is our duty to make those mistakes and failures within the true path G-d has commanded us to take.
Most Noahides in modern times have come to Noahism from a background which teaches a dualistic religious system, which tries to explain the existence evil by appealing to a war between a “good G-d” and an “evil god” (“the devil”). Since those religions assume that the “good G-d” can only create “good” (i.e., what they perceive as good), they assume that the presence of evil in the world G-d created is the result of the interference of an evil “god.” (In order to be brief, am actually putting this in a very crude way.) In some of these dualistic doctrines, individual evil deeds are not identified as the problem at all. Rather, they say that by eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Chava (Eve) contracted and passed on a “disease,” of which individual sins are merely symptoms. Regardless of how many or how few symptoms each individual may manifest, it is imagined that everyone has the same disease, and unless it is addressed all are doomed to “eternal damnation.” Their solution is that to be saved, each individual must at some point in his life be “born again.” Because the people who follow this belief are not knowledgeable or understanding of Noahism, they think that only Orthodox Judaism, out of all ritual/liturgical religions, is ordained by G-d (in the Torah of Moses).
What most people have not yet learned is that, from the day that humanity was created, there was already this set of Divine commandments which offers to every person the truth that he must do good and avoid evil, and that G-d judges all his thoughts, words, deeds, and omissions until the day he dies. The Noahide acknowledges G-d as the only G-d, and strives to live according to His statutes. The point of this is that one should reject all post-Torah innovative religions, and then imbibe the G-d given Torah purely. There is no excuse to declare the Torah “fulfilled” and then replace it with something else that has the same stated objective. The only required leap from common understanding is to realize that the Torah explicitly communicates two parallel paths to fulfill G-d’s will: Torah Noahism for Gentiles and Torah Judaism for Jews.
The point to be stressed in disseminating Noahism is that this is the True and objectively moral duty assigned to mankind by G-d, regardless of one’s background, ethnicity, weaknesses, or what one has always been taught. On the more subjective level, the way to appeal to people in a positive way is to stress the factual, non-mythological nature of the Torah. This ancient history of the human race is very important, as it is the only ancient history of this scope and detail that we have. Noahism upholds the factuality of the personages and events of the Hebrew Bible. It provides the Gentile with a place that is his to turn to while at the same time staying within the context of the teachings of the Torah. It is universally acknowledged by believers in the G-d of Moses to have come from G-d. Beyond this, one only needs to understand that is an eternal covenant.
How does religious polity work in Judaism?
A few questions wrapped into one:
1. Is there any form of hierarchy in Judaism? Any final arbiter of doctrine?
2. Is there any sect/denomination of Judaism that has legal dominance in the state of Israel?
3. If the temple were to be rebuilt, WHO would be in charge of it? Would only members of a certain branch of Judaism be allowed to attend?
War of Gog and Magog
Ezekiel 38
Ezekiel 39
Charity Prevents Penalties
Source: breslev.co.il
Many penalties and other forms of financial loss occur when a person gives insufficient charity.
The Real Story of Christmas
Source: Simpletoremember.com
I. When was Jesus born?
B. The New Testament gives no date or year for Jesus’ birth. The earliest gospel – St. Mark’s, written about 65 CE – begins with the baptism of an adult Jesus. This suggests that the earliest Christians lacked interest in or knowledge of Jesus’ birthdate.
C. The year of Jesus birth was determined by Dionysius Exiguus, a Scythian monk, “abbot of a Roman monastery. His calculation went as follows:
a. In the Roman, pre-Christian era, years were counted from ab urbe condita (“the founding of the City” [Rome]). Thus 1 AUC signifies the year Rome was founded, 5 AUC signifies the 5th year of Rome’s reign, etc.
b. Dionysius received a tradition that the Roman emperor Augustus reigned 43 years, and was followed by the emperor Tiberius.
c. Luke 3:1,23 indicates that when Jesus turned 30 years old, it was the 15th year of Tiberius reign.
d. If Jesus was 30 years old in Tiberius’ reign, then he lived 15 years under Augustus (placing Jesus birth in Augustus’ 28th year of reign).
e. Augustus took power in 727 AUC. Therefore, Dionysius put Jesus birth in 754 AUC.
f. However, Luke 1:5 places Jesus’ birth in the days of Herod, and Herod died in 750 AUC – four years before the year in which Dionysius places Jesus birth.
D. Joseph A. Fitzmyer – Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the Catholic University of America, member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and former president of the Catholic Biblical Association – writing in the Catholic Church’s official commentary on the New Testament, writes about the date of Jesus’ birth, “Though the year [of Jesus birth is not reckoned with certainty, the birth did not occur in AD 1. The Christian era, supposed to have its starting point in the year of Jesus birth, is based on a miscalculation introduced ca. 533 by Dionysius Exiguus.”
E. The DePascha Computus, an anonymous document believed to have been written in North Africa around 243 CE, placed Jesus birth on March 28. Clement, a bishop of Alexandria (d. ca. 215 CE), thought Jesus was born on November 18. Based on historical records, Fitzmyer guesses that Jesus birth occurred on September 11, 3 BCE.
II.
How Did Christmas Come to Be Celebrated on December 25?
A. Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.
B. The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’s observance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).
C. In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.
D. The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’ birthday.
E. Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia. As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.” The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.
F. The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that “the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.” Because of its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681. However, Christmas was and still is celebrated by most Christians.
G. Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reports, “Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators. They ran… amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.”
H. As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome sent a petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual Saturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune to make any innovation.” On December 25, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots across the country. In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, and many Jewish women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.
III.
The Origins of Christmas Customs
A. Christmas Trees
Just as early Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas with the Saturnalia, so too worshippers of the Asheira cult and its offshoots were recruited by the Church sanctioning “Christmas Trees”. Pagans had long worshipped trees in the forest, or brought them into their homes and decorated them, and this observance was adopted and painted with a Christian veneer by the Church.
B. Mistletoe
Norse mythology recounts how the god Balder was killed using a mistletoe arrow by his rival god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna. Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim. The Christian custom of “kissing under the mistletoe” is a later synthesis of the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificial cult.
C. Christmas Presents
In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelled their most despised citizens to bring offerings and gifts during the Saturnalia (in December) and Kalends (in January). Later, this ritual expanded to include gift-giving among the general populace. The Catholic Church gave this custom a Christian flavor by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas (see below).
D. Santa Claus
a. Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CE and later became Bishop of Myra. He died in 345 CE on December 6th. He was only named a saint in the 19th century.
b. Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament. The text they produced portrayed Jews as “the children of the devil” who sentenced Jesus to death.
c. In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy. There Nicholas supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, or Pasqua Epiphania, who used to fill the children’s stockings with her gifts. The Grandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of the Nicholas cult. Members of this group gave each other gifts during a pageant they conducted annually on the anniversary of Nicholas’ death, December 6.
d. The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by German and Celtic pagans. These groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden –their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw. Woden had a long, white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn. When Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a beard, mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavy winter clothing.
e. In a bid for pagan adherents in Northern Europe, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas cult and taught that he did (and they should) distribute gifts on December 25th instead of December 6th.
f. In 1809, the novelist Washington Irving (most famous his The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle) wrote a satire of Dutch culture entitled Knickerbocker History. The satire refers several times to the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name, Santa Claus.
g. Dr. Clement Moore, a professor at Union Seminary, read Knickerbocker History, and in 1822 he published a poem based on the character Santa Claus: “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there…” Moore innovated by portraying a Santa with eight reindeer who descended through chimneys.
h. The Bavarian illustrator Thomas Nast almost completed the modern picture of Santa Claus. From 1862 through 1886, based on Moore’s poem, Nast drew more than 2,200 cartoon images of Santa for Harper’s Weekly. Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from a stern looking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock. Nast also gave Santa a home at the North Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of the good and bad children of the world. All Santa was missing was his red outfit.
i. In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contracted the Swedish commercial artist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa. Sundblom modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubby face. The corporation insisted that Santa’s fur-trimmed suit be bright, Coca Cola red. And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, and commercial idol.
IV. The Christmas Challenge
· Christmas has always been a holiday celebrated carelessly. For millennia, pagans, Christians, and even Jews have been swept away in the season’s festivities, and very few people ever pause to consider the celebration’s intrinsic meaning, history, or origins.
· Christmas celebrates the birth of the Christian god who came to rescue mankind from the “curse of the Torah.” It is a 24-hour declaration that Judaism is no longer valid.
· Christmas is a lie. There is no Christian church with a tradition that Jesus was really born on December 25th.
· December 25 is a day on which Jews have been shamed, tortured, and murdered.
· Many of the most popular Christmas customs – including Christmas trees, mistletoe, Christmas presents, and Santa Claus – are modern incarnations of the most depraved pagan rituals ever practiced on earth.
Many who are excitedly preparing for their Christmas celebrations would prefer not knowing about the holiday’s real significance. If they do know the history, they often object that their celebration has nothing to do with the holiday’s monstrous history and meaning. “We are just having fun.”
Imagine that between 1933-45, the Nazi regime celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday – April 20 – as a holiday. Imagine that they named the day, “Hitlerday,” and observed the day with feasting, drunkenness, gift-giving, and various pagan practices. Imagine that on that day, Jews were historically subject to perverse tortures and abuse, and that this continued for centuries.
Now, imagine that your great-great-great-grandchildren were about to celebrate Hitlerday. April 20th arrived. They had long forgotten about Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. They had never heard of gas chambers or death marches. They had purchased champagne and caviar, and were about to begin the party, when someone reminded them of the day’s real history and their ancestors’ agony. Imagine that they initially objected, “We aren’t celebrating the Holocaust; we’re just having a little Hitlerday party.” If you could travel forward in time and meet them; if you could say a few words to them, what would you advise them to do on Hitlerday?
On December 25, 1941, Julius Streicher, one of the most vicious of Hitler’s assistants, celebrated Christmas by penning the following editorial in his rabidly Antisemitic newspaper, Der Stuermer:
If one really wants to put an end to the continued prospering of this curse from heaven that is the Jewish blood, there is only one way to do it: to eradicate this people, this Satan’s son, root and branch.
It was an appropriate thought for the day. This Christmas, how will we celebrate?
AUTHOR: LAWRENCE KELEMEN
