Santa - Pope or Pagan?

One of the closest of our links with the heathen beliefs is the figure of Santa Claus. He is presented to us today as a jolly, red-cheeked benevolent old gentleman who pops out of the North once a year to give presents to good children. This stereotype has been with us for only a short time, and his history and rise to fame is worthy of attention.

Many different characters, mythical and historical, have combined into the Santa we know today, and perhaps the most obvious of these is the King of the Roman Saturnalia, the man chosen to lead the revels and who had the power to issue any order, no matter how crude or silly, during the seven days of the feast. This man represented Saturn, the god of the feast - the identical god in Greece was Cronos the Charioteer.

Although this man became simply a figure of fun and king for a season, he would formerly have been the chosen human sacrifice to be given at the end of his unfortunate reign. We have hints of this custom from all over the world.

The Aztec ‘king’ would have been a prisoner of war, and he ‘reigned’ for a full year before being offered to the sungod. The Celts chose their victim by lots using a round cake, one portion of which was blackened in the fire.

One account of Saturnalia amongst the Romans at the Danube, written in 1727 and based on the official documents, tells of the choice of a handsome young man thirty days before the feast, dressed in royal attire to resemble Saturn. Thus he went about in public to indulge himself to the full and after the thirty days were ended, cut his own throat on the altar of Saturn. However, so the account goes on to say, in the year 303, the lot fell to a young Christian soldier called Dasius who refused the ‘honour’ of being sacrificed in this way and after threats and arguments was beheaded on 20th November.

King of Fools

In this country, the king of Saturnalia became the Bishop of Fools (or in Scotland, the Abbott of Unreason) who presided over the Feast of Fools at Christmastime. This was a time of the reverse of the proper order of things much as it was in Rome, when the monasteries and churches were scenes of drunken foolishness, the priests wearing masks and reciting bawdy verses and playing crude tricks upon their superiors.

This festival and its counterpart for children at which a boy was elected Bishop became so obnoxious that it was suppressed by the Council of Basle in 1434, but the customs did not die out until the Reformation had taken hold.

A similar figure was the Lord of Misrule, who was the secular version of the Bishop of Fools. However, he was far from the Father Christmas of later years, for at that time Christmas was still an adult festival, a time of feasting, drinking and wenching.

The man who, all unknowingly, did much to ‘christianise’ and clean up the Saturnalian king was Bishop Nicholas of Myra who was born in 270 AD. He was a popular man who, after his death, was canonised and hailed as a folk hero, a symbol of kindly generosity, especially to children.

A much enhanced and polished-up version of the life of Nicholas was written 500 years later by Methodius of Constantinople and it is this biography which has given us our Santa Claus stories.

For instance, it was said the Nicholas responded to the plight of a destitute nobleman who could not afford a dowry for his three daughters by tossing three bags of gold coins through the man’s window at night. One of the bags landed in a slipper which was warming by the fire, and so children today still hang up their stockings in the hope that the generosity of St. Nicholas will extend to them.

St. Nicholas, in his church regalia, was adopted as the Father Christmas of Roman Catholic countries. It was in Amsterdam that he was made into the white-bearded, red-robed "SinterKlauss". However, in our land, the heritage left to us by the Druids and the Romans, and the influence of our Viking ancestors coloured our picture of Santa more than the Catholic St. Nicholas.

Northern Rituals

In the very distant past, all over the snowy- wastes of the Arctic, Siberia, Northern Canada and Greenland, the winter solstice was a time of terror and magic, for it meant the appearance of the shaman who was a sort of witchdoctor and priest. This magician was an important figure at the rites for he was the only person who could travel between earth and heaven to intercede with the gods.

The shaman performed his magic act of intercession by means of a trance induced with the hallucinogenic mushroom Fly Agaric, which was also eaten by the reindeer! The shaman, thus ‘flying’ in the sky, was reputed to enter the underground homes or kivas of the people by the only entrance available, the smoke-hole at ground level. (Here is the origin of Father Christmas flying through the sky and descending down the chimney - a most unlikely myth!)

The fear of the people for the ghoulish shaman was shared by those who knew Odin as their god. He was titled Grim, meaning a hooded man. The British version of this god was Woden, who gave his name to Wednesday, and he was the father of Thor and husband of Frigga (Thursday and Friday!)

Odin was a sort of shaman. He was the All-Father, the Father of war, god of the hanged. He lived in Valhalla, feasting on pork and mead. In his honour, men - especially defeated enemies -were stabbed or speared as they hung on a tree, for the tree was Odin's means of suffering and victory in pursuit of the key to mystic knowledge:

"I know I hung on the windy tree
For nine whole nights
Wounded with the spear;
Dedicated to Odin,
Myself to myself..."

What could be closer to the counterfeit religion of satan than this? Our Lord, unlike Odin, truly did hang on the Tree, for the salvation of mankind, wounded by the spear of a Roman soldier, dedicated to God the Father as a Sacrifice for sins. But instead of remembering the Cross of Jesus, at Christmas we erect the death-tree of Odin and decorate it with lights and trinkets! In olden times it would be decorated with the skulls of human sacrifices.

At the Winter Solstice, Odin in his golden chariot drawn by two white horses, or riding his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, would be flying through the skies in search of souls to take back with him to the region of the dead. Once more we see the beliefs of Halloween and Christmas merge into one. But will those who abhor Halloween now give Christmas the same wide berth and treat it with the repugnance it deserves? I doubt it!

To appease Odin, the terrified folks would leave gifts for him, his attendants and his horse, a custom still maintained in some parts today. I recall vividly that my parents would always leave a glass of wine and a mince pie out on the kitchen table before they retired to bed on Christmas Eve - for Father Christmas, whom they of course knew did not even exist! It was a common custom then, and probably is still observed today.

The sinister aspects of the season are still remembered in Odin’s realm: In Germany, St. Nikolaus is accompanied by Knecht Ruprecht, a man with a blackened face who brandishes a chain and carries a sack in which to put naughty children.

The Finns have Joulupukki, a Christmas goat, who was formerly a black devil with the same role as Knecht Ruprecht, and in Greece the Kallikantzaroi, evil spirits, come from the underworld to terrify the people. Also, in Amsterdam, St. Nicholas arrives with Black Peter, and the children leave out carrots and hay for his horse in much the same way as of old.

Father Christmas Takes Shape

In this country, the various pagan and Catholic strands of the Santa prototypes merged into a vague personification of the season, a Father Christmas figure much like Father Time (13) who appeared in medieval plays. He was used as a symbol of good living and gaiety in the 18th century in order to ridicule the Puritan objections to Christmas, and he regularly appeared in ‘Punch’ in the 19th century but there was no agreement about his clothes or other features, and there is no mention of stockings, sleighs or chimneys until almost 1900.

It was Queen Victoria and her family who made Christmas a popular family occasion; she and her consort imported many of the Germanic Christmas customs, including the decorated fir tree.

Charles Dickens, too, popularised the festival with his books. In "A Christmas Carol" (1843) the Spirit of Christmas is shown as a green-robed, bare-chested Bacchus, his head wreathed with holly. It seems significant that he gives the figure a rusty ancient scabbard in which there is no longer a sword. Perhaps he meant to indicate that the bloody sacrifices of Odin and Saturn were ended at last.

Later still, an artist called Thomas Nast illustrated the children’s poem, "The Night Before Christmas" by C. C. Moore which had become a firm favourite since 1891. This poem influenced the festivities of the whole country, and its illustrations of the white-bearded, red-robed figure of Santa Claus and his reindeer sleigh fixed his image once and for all.

Nevertheless, the Santa familiar to us in this country (England) is a Dutch-American import, and other European countries model their Father Christmas either on St. Nicholas, who appears in full church regalia, or on the darker character of Odin and his spirits who give us once again a reminder of the pagan origins of such customs.

Rudolph, the rednosed Idol?

Possibly, reindeer were chosen to pull Santa’s sleigh because they were the most suitable for a Scandinavian ex-god, and symbolic of the snowy wastes of the North. However, it cannot be overlooked that the reindeer or stag was one of the most important cult animals. The reindeer was sacred to the Norse Mother Goddess, as was the stag to Diana, the Huntress, whose chariot was drawn by four stags with golden antlers.

The Celtic god Cernunnos, was sometimes portrayed as antler-horned, for the animal was believed to be the enemy of the serpent; that is, it was a symbol of he who was to bruise the serpent’s head.

Stag or reindeer sacrifices are among the most ancient. At Stellmoor, a Neolithic site near Hamburg, the bodies of twelve reindeer were found on the floor of a lake together with a pole which once stood on the shore, surmounted by a reindeer skull. In this country, at Chaldon Herring in Dorset, the graves have been discovered of men in a sitting position wearing antlers on their shoulders.

It may well be that the wide-spread and long-standing custom of dressing in an animal’s skin and head is a dim remembrance of the time when the man chosen to be the sacrificial victim would be led out to his death so clothed. After the deed was done, the ‘spirit’ of the sacrificed god was reputed to enter into the priest who, skin-clothed, would prophesy and do magic as an embodiment of the god. Thus, the wearing of skins and antlers is an identification with the god.

Horns of Power

The significance of the horn as symbolising supernatural and earthly power has already been touched on, and the antlers of the reindeer certainly provided a striking headgear. For Nimrod and his mother/wife, there was added significance, for Nimrod was the "mighty hunter" and shares this attribute with his spouse. Hence, Diana and Artemis are so known, as also are Apollo and Odin.

An illustration of Ishtar, from an Akkadian seal of about 2000BC, shows her not only as the lion-slayer with a quiver of arrows, but also as horned and winged for good measure!

Although the wearing of skins and horns in ceremonies and folk festivals was severely condemned by certain Church leaders, the practise has continued to this day, for instance in the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance in Staffordshire.

The Tree

Few would deny the pagan nature of the Christmas tree. Although half-hearted attempts are made to christianise it by topping it with an angel or explaining that it represents the everlasting life of Jesus, it is more often tolerated as an inexplicable, but essential, part of the feast.

In the same category is the Yule log; also the evergreen decorations and the wreaths which are often nailed up on front doors. Of this practise Tertullian wrote: "If thou hast renounced temples, make not a temple of thine own house door".

The Christmas tree has a long history. The first trees were in Eden, and included the Tree of Life, which speaks of Jesus, and the Tree of Knowledge which was used by satan to bring about the downfall of man. Ever since that time, trees have figured largely in pagan worship, for the original act of betrayal has not been forgotten either by man or by satan, who has glorified and idolised the tree of knowledge ever since.

For satan, this tree is, and symbolises, the corrupt forbidden and destructive enlightenment that he promises to men. Every secret cult and false religion draws from the fruit of that tree; the fruit itself is often shown in pagan worship as the pomegranate, the orange, the lemon or the apple ^(14). It is little wonder that the tree is so important to idol-worshippers everywhere, for it represents satan himself.

In addition, there is evidence that the ancient world saws trees as the physical embodiment of angels (fallen angels, that is) - thus, they became symbols of the gods of old, and worship took place beside sacred trees and in the groves.. The bible also uses such imagery, calling men "trees of righteousness" and so on. (Judg 9:8-15; Song 2:3; Isa 61:3; Ezek 31:3-5; Zech 4:3-14; Rev 11:3-4.)

Tree worship was especially important in the Aryan races of Europe, which was a thickly forested region. The oldest sanctuaries were woods, and it is well known that Druid ceremonies took place in a sacred grove of oak trees. The Celts worshipped the oak, and their word for a temple was, taken from the Latin NEMUS, which means a grove or woodland glade.

Throughout the centuries, trees have been treated with adoration and have received special care and protection; sacrifices are made to them. They came to be seen as the embodiment of a spirit and there were severe penalties for damaging a sacred tree. The superstitious still appeal to these spirits for good luck when they say "touch wood" or "knock on wood" and they take trouble to touch or knock on a piece of a tree when they want good luck.

Tree worship sometimes took strange forms, such as driving coins edgeways into the bark. One such holy tree was in Innis Maree on Loch Maree, Wester Ross, Highland Region and so many coins were hammered into the tree that it was covered with metallic scales to a height of eight or nine feet. This devotion eventually killed the tree!. A tree similarly adorned can be seen in the Slieve Bloom area of County Laois.

The popular customs about trees retain only a shadow of the reality. The mother goddess and her baby who represented, amongst other things, fertility and birth, and her husband, who civilised the people and taught them agriculture, are remembered in vague terms as having the power to bestow fertility in marriage and to the fields.

Our own familiar Christmas Tree is a German import. It is mentioned as being used at Strasbourg in 1605, but did not leave the Rhineland until the 19^th century, being introduced into England by Prince Albert around the year 1840. One of the forerunners of the lighted tree was the wooden pyramid which was used for centuries in Germany and other countries.

The Worship of the Seed

Along with the decoration and adoration of the tree, branches were gathered and made into hoops bearing gold and silver balls to represent the sun and moon, and a doll in a white robe was placed among the leaves. It need hardly be said that this little effigy had to suffice for the human sacrifice which - in darker days -would have been offered to the god/goddess of fertility.

The figure clad in virgin-white is a recurrent feature of old customs. The corn-dolly which is made at harvest time and kept indoors throughout the winter was a good luck charm for next year’s crop, for it represented the Mother Goddess who would bring fertility.

In Russia, the villagers dress the tree itself in women’s clothes and decorate it with ribbons. This reminds us of the object of their devotion: the Lady, the Mother, the Virgin Goddess (and, by implication, her son, the Seed).

The Celts called their Lady Brigid or Bride, from the Sanskrit Brahti, the Exalted One. They celebrated her festival, Imbolc, on February 1st, and this was taken into the Roman Catholic Church as Candlemas. On Candlemas Eve, Scottish crofters would dress a sheaf in women’s garb and put it in a large basket called Bride’s bed.

The Roman Church canonised Brigid and made her out to be the foster-mother and wet nurse of Jesus. She is still popularly known as "The Mary of the Gauls" and her feast day is - predictably -the 1st February.

Behind the country customs that prevail to this day lies a history of idol-worship and human and animal sacrifice. Fire trees, now an accepted part of the Christmas celebration, were not so long ago recognised as an integral part of pagan worship.

Pine trees were sacred to many antichrist gods including Attis, who died under one and whose spirit transferred itself into that tree. The Phrygians worshipped above all the pine tree and ivy, and the priests of Attis had ivy tattoos upon their bodies. Pine cones were used to make the wine which was used in the orgiastic rites of Cybele, the Mother Goddess of Asia -Minor (she was the wife/mother of Attis.)

The May Tree

The time of year especially important in the worship of the fertility god and goddess is, of course, the time of planting, for then good omens for the harvest are needed; and at the turn of the year, assurance is needed that the dying season will be once more re-born as Spring. The popular rites at both these times have much in common.

At both Spring festivals and Winter feasts, evergreens and green trees were used, as holding out a promise of fertility, and the fir tree was looked upon as fuller of vitality than other trees, for it retained its greenery all year round. So, too, did the laurel, the holly and the ivy, all used in idol worship since very early days.

In May, country people would appeal to their gods by felling a large tree and drawing it into the village as the May-pole. This would draw the blessing of the tree spirit into the village; to make doubly sure, the outside of the houses were decked with evergreen branches and wreaths.

This is how the Puritan writer, Phillip Stubbes in his "Anatomie of Abuses" (1583) described the May pole ceremonies:

"Against May, Whitsunday or other time, all the young men and maids, old men and wives, run gadding over night to the woods, groves, hills and mountains, where they spend all night in pleasant pastimes; and in the morning they return, bringing with them birch and branches of trees to deck their assemblies withal.
And no marvel, for there is a great lord present among them, namely satan, prince of hell.
But the chiefest jewel they bring from thence is their Maypole, which they bring home with great veneration...this Maypole (this stinking idol, rather) is covered all over with flowers and herbage, bound round about with string from the top to the bottom and sometimes painted with various colours, with two or three hundred men, women and children following it with great devotion. And thus being reared up, with handkerchiefs and flags hovering on the top, they straw the ground round about, bind green boughs about it, set up summer huts, bowers and arbours hard by it, and then they fall to dance about it, like as the heathen people did at the dedication of the idols, whereof this is the perfect pattern, or rather, the thing itself.
I have heard it credibly reported that of forty, sixty or a hundred maids going to the wood overnight, there have scarcely the third part of them returned home again undefiled."

This account of the rice-planting ceremony in Bengal is remarkably similar:

"A party of young people go to the forest and cut a young Karma-tree. Bearing it in triumph they return singing, dancing and beating drums, and plant it in the middle of the village dancing-ground. A sacrifice is offered to the tree; next morning the youths, linked arm-in-arm, dance in a great circle round the tree, which is decked with strips of coloured cloth and plaited straw".

The tree is possibly the most basic and important pagan religious symbol, being used world-wide, and from ancient Babylon to modern times to represent satan and his ‘wisdom’; also, by an extension of this, the pagan messiah and his family.

• In the Buddhist religion, Buddha is represented as having sat under the sacred tree to attain enlightenment, and the Tree of Light used at the Buddhist feast of the dead bears candles to represent souls.
• On the fir tree of Woden, luminous balls represented sun, moon and stars. The god bestowed gifts upon those who thus honoured his tree. Perhaps, as you decorate your Christmas fire tree with golden, silver and bronze-coloured balls you will remember this custom!
• The Shaman used the tree as a means of ascent to the gods, in order to obtain supernatural wisdom or powers; thus a tree on a pole was erected for him through the smoke-hole entrance of the kiva.

Each religion has its version of the trees of Life and Knowledge.

• For the Germanic races, it was the Yggdrasil the World Tree that penetrated heaven, earth and the underworld. It was known as Odin’s ‘steed’ for he, as a shaman, travelled between heaven and earth on the tree. He also sacrificed himself on it to obtain wisdom and power.
• Later, in Germany, the "Paradise Tree" decorated with apples and ringed by candles, was the central object of medieval mystery plays.
• The Hebrew ‘Book of Zohar’ says, "The Tree of Life extends from above downwards, and is the sun which illuminates all".
• The Mithraic sacred tree is the pine;
• Iin Babylon it is the palm tree.

Inseparable from the Tree of Knowledge, of course, is the serpent - satan himself. In mythology, he appears as the beast or dragon who guards, or dispenses, the miraculous benefits of the tree, as did the dragon killed by Hercules in his search for the golden apples of Hesperus, or the serpent killed by Jason when he snatched the Golden Fleece from the branches.

The worship of Attis included the felling of a pine tree which was brought into the sanctuary of Cybele where it was treated as a great divinity. The trunk was swathed as a corpse with woollen bands and decked with wreaths of flowers, and the effigy of Attis was tied to the stem.

Like tree-spirits in general, Attis was identified with corn. A Roman statue of him shows him with a bunch of corn-ears and fruit in his hand and a wreath of pine-cones, pomegranates and fruits on his head. It takes no longer to unravel this mystery than it does to say that Jesus is our Seed and Branch. (Isa 11:1-2; Jer 23:5-6; Gen 13:15; Gal 3:16.)

Pine cones were seen as important instruments of fertility, and they were tossed, with pine branches and offerings of pigs, into the sacred caverns of Demeter, and afterwards drawn out to be ploughed into the fields.

• In GREECE, Dionysus, or Bacchus, was a god of wine and trees, and his image was often a draped tree. Particularly sacred to him was the pine tree, and the Delphic Oracle commanded the Corinthians to worship the pine tree "equally with the God". .
• In EGYPT, the tree - more usually the palm tree- was a representation of Osiris and, as Baal-Tamar, denoted the satanic messiah. Osiris was a tree spirit, and in a ceremony described by Firmicus Maternus, he is especially associated with the pine tree, for that tree was cut down and hollowed out to receive an image of the god. The legend of Osiris tells how he was killed by his wicked brother, Set, and eventually became incorporated into a tree which grew up around his coffin.
• In ROME the sacred tree was the fir, and the god was known as Baal-Berith (Lord of the Fir) which was a play on words for the benefit of the initiates, for Baal-BerEth meant Lord of the Covenant. The theme of worship of the dead Osiris was continued by the Celts, who carried out a ritual burial of the tree.

It appears from this that the tree was more representative of death than life, for it not only brought death to mankind, but also to the true Saviour of mankind, Jesus Christ.

It is the death of the gods which makes their trees objects of worship, and it was by the death of a human representative of the god that the tree-god was honoured. Those offered to Odin were - predictably - hanged upon a tree and speared; the sacrifices to Attis were tied to the tree and flayed to death. Artemis appears to have been hanged annually either in effigy or by a representative in her sacred grove of Condylea in Arcadia. In that place she went by the name of The Hanged One. The Greeks, too, sacrificed animals in this way.

The Yule Log

The Log, so symbolic of Christmas celebrations, is only a smaller version of the complete tree. It is burned (sacrificed) on Christmas Eve and resurrected on Christmas Day as the Christmas Tree. Although the customs surrounding the Log are dying out as central heating replaces open fires, the Log still remains one of the central features of Christmas celebrations, and the chocolate version graces many a Christmas tea table on the day.

It has been said that the Log is all that now remains of the ancient fire festivals of Winter, and to some extent this is true; however, this does not explain the custom of shaping the log into the figure of an old woman, or chalking upon it the shape of a man. This seems to indicate that the original meaning of the Yule Log does indeed come from the dying ‘saviour’ god.

It must be remembered that the divine child born at the solstice was born as a new incarnation of the ‘Mighty One’ after that god had been killed. The god who was cut down in the midst of life was symbolised as a huge tree cut down almost to the ground. In the Bible, the Tree of Life returns to mankind as the Branch, shooting afresh from the roots of Jesse. (Isa 11:1-2). . See also Isaiah 61,3b for the use of the tree as ‘mighty one’ and Daniels’s interpretation of the tree vision (Dan 4)

Thus, the Yule Log is destroyed by the fire and raised again as the pine tree. This may remind some of the fabled Phoenix bird of Egypt which kills itself by sitting on a bonfire, the ashes then giving birth to a new young bird after three days. The symbolism of this was such that the Church Fathers made use of the Phoenix to illustrate the death and resurrection of Christ.

But here is the link between the Yule Log and the Phoenix bird. The Greek word PHOINIX means PALM TREE!

The Fire-Born God

The name of the Persian leader of the fire-worshippers, Zoroaster, comes from Zero-ashta, or "seed of fire", fire-born. This name carried a double meaning, for the Chaldean word ‘ashta’ not only meant fire, but ‘woman’, hence Ishtar/Astarte. Thus, the title "Seed of Fire" could equally be "Seed of the Woman", the pagan messiah.

Dionysus/Bacchus was also called ‘fire-born’ (15) for his story was that he, with his mother, was consumed in the flames produced by his father, Zeus, who then rescued the boy from the flames and sewed him up in his thigh until the child was mature.

It cannot be discounted that the gods who were represented in, or snatched from the flames are yet another blasphemous and satanic counterfeit for the God who descended into the nether world and was raised to life again by His Father. Certainly, the imagery, which must have been well known to the prophets of old, was used to represent Israel in Amos 4:11, and Joshua (himself a type of Christ) in Zechariah 3:2, when the Lord rebukes satan on his own terms by saying of Joshua, "Is not THIS a brand plucked from the burning?"

Thus the fire-born god dies as the hewn log, and rises again to be worshipped as the full-grown fir tree, full of light and glory. How perfectly we have encapsulated this worship in our Christmas festivities!

Festival of Light

Christmas is, supremely, a festival of fire and light. Towns and cities contest with one another in the brightness and ingenuity of their lights and flashing tree decorations are everywhere. Candles, too, figure prominently in church services and house decorations and are a potent symbol of Christmas.

The Christmas season begins with Hallowe’en, and the bonfires, candles, and lights set within skulls of hollowed-out marrows or turnips are a direct throw-back to the Celtic ceremonies of Samhain.

In the early years of this century it was reported that, in Lancashire, the 31st October was known not as Halloween but as Teanday, from the Celtic ‘teindh’ meaning fire or light.

In 1784 the lighting of bonfires on Findern Common in Derbyshire for the purpose of lighting souls out of Purgatory was described by contemporary writers.. All Hallows bonfires were regularly lit around the country until very recently and the practise of jumping through the flames is a vivid reminder of much more ancient rituals. (That is, of the burning of children and animals to the god of the dead!).

Equally significant are the customs of carrying in procession a burning bush made of hawthorn, fir, ash or holly decorated with mistletoe at the time of Old New Year (Jan 11th), for we have seen that the branch or tree was a counterfeit of the messiah.

In Herefordshire, this truth is emphasised by the burning of two hawthorn globes, one inside the other, to represent the Master and the First-Born, the ashes of which are then scattered on the fields for crop fertility. Obviously, much more than worship of the sun is implied here. We cannot explain these ceremonies simply as fertility rituals. The ancient world worshipped a god-saviour who had died.. They performed their rituals in order to ensure and hasten his return.

The Fire-Festivals of the Britons

Each of the four winter solstice months had its own fire festival:

• In November it was Samhain or Halloween
• December was the true sun solstice, with the candles on the trees.
• In January were New Year and Twelfth Night,
• February was the Celtic Imbolc, the ancient ‘Festival of Lights’ which the Church adopted as Candlemas.

(In Rome, too, the first of February was a festival of candles and torch-lit processions for there they honoured the deity Februa/Februis in a ritual purification of the city. Pope Sergius (d.701 )when he saw the Christians’ hankering after this festival, created the feast of Candlemas for the Purification of the Virgin after childbirth, which gave church people a chance to indulge in their own candle blessing and procession.)

The practises associated with these bonfire festivals of the winter months have so much in common with the Mayday, Easter and Midsummer bonfires that they might be thought to express the same idea and have the same purpose. To put it in terms of satan’s own blasphemy, this was to "show the Lord’s (Baal’s) death until he comes again" and originally this is just what they did, for the merciless Priest of Baal (Khana-Baal= Cannibal) would sacrifice and eat the ‘god’ in the form of some hapless victim who no doubt thought it a great honour to die in this way. Thus the word ‘cannibal’ came into our language, meaning one who eats another human being.

Bonfire Rituals

The beliefs and ceremonies of fire festivals throughout the year and around the world are remarkably similar: dancing in a circle, singing or shouting, burning a certain representative object - a straw effigy, tree or dummy -and after the flames have died down, leaping across the bonfire for good luck and fertility. Often, this is the privilege of young women or young couples hand-in-hand, but sheep, pigs and cattle used to be driven through the dying embers too.

An illustration showing couples leaping across the bonfire in Alsace, France in 1830 is accompanied by the incantation to Apollo, the sun-god noted by the poet Virgil. It says:

"…whom first we serve; whole woods of unctuous pine,
are felled for thee, and to thy glory shine.
By thee protected, with our naked soles,
Through flames unsinged we march and tread the kindled coals."

I probably do not need, at this point, to remind you of the same practise of fire-walking still alive amongst the Hindu gurus.

In former times, animals, including cats and foxes, were burnt in the fires; sometimes a fir tree dressed in clothes or a ‘straw man’ was burnt. In France, this man of straw was addressed as "Granno my friend, my father, my mother" and the name has been traced to the Celtic god Grannus, identical with Apollo. In more recent years and in Roman Catholic countries, the effigy has been given the name Judas and is burnt or hanged on Good Friday, but the idea remains the same.

The Druidical practise at the time of the Roman invasion was noted by various historians of that time. Once every five years an enormous wicker-work ‘man’ was made which was filled with prisoners and animals and then burnt. We can imagine that, annually, lesser fires were lit for the same purpose.

A significant feature of the bonfire party in many places is the special cake which was divided amongst those present, the one who chose the blackened or marked portion being treated as a victim of some sort. The others, for instance, would make as if to throw him into the flames. In Scotland, the victim would be spoken of all year as having died.

Fire Worship

It might be thought that bonfires (or, more properly, bun-fires, from the blackened cakes that indicated who was to be sacrificed) were a natural progression from the worship of the sun as god, especially in the darker months of winter when the fire would act as a substitute. Certainly, customs indicate such sun-worship: ie. the tossing of fiery discs above the flames and the rolling of wheels of straw or tar barrels down hills.

However, in very early days, the sun was recognised to be a servant or minister of God and man, and its name was Shamesh, the Minister. Only later was the sun called Baal, the Lord, and worshipped as symbolic of the Light of Heaven. Satan’s jealousy of our true Lord Jesus, the Son and Light of the world was such that he drew man’s adoration to the visible light of the sun as a symbol of himself as the "lightbringer" (Lucifer) (16) and enlightener of men.

The 'Strange Fire' of Satan

It may be that the original fire was that which fell from Heaven from God to consume the sacrifices of Adam and his descendants after the Fall. Satan could not imitate this (the priests of Baal called upon him to do so, but went unanswered. 1 Kings 18:26) But he could direct natural lightning to create fires in the trees and grass which men venerated and idolised as symbolic of the power of their ‘lord’. When fire not of God, strange, alien fire, was offered in the Tabernacle, it caused the death of the two Jewish priests whose presumption was that a man-made alternative would be acceptable to God. (Leviticus 10:1,2) The bonfires of all the ages since stand testimony to satan’s continued arrogance and rebellion against the one true God.

The names of those gods identified with Nimrod, and Nimrod’s own titles, bear witness to his character as a god of fire. As Phaethon, the son of the sungod, who rebelled against his father and was thus cast out of heaven, he was the "kindler of light", and as Tammuz he was the "perfecter by burning" (Tam = to perfect; muz = to burn).

Moloch, too, offered ‘purification by fire’ to those who were prepared to pass through the flames, and his name - King - points to the one who first made himself a king on the earth. Likewise, the name of the Roman god of fire, Mulciber, comes from Molk-Gheber, "Mighty King".

In Egypt, the sun was addressed as P’ouro, which means red-fire-king, and the title of Nimrod himself is reported to have been Alorus, god of fire. Many people know that the Zoroastrian religion is one of fire worship, and the popular story of its origins was that it derived from ‘the founder of Babylon and the father of Tahmurs’. The name Zoroaster means ‘fire-born’ but also ‘seed of the woman’ as previously noted, which gives us another clear link between satan’s messiah and fire worship. A Zoroastrian saying worships fire as the "one god and father of all, who delivered men to the second mind whom all nations call the first".

Another myth, this time from India, seems to shed light on the history of Nimrod and his fall. It was said that the fifth head of Brahma was cut off for the distress it caused to the earth by its dazzling beams. As Noah was the ‘god’ of the old world as well as the new he is represented with two heads (as Janus, for example); his son Ham is the third head, Ham’s son Cush is the fourth, and Nimrod is the fifth head or generation after the Flood. Another way to reckon this is to say that the ‘man of sin’ was originally Adam and satan’s bloodline passed to Cain, then after the flood through Ham and Cush to Nimrod, the fifth.

Zeus was the sixth child born to Rhea, wife of Cronos (Nimrod) but the other five were swallowed by their father because he feared that his child would depose him. This would correctly place Cronos as the fifth and his son, the baby messiah, as the sixth generation. Plutarch seems to confirm this story of fire worship arising in the fifth generation by telling us that the Egyptians thought that light was produced by MICE in the fifth generation, when a NEW MOON was produced.

The intriguing idea that mice (17) produced the light can be explained. The confusion arises because the Chaldean word for mouse is ‘Aakbar’ which will be familiar to some in the Arabian phrase "Allah Akbar, God is Great". The word means great or mighty, and is a reference to the Mighty One, Nimrod. (For a biblical reference indicating the pagan reverence of mice, as a symbol of the Mighty One, see 1 Sam 6).

Nimrod, as well as being worshipped as the sun, was a moon god. Baal, too, was the moon god at Ur where Abraham lived and also at Harran, where he and his father came to rest on their journey to Canaan. The name of the Sumerian moon god, Sin, means "knowledge lord" and that of the Assyrian Nannar means "lightbringer" (lucifer).

From this it will readily be seen why the onset of light, or enlightenment coincided with the rise of a ‘new moon’.

Continue to Part Three